Announcements

Check back here regularly to learn about Luskin Center activities, new reports, and other noteworthy updates about our work.

LCHP Releases Report on Land, Endowments, and Ethics: Unpacking the Historical Legacy of UC Real Estate Investments

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LCHP Releases Report on Land, Endowments, and Ethics: Unpacking the Historical Legacy of UC Real Estate Investments

The Luskin Center is dedicated to creating a new type of research that adds historical context to urgent and relevant policy issues. We are also committed to harnessing the exceptional talents of our undergraduate and graduate student researchers. Additionally, we strive to critically examine our own university environment and system as whole.

Together, this report provides critical and constructive insights into the institution we call home. We hope that a thorough and honest exploration will guide us toward a better and more just UC-wide community. As always, we welcome your feedback and input on this significant body of research.

The History of the University of California’s Real Estate Investments

This report explores the UC’s significant investment in Blackstone, a real estate trust that generates profits by raising rents and housing prices—outcomes that have a direct impact on many UC students and faculty. It prompts an examination of the UC system’s funding history, its investment strategies, and the ethical implications of its financial decisions. It reflects the balance between financial strategy and social responsibility within the realm of higher education.

This report was written by a team of UCLA student researchers and Ph.D. students who conducted research over the past year and a half. They include John Schmidt, Abbie Cohen, and Samuel Feldblum.

To read the paper, click [HERE].

Listen to report authors Samuel Feldblum, John Schmidt, and Abbie Cohen in a conversation about their report in the podcast episode below.

Dr. Paul’s Article on the American Historical Review

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In 2022-2023, LCHP Researcher Dr. Paul led a research team that studied street naming practices in Los Angeles. The team, consisting of student research fellows Maggie Seay, Tessa Fier, and Rachel Tokofsky, explored what personal names were commemorated in LA street names, why certain individuals are commemorated with street names while others aren’t, and what effects these names have in neighborhoods. In September 2023, Dr. Paul published an article based on this LCHP-funded project in the American Historical Review as part of the “engaged history” forum. We are very proud of her academic accomplishments and we are happy to continue supporting this ongoing research in 2023-24. 

Samuel Feldblum’s Fulbright-Hays Fellowship Award

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Samuel Feldblum, a UCLA graduate student, won the prestigious Fulbright-Hays Fellowship award in 2023. With this award, he will study abroad in Chile and the research will focus on water governance through the lens of historical political ecology. He worked with the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy in the past as a part of the Student Debt and University Endowment Funding research team in 2022-2023 as a graduate student research fellow under Professor David N. Myers. As an LCHP grantee and researcher, he co-wrote and published articles including “The Transformation of Academic Labor: Past as Prologue at the UC” and “Ronald Reagan’s Ghost Runs the UC System. Expect strikes until that changes.” We are proud of the work he has gone on to accomplish and we wish him the best!

History in the Streets: Street Renaming in Los Angeles: Commemoration, Policy and the Politics of Identity

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History in the Streets: Street Renaming in Los Angeles: Commemoration, Policy and the Politics of Identity

Whether it be city planning or school curricula, tension over how history is represented, remembered and taught has gripped the American social and political landscape over the past several years. The 2020 Black Lives Matter uprisings brought renewed and critical attention to public commemoration, particularly the abundance of statues, memorials and place-names dedicated to the legacies of the Civil War, and how these offer one-sided historical narratives. Commemoration has implications for civic identity and belonging in urban neighborhoods. Discussions over whether a statue should be removed or remain intact are often lightly concealed debates over whose history and whose identity should be represented in the physical fabric of the city. The histories that we tell affirm and entrench power relations. In order to address issues of memory, power and identity in the urban landscape, this report focuses on street names as forms of commemoration, using Los Angeles as a case study.

This important research was led by LCHP Researcher and Directory of the Public History Initiative Tawny Paul, who worked with UCLA graduate students Tessa Fier, Maggie Seay, and Rachel Tokofsky.

Read the full report [here].

LCHP Funded Research on “Racism by Design” Published

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Journal of the American Planning Association: Vol 88, No 3 (Current issue)

LCHP Funded Research about Asian Immigration and the Adoption of Planning and Design Regulations in Three Los Angeles Suburbs

UCLA graduate student Hao Ding and Professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris recently published a peer-reviewed article “Racism by Design? Asian Immigration and the Adoption of Planning and Design Regulations in Three Los Angeles Suburbs” in the Journal of the American Planning Association. Based on their research supported by LCHP, Ding and Loukaitou-Sideris examine the exclusionary effects of land use and design controls in three Los Angeles County cities.

Read their published article here.