UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy

'To Fight One War with the Other': Race, the War on Poverty, and the Vietnam Draft
2023-02-08 12:30 (America/Los_Angeles)
Dr. Ben Zdencanovic (Postdoctoral Scholar at the Luskin Center for History and Policy)

This talk traces the largely forgotten history of “Project 100,000,” a Defense Department initiative which recruited tens of thousands of poor and working-class nonwhite men into Vietnam from 1966-1971. Contrary to the “guns versus butter” narratives that we typically have of this era, “Project 100,000” was conceived as a component of the domestic War on Poverty. In the hopes of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, labor official Patrick Moynihan, and others in the Johnson administration, “Project 100,000” would simultaneously address conscription needs for the Vietnam War and also serve a social function by providing vocational training and a disciplined masculine environment for underemployed youths of color. The talk thus shows how the Great Society state combined paternalistic welfarism and conscriptive militarism to discipline and manage marginalized, underemployed, and putatively volatile nonwhite urban populations. The story of “Project 100,000” indicates that the War on Poverty is best understood not as an expression of well-intentioned but paternalistic liberalism (as scholars typically depict it), but rather as a technocratic effort to mobilize and manage the manpower of racialized surplus labor in the context of the Cold War national security state.

The Soldier's Opinion In-Person Screening and Q&A
2023-02-13 18:30 - 20:00 | Royce Hall Room 190
RSVP Here

Town Destroyer Film Screening
2023-05-23 16:00 | Bunche 6275, Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles
A historic mural at George Washington High School in San Francisco shows George Washington as both a triumphant general and the destroyer of Indigenous lives and settlements. Painted by Victor Arnautoff in 1936, the mural is unusual for its time in that it critically depicts Washington as the owner of enslaved people and destroyer of Native lands. The image of a Native individual’s lifeless body, life-size and centrally located in the school, prompts discussion of trauma response, cancel culture, artistic impact versus intent, and student safety.

A screening of the film will be followed by a panel discussion with the filmmakers.

Space is limited for this event. Please RSVP before May 1 to: luskincenter@history.ucla.edu

Zev Yaroslavsky Book Event
2023-06-06 16:00 - 18:00 | Royce Hall 306
Join us to celebrate the release of a new memoir by long-time member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and member of the LCHP Board of Advisors, Zev Yaroslavsky.

Space is limited for this event. Please RSVP to: luskincenter@history.ucla.edu.

Atrocities, genocide & the Duty to Prevent and to Punish under International Law: The Situation of Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh
2023-10-10 19:00 - 21:30 | UCLA Engineering VI (Engineering Building 6), 404 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, 90095, United States
This event is a co-production of the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA School of Law and The Promise Armenian Institute at UCLA.
Armenians have suffered discrimination and persecution at the hands of Azerbaijan—in Azerbaijan, Armenia and in Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh—for decades. In December 2022, Azerbaijan began its restrictions and eventual full blockade of the Lachin Corridor, the only road connecting the 120,000 ethnic Armenians in the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh within the borders of Azerbaijan to Armenia proper. As of this writing, for nearly 300 days, the population of Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh, 25% of whom are children, have been deprived of life-saving necessities such as food, medicines and fuel, resulting in starvation and death. More recently, even the International Committee of the Red Cross and other humanitarian aid organizations were prevented from accessing the population and, all the while, Azerbaijani officials have employed rhetoric normalizing hatred against ethnic Armenians while weaponizing starvation leading to death or forcible displacement from Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh.
Azerbaijan’s aggression with respect to the Lachin Corridor over the past year is not isolated and points to a pattern and practice of ethnic cleansing that has gone unchecked for years. Indeed, on Tuesday, September 19, 2023, Azerbaijan launched a military operation against the already-suffering people of Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh, with hundreds of deaths and injuries within the first 24 hours of the attack. This tragic situation became an overt initiation of wholesale, violent ethnic cleansing, and while ceasefire agreements may be in place, threats to the safety and security of the ethnic Armenians in this region continue.
Looking at the situation with respect to attacks against ethnic Armenians as a result of the Lachin Corridor blockade, and recent active military attacks in Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh and in Armenia generally, this panel will explore the following key questions drawing from action taken thus far by States and international actors (or not):

What conditions trigger the duty to prevent atrocities, including genocide?
Once triggered, what is the scope of that duty, and what tools, both national and international, can help to identify these obligations as well as lawful steps for addressing a genocidal situation?

