McKinnon Center for Global Affairs Annual Report 2018-19

2018-2019 Academic Year Report

INTRODUCTION Thanks to your generosity, the McKinnon Center for Global Affairs continues to be an epicenter for exciting change and growth as we promote excellence in global liberal arts through teaching, research, outreach and international exchange. During the 2018-19 academic year, a number of faculty and students took the lead in strengthening Occidental’s foundational commitment to supporting our community in conducting impactful research in Los Angeles and around the world. Some of this research was subsequently shared with the campus through the Global Crossroads app and displayed on the Media Wall to inspire dialogue and showcase co-curricular programming and collaboration across disciplines. The McKinnon Center, and in particular Choi Auditorium, also played host to stimulating campus conversations as well as talks by visiting leaders on significant global issues, ranging from the economic, social and financial to the political and cultural. Experts engaged us on difficult issues at the intersections of the local, transnational and international.

We are excited that many of the programs and initiatives, such as the Young Initiative for Global Political Economy, are based from within the McKinnon Center. Year after year, they continue to have an increasingly powerful impact on the theory and practice of global political economy in Los Angeles and beyond and in the promotion of actions of general public and social benefit.

We appreciate your partnership and thank you for providing unparalleled access and experiences for our students as they become citizens of the world.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Global Crossroads

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The Media Wall

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Varelas Innovation Lab

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Partnerships for the Sustainable Development Goals

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Time Will Tech

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Choi Auditorium

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Global L.A. Speaker Series

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Distinguished Speaker Series

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Barack Obama Scholars Program Speaker Series

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Global LGBTQ Speaker Series

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Campus Collaboration

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Million Dollar Hoods

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Bird LA Day

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Oxy’s Cultural Studies Program

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U.N. Week 2019: Gender, Sexuality and Collective Action

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Select Faculty Work and Activities

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GLOBAL CROSSROADS A marketplace of ideas, images and information As technology becomes increasingly important to how we teach and learn, Occidental continues to pioneer bold new approaches to education and collaborative learning on campus. The Global Crossroads project is a largescale environmental installation driven by faculty and student content that is created within an accompanying web application. The project is an exciting example of how Oxy is using digital media and technology to bring our community together.

This system aims to reinvigorate the familiar educational processes of inquiry and exploration and to provoke collaboration across varying disciplines. As they work within the web app to create projects based on either a thesis or a provocative question, students can view and share their work in a number of ways, from outlined lists to maps to more visually organized canvases. The interface allows users to work together on projects, access content submitted by others, investigate new areas of interest and interact with fellow contributors, strengthening Oxy’s broader sense of community.

While the web app drives the creation of student projects, the Media Wall, used to highlight particularly thought-provoking or interesting projects, exposes the importance of visual and digital literacy and storytelling techniques. Its distinctive form challenges our students to carefully and thoughtfully think through how work can and should be displayed, encouraging them to think creatively, analytically and to also consider new ways of communicating their ideas.

While the Global Crossroads system and Varelas Innovation Lab technologies have been in place for over 5 years, they continue to represent cutting-edge ingenuity in a liberal arts institution. The Global Forum, one of the principal destinations for campus tours of prospective students and parents, has seen 14,157 visitors this past year, as well as served as the venue for four Admission special events, with nearly 1,000 guests in total. It is often featured in Occidental’s web and recruitment materials, as representative of Oxy innovation and commitment to and support for global affairs.

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THE MEDIA WALL The Media Wall broadcasts Occidental’s commitment to openness, academic excellence, global affairs and visual literacy, and serves as a physical reflection of the liberal arts experience and its commitment to inquiry and exploration. More than 50 feet wide and 30 feet tall, the wall is designed to evoke the connective landscape of knowledge and analysis that fuels learning in the information age. Its distinctive form pushes students to consider visual and structural design, continuity and storytelling techniques that they can then apply to their rigorous academic research, helping them to better express their point of view to a wider audience without the aid of textual guidance or narration.

These high-profile technology-enhanced platforms and facilities showcase curricular and co-curricular programming for the McKinnon Center for Global Affairs, the International Programs Office, John Parke Young Initiative on the Global Political Economy, and for the resident academic departments: Diplomacy and World Affairs, Politics, Spanish and French Studies, and Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture, among others. The Media Wall also provides a publicly visible instructional space for innovative curriculum and technology-integrated instruction for courses across disciplines. The comprehensive Oxy Campaign For Good in May featured Global Crossroads and the Media Wall as well as the photogrammetry project work and other immersive technologies developed in the Varelas Innovation Lab and Critical Making Studio during this past year.

As a principal developer and the administrator of the Global Crossroads, Christopher Gilman regularly trained and coordinated with McKinnon Center staff and student worker teams to create and schedule updated content for McKinnon Center events and guest speakers, including events during the academic year sponsored by the McKinnon Center and/or the Young Initiative, and 8 events/activities during U.N. Week sponsored by the William and Kahane United Nations Program at Occidental College. Crossroads and the Media Wall were also deployed for the annual Dispatch Contest with the International Programs Office, a sponsored submission of Global Crossroads digital postcards from students studying abroad and international students experiencing Los Angeles. In addition, select campus wide and special public events that required custom content development and presentation configurations from last year included: • ILiADS (Institute for Liberal Arts Digital Scholarship) • Orientation • The Barack Obama Scholars Program Speaker Series talk with David Plouffe • Spanish and French Studies event featuring Chicana artist Judith Hernandez, “A Dream is the Shadow of Something Real” • Bird LA Day with the Moore Lab of Zoology 3

