Gifts of Stories

The biannual Faculty Research Lecture at UCLA has presented the work of the university’s most distinguished scholars since 1925. Its purpose is to recognize their superb achievements, and give the campus and the greater community an opportunity to gain a new perspective on scholarly achievements and the viewpoints of the faculty honored. UCLA History Professor Brenda Stevenson delivered the 127th lecture, a talk titled “The Gifts of the Storyteller.”

She talks about growing up in Virginia listening to her mother’s stories of their enslaved ancestors. As a scholar of slavery and the Antebellum South, some of our country’s most painful moments and eras, she found little documentary evidence of women’s lives. She had to become an investigator, following leads and bits of information to get to the stories told through the ages.

In this lecture she shares the stories of three women from different classes. Her careful listening over the years has unearthed fascinating stories about the women and the time in which they lived.

Watch — Gifts of the Storyteller with Brenda Stevenson – UCLA Faculty Research Lecture

Honoring the Legacy of an Urban Planning Pioneer

Leo Estrada built a legacy fighting for civil rights, voting rights and equal representation for Latinos during his 40-years at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA. Estrada was a pioneer in the field of urban planning, providing his expertise to the U.S. Census Bureau throughout his career. Estrada passed away in 2018, and the Luskin School established a fellowship in his honor, proving support to underrepresented graduate students in the Department of Urban Planning. Recently, the Luskin School paid tribute to Estrada with a daylong symposium centered around the lessons of his work.

The New Majority & the 2020 Census: Shifting the Balance of Power

In his keynote address, Arturo Vargas, president and CEO of the NALEO Educational Fund discusses the importance of the census, and the long history of efforts to avoid counting immigrants and minorities. Indeed, the Hispanic origin question was only added to the census in the 1970s, when Leo Estrada was working at the U.S. Census Bureau. Vargas calls the controversial proposal to require undocumented immigrants to identify themselves a scare tactic, aimed at decreasing representation in Washington. He details other challenges ahead, and what must be done to overcome them.

Demography & Population Studies as a Conduit to Systems Change

Quality data is paramount to ensuring equal representation. If we don’t know who is living in our communities, we can’t create and maintain the systems needed to care for and support those communities. In this panel discussion, experts on data collection, Chicano studies and urban planning discuss the challenges of getting good data, and how to turn data into action.

The Historical Exclusion of Minority Elected Officials & The Modern Fight for Minority-Majority Districts

Leo Estrada had a major impact on redistricting in California. This panel discussion features former elected officials, legal and political experts discussing how Estrada worked to ensure people of color achieved equal representation in the legislature. Not only was his expertise and data collection essential in understanding the makeup of California communities, but it also proved invaluable in recruiting the best candidates.

Mentorship: Building a Diverse Pipeline in the Academy

Leo Estrada’s legacy lives on in the scores of people he mentored over his decades-long career. This panel of academics, who crossed paths with Estrada at various points in their lives, discusses the lessons learned from his unique form of mentorship. They explain how making it in academia can be especially difficult for people from underrepresented communities, and how Estrada’s methods could be used to get more students from those communities through higher education.

Watch — The New Majority & the 2020 Census: Shifting the Balance of Power

Criminal Justice and the Latinx Community

The criminal justice system’s impact on Latina and Latino people in Southern California and across the nation was the focus of the annual UCLA Law Review symposium at the UCLA School of Law. Featuring leading scholars and practitioners who work to uncover and combat the ways in which bias affects Latinx communities’ interactions with law enforcement, panelists addressed incarceration, policing, community organizing and criminal adjudication, plus related issues involving ethics and capital punishment.

UCLA Law professor emeritus Gerald López delivered the event’s keynote address. He captivated the crowd with reflections on his childhood in East Los Angeles in the 1950s, where he watched the criminal justice system target Latinx people — activity that, he noted, continues to this day.

“It left impressions on me that shape everything I do,” he said while encouraging budding attorneys and activists to continue his lifelong effort to respond to those challenges and “change the world.”

Browse more programs in Latinx Communities, Race, and the Criminal Justice System

The Tibetan Plateau

The Tibetan Plateau is home to unique, rare and endangered fauna and flora that has adapted to survival in this lofty, arid land. For thousands of years rivers originating here have nourished the civilizations stretching from Pakistan to China and throughout India and South Asia. Home to about one-third of the world’s population, this vast region is facing dramatic changes as the glaciers that both store and supply water shrink, and global warming brings new regimes and patterns in climatology.

What will these changes be? What are the mechanisms that cause them? How can so much of the world’s humanity adapt or prepare? And what will be the fate of the plants and animals that have for so long called this place home?

Explore how UCLA researchers are studying the causes and the effects these changes will bring to The Tibetan Plateau and all it touches.

Watch The Tibetan Plateau

New Programs from UCLA’s Distinguished Scholars

8232The biannual Faculty Research Lecture at UCLA presents the work of the university’s most distinguished scholars. Its purpose is to recognize their superb achievements, and give the campus and the greater community an opportunity to gain a new perspective on scholarly achievements and the viewpoints of the faculty honored.

Enjoy these new programs from UCLA:

8232Dead Man Talking: Lenin’s Body and Russian Politics
“Arch Getty explores details surrounding Lenin’s body which has been on public display since shortly after his death in 1924.”

8232Jorge Luis Borges on War
“Efrain Kristal explores the significance of war in the writings of Jorge Luis Borges who introduced the Spanish-speaking world to German expressionist poetry and later observed the rise of Nazism.”

8232Oncogene, Metabolism of Development, Cancer and the Little Fruit Fly That Could
“The amazing advances made in mapping the human genome don’t alter one longstanding fact: when it comes to unlocking the scientific secrets of life, fruit flies rule.”

The first UCLA Faculty Research Lecture was presented in 1925. In 1986, the program was expanded to two lectures each year: one from the natural sciences or engineering, the other from humanities, social disciplines or creative arts.

The Faculty Research Lectures have spanned the scope of new knowledge created at UCLA, including the functions of the brain, the evolution of the earth and nature, innovations in the exploration of literature and the arts, global security, landmarks in archaeological discovery, discoveries in the molecular realm, the core of our galaxy, fundamental constructs of human morality, and the Supreme Court and constitutional law.

Browse more programs from UCLA’s Faculty Research Lectures.