Agenda:
7:00pm-8:30pm Panel Discussion
8:30pm-9:30pm Closing Reception

Speakers:

Dr. Taner Akçam, Inaugural Director, Armenian Genocide Research Program of The Promise Armenian Institute at UCLA
Professor Thomas Becker, Legal & Policy Director, The University Network for Human Rights, Columbia Law School & Wesleyan University, author of briefing “The Tip of the Iceberg” on the Lachin Corridor blockade.
Professor Hannah Garry, Moderator, Executive Director, Promise Institute for Human Rights, signatory to Submission to UN Special Adviser on Prevention of Genocide, Sept. 5, 2023
Professor Juan Méndez, American University Washington College of Law, first UN Special Advisor on Prevention of Genocide, author of a “Preliminary Opinion” on the crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh and the need to prevent atrocity crimes.
Sheila Paylan, International law, human rights and gender expert; Director, Armenian Women’s Bar Association Board of Directors

This event is co-sponsored by UCLA’s Promise Armenian Institute, UCLA’s Armenian Students’ Association, Jewish World Watch, UCLA’s Initiative to Study Hate, UCLA’s Luskin Center for History and Policy, the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research, and The University Network for Human Rights.

Understanding the Israel-Gaza Conflict: Causes, Conduct, Consequences
2023-11-21 14:00 - 15:00 | Zoom
James L. Gelvin (Professor, UCLA)
David N. Myers (Professor, UCLA)

What is Hamas? What’s behind its attack on Israel? Why was Israel so ill-prepared? What lies ahead in the future in Israel-Palestine and the wider region?
This informational session will feature short presentations by Dr. James L. Gelvin and Dr. David N. Myers, followed by an audience Q&A.

This event will be held on Zoom. Advance registration is required. Register here.

James L. Gelvin is professor of history at UCLA. He is author of numerous books and articles on Middle East history and contemporary issues, including The Israel-Palestine Conflict: A History.
David N. Myers is professor of history at UCLA and director of the Luskin Center for History and Policy. He is the author and editor of numerous books in the field of modern Jewish history, including Between Arab and Jew: The Lost Voice of Simon Rawidowicz.

This event is co-sponsored by the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, the UCLA Y & S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, and the UCLA History Department.

Where the Hood at? Fifty Years of Change in Black Neighborhoods
2023-11-29 12:30 - 13:30 | Bunche Hall 6339, Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles
Michael Lens (Professor, UCLA)

What does DMX have to do with fair housing? Michael Lens examines fifty years of data on Black neighborhoods since the Fair Housing Act to explore this question and provide the first comprehensive picture of the characteristics and trajectories of America’s longest enduring urban racial enclaves.

Michael Lens is Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy, and Associate Faculty Director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. Professor Lens’s research and teaching explore the potential of public policy to address housing market inequities that lead to negative outcomes for low-income families and communities of color. Professor Lens’s research has received funding from the MacArthur Foundation, the Arnold Foundation, and the Terner Center for Housing Innovation, among other sources.

Racism, Law, and the Hidden Power of the Archive
2024-01-10 16:00 - 18:00 | Bunche 6275, Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles
Elizabeth Hinton (Professor, Yale University)

The United States Supreme Court has made it nearly impossible to prove that a particular law is racially discriminatory. Under the standards the Court established in the 1970s, archival materials are the only available evidentiary sources that can be used to prove discriminatory intent behind the enactment of criminal and civil laws. Although the proof lies in the historical record, it has yet to be fully utilized in this manner. Focusing her discussion on crime control policies enacted in the 1980s and 1990s, Elizabeth Hinton will explore opportunities within archives to combat racial discrimination and advance social justice through the law.

Elizabeth Hinton is Professor of History, African American Studies, and Law at Yale University. Her research focuses on the persistence of poverty, racial inequality, and urban violence in the 20th century United States. Professor Hinton’s first book, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America was published by Harvard University Press in 2017. Her recent book, America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s (Liveright 2021), won a Robert F. Kennedy book award.

Date: Wednesday, January 10, 2024
Time: 4 pm
Location: Bunche Hall 6275

Light refreshments will be served.

Please RSVP before Friday, January 5.

Eviction as Collateral for Municipal Bonds: The Making of a Predatory Debt Market in Early Twentieth Century Los Angeles
2024-02-07 12:30 - 13:30
Marques Vestal (Assistant Professor, UCLA)

In February of 1938, George Farley shot and killed two Los Angeles deputies while resisting an eviction over what the Los Angeles Times claimed was delinquent rent of $69. Rallying to Farley’s defense, the California Eagle, the newspaper of record for Black Los Angeles, revealed that Farley once owned his home but fell victim to tax foreclosure for an unpaid “street bond.” In this talk, I uncover the now forgotten history of the predatory debt market that leveraged the right to evict George Farley, and thousands of others, to finance the modernization of Los Angeles. I end with a discussion about the implications of this case study on contemporary discussions of housing policy.

Marques Vestal is an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Critical Black Urbanism. He serves as a Faculty Advisor for Million Dollar Hoods, a community-driven and multidisciplinary initiative documenting the human and fiscal costs of mass incarceration in Los Angeles. He also serves as a historical consultant for the Luskin Center for History and Policy. Marques is a tenant of Los Angeles and a member of the South Central local of the Los Angeles Tenants Union. Marques is an urban historian studying the social history of residential property in Black Los Angeles during the rebellious twentieth century. His work links property conflict—the everyday contracts, solicitations, complaints, lawsuits, and murders over property—to broader transformations of real estate, urban development, and Black liberation. He argues that this space of incessant conflict is the unwritten housing policy of the United States. Marques’ research interests are broad, but center on the twentieth-century experience of a few key political relations to land: property, housing insecurity, municipal incapacity, and racial capitalism. Having witnessed, archivally and firsthand, the violence of Los Angeles’ rental housing markets, he is dedicated to projects that advance social housing and horizontal tenant governance.

Film Screening and Director Q&A: Agniia Galdanova’s queer dissident documentary film “QUEENDOM”
2024-04-19 18:30 | James Bridges Theater, 235 Charles E. Young Drive E, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
The UCLA Department of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Languages and Cultures (SEEELC), in collaboration with the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television, the UCLA Center for European and Russian Studies (CERS), and the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy, invites you to a screening of Agniia Galdanova’s dissident Russian documentary film “Queendom,” which will be followed by a Q&A session with the director. View the trailer here.

Film Synopsis
Gena, a queer artist from a small town in Russia, dresses in otherworldly costumes made from junk and tape, and protests the government on the streets of Moscow. Born and raised on the harsh streets of Magadan, a frigid outpost of the Soviet gulag, Gena is only 21. She stages radical performances in public that become a new form of art and activism. By doing that, she wants to change people’s perception of beauty and queerness and bring attention to the harassment of the LGBTQ+ community. Their performances – often dark, strange, evocative, and queer at their core – are a manifestation of Gena’s subconscious. But they come at a price.

About the Director
Agniia Galdanova is a Sundance and IDFA-supported documentary film director. Her previous film, “One Step Forward, One Step Back,” about a family’s dream to live far from civilization in the Altai Mountains, premiered at the Message to Man International Film Festival. Her work focuses on complex human relationships told through immersive observational language. Her new film QUEENDOM about a young queer artist Gena Marvin premiered at SXSW 2023 in Documentary Competition.

How European Wars End - and What This Might Tell Us About the Conditions for Peace in Ukraine
2024-05-15 16:00 - 18:00
Stella Ghervas (Assistant Professor, UCLA)

Stella Ghervas is Professor of History and the Eugen Weber Chair in Modern European History at UCLA. She has held teaching, research and visiting positions in Australia, France, Georgia, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Her main interests are in intellectual and international history of modern Europe, with special reference to the history of peace and peace-making, and in Russia’s intellectual and maritime history. She is the author or editor of six books, most notably Réinventer la tradition: Alexandre Stourdza et l’Europe de la Sainte Alliance (2008), which won the Guizot Prize from the Académie Française, A Cultural History of Peace in the Age of Enlightenment (co-ed., 2020), and Conquering Peace: From the Enlightenment to the European Union (2021), which won the 2023 Laura Shannon Prize. She is now working on a new book Calming the Waters? A New History of the Black Sea, 1774-1920s, and an anthology of essential texts on peace from the Antiquity to the present day.
Check out a recent interview featuring Professor Ghervas, “Pondering Peace: A Q&A with Professor Stella Ghervas”, available on the UCLA College website.

Violence in the Suburbs of France: A Tragic Cycle of Déjà Vus
2024-06-05 16:00 - 18:00 | Bunche 6275, Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles
Luuk Slooter (Professor, Utrecht University)

On 27 June 2023 a 17-year-old boy, Nahel Merzouk, is shot dead by the police in Nanterre, a suburb north of Paris (France). The same night collective violence erupts: cars burn down, buildings are set on fire and there are heavy clashes between young people and the police. The unrest spreads across the French Republic and lasts for 8 days.
The death of Nahel was not a one-off incident, but part of a longer history of suburban unrest in France’s marginalized suburbs. It was a déjà-vu. A tragic play that has been staged multiple times over the past four decades. Although the play has been performed in different forms, at different locations, and by different actors, it has remained loyal to a script in three acts.
In this talk I will bring you to the disadvantaged suburbs (banlieues) of France and disaggregate this three act drama. Drawing on ethnographic research I will show how the cycle of car burning protests and police brutality is rooted in the structural violence of a socially and spatially divided society.

Luuk Slooter is an Assistant Professor Conflict Studies at Utrecht University. His research focuses on urban uprisings, violence, policing, polarization and spatial segregation. He conducted ethnographic research in the French banlieues and disadvantaged neighborhoods in the Netherlands. He obtained his PhD from Utrecht University (the Netherlands) and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (France). His book publications include ‘The Making of the Banlieue: An Ethnography of Space, Identity and Violence’ (Palgrave, 2019) and ‘Geweld’ [Violence] (Athenaeum, 2021 – in Dutch – co-authored with Prof. Jolle Demmers).
Luuk Slooter is currently visiting Professor at UCLA’s Center for European and Russian Studies (Dutch Studies Program).

RSVP Here by June 3

The Nexus of Education Non-Profits, Corporations, and Philanthropy: The Pressures of the Past and Reimagining the Future (The Pasts and Futures of Higher Education in the U.S. Seminar)
2024-11-04 12:00 - 13:30 | Bunche 6339, Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles
Abbie Cohen (PhD Student, UCLA)

The University in Ruins? The Past and Futures of Today's Higher Ed Crisis
2024-11-18 12:00 - 13:30 | Bunche 6339, Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles
Davarian Baldwin (Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Founding Director of Smart Cities Research Lab, Trinity College)

The Original DEI: The Protestant Establishment and the Secularization of the University
2025-01-22 16:00 - 17:30 | Bunche 6339, Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles
Nomi M. Stolzenberg (Nathan and Lily Shapell Professor of Law, USC)

Once More Unto the Breach: The Neutrality Debate and the American University, 1967 and 2025
2025-02-10 12:00 - 13:30 | Bunche 6339, Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles
Malick Ghachem (Professor, MIT)

Why History Matters in an Age of Polycrisis
2025-03-06 18:00 - 19:00 | Wende Museum, 10808 Culver Blvd, Culver City, CA, 90230
Wende Museum

The Legacy of Impunity: A Book Talk with Philippe Sands
2025-03-12 12:15 - 13:30 | ULCA Law Room 1447
UCLA Law Room 1447

Black for the First Time: Race, Admissions, and Socialization in the Historically White Institutional Context
2025-04-07 12:00 - 13:30 | Bunche Hall 6339, Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles
Jamaal Muwwakkil (Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow, UCLA)

Borders within Borders: Service Provider Voices across America's Patchwork of Immigration Policies
2025-04-21 16:00 - 17:30 | Bunche Hall 6339, Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles
Tatiana Londoño (UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs)

Why History Matters: L.A. Wildfires Past, Present and Future
2025-04-30 18:00 - 20:00 | Lenart Auditorium, Fowler Museum at UCLA, 308 Charles E Young Dr N, Los Angeles, CA, 90024
Hitoshi Abe, Gerald Clark Jr., Char Miller, with moderator Stephen Aron

The Future of History
2025-11-03 15:00 - 18:00 | Legacy Room, Luskin Conference Center, 425 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095

"Teach Truth: The Struggle for an Antiracist Education" with Jesse Hagopian
2025-11-10 18:30 - 19:30 | 3312 Murphy Hall

Higher Education in Peril: A Conversation with Prof. Kim Scheppele and Prof. David Kaye
2025-12-02 12:00 - 14:00 | Bunche 6275, Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles
RSVP here by November 24