VARELAS INNOVATION LAB The Varelas Innovation Lab was designed for digital lab work, media-intensive workshops and classes, and innovative, practice-based curriculum. This past year Varelas was regularly scheduled for: • Biology 260 lab • Cognitive Science 201 lab • Media Arts and Culture 260 (“The Art and Politics of Virtual Reality”) • DWA 152 (“Social Enterprise Practice and Theory”) • Language advising • SSAP Computer Science tutoring • Special labs • Spanish 201 VR (Orozco) • Chinese VR project work Toward scalability and sustainability of Global Crossroads, and its underlying purposes of enriching the intellectual community of the institution through public display of research and curricular project work, Dr. Gilman also led the development of a single-screen interactive display of Global Crossroads content viewable in the Academic Commons “CommonPlace” Screen.

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PARTNERSHIPS FOR THE SDGs (SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS) Emblematic of the kinds of global work and community action our students and faculty are undertaking, Occidental College has actively engaged with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on a joint project to integrate the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development into city policymaking. Oxy’s Global Ambition-Local Action (GA-L.A.) Initiative embeds U.N. SDGs content in curriculum and empowers undergraduate students to conduct meaningful research and present recommendations to inform and impact city action and partnerships on issues including poverty, health and education, and the environment.

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Since February 2018, student-constituted working groups have worked to identify mechanisms by which reference to the SDGs can improve city policy-making. The focus has been on translating data indicators to better frame issues ranging from climate change to homelessness. Working in a collaborative consultant capacity with the Mayor’s Office for International Affairs, the first cohort of Occidental students performed an initial mapping of SDG targets, data and indicators, stakeholders and budgeting against existing city programming. This provided context for the project’s second phase, in which students focused on stakeholder outreach across public, private and nonprofit sectors. The summer phase highlighted how city offices and departments can integrate the SDGs into their work on key issues such as climate change and homelessness.

In the fall of 2018, a USC-led working group, in liaison with Oxy, extended this analysis by integrating human rights metrics into how the SDGs can be used as a framework to address “wicked problems.”

In spring 2019, Oxy students further worked to engage community actors in identifying entrepreneurial solutions to homelessness while drawing from the lived experiences of grassroots stakeholders.

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TIME WILL TECH EXPLORING THE INTERSECTION OF HOMELESSNESS + TECHNOLOGY

Technology pioneers, social impact visionaries and policy makers gathered in Los Angeles in April for conversations regarding the intersection between homelessness and technology. The goal for the event was to inspire, educate and dream up initiatives to further tackle the issue by using technology as a force for good.

Through technology demos, presentations and thought-provoking dialogues, Time Will Tech created spaces for cross-sector collaboration among those passionate about raising the standards of living for current and future generations.

Time Will Tech was supported by the City of Los Angeles, Occidental College and 30 amazing students passionate about social enterprise.

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CHOI AUDITORIUM

One of the most prominent spaces in the McKinnon Center is Choi Auditorium. The former Johnson 200 lecture hall was transformed into a principal convening space dedicated to presentations, lectures and debates by leading political and international leaders. Architectural work on this now modern, technologically advanced auditorium uncovered historic details of this former chapel that were carefully restored. Overlooking each side of the auditorium are two multipurpose galleries used as overflow seating for large audiences that are also flexible enough to serve as classroom, press conference and meeting spaces.

Choi Auditorium hosted a number of integral lectures and campus conversations during the 2018-19 academic year with leading thinkers, academics, politicians, international and community figures, as well as our inaugural Barack Obama Scholars Program speakers.

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SPEAKER SERIES

Most of the Global L.A. speaker series this past academic year, a new series which was sponsored by the Young Initiative, were held in the Choi Auditorium within the McKinnon Center for Global Affairs. The Global L.A. speaker series highlights Los Angeles as a global city with unique cultural complexities and urban challenges. This series also complements Occidental’s ongoing partnership with the City of Los Angeles on the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

he Young Initiative can play a pivotal role in efforts to construct T alternatives to the status quo in the global political economy. This informs our commitment to supporting innovative student and faculty research, extending academic expertise into practical policy that can make Los Angeles a model in groundbreaking approaches to problems plaguing cities around the world, and positioning the Young Initiative as a central actor in global conversations about new approaches to political economy relevant to crises in governance around the world.

Anthony Tirado Chase Professor of Diplomacy and World Affairs Interim Chair, Young Initiative on the Global Political Economy

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LEO BRAUDY SEPT. 25, 2018 A CONVERSATION ON POPULAR CULTURE Leo Braudy is a cultural historian, film critic, professor and current Leo S. Bing Chair in English and American Literature at the University of Southern California. His work has appeared in journals including American Film, Film Quarterly, Genre, Novel, Partisan Review and Prose Studies.

STEVE P. ERIE OCT. 2, 2018 A CONVERSATION ON L.A. AND THE WORLD ECONOMY Steven P. Erie is a professor in the department of political science at the University of California San Diego. His research interests include urban politics, public policy, ethnic/racial politics and American political development.

MANUEL PASTOR OCT. 16, 2018 A CONVERSATION ON PROGRESSIVE POLITICS Dr. Manuel Pastor is professor of sociology and American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He currently directs the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity at USC and USC’s Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration.

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SARAH PORTNOY OCT. 30, 2018 A CONVERSATION ON FOOD AND CULTURE Sarah Portnoy is a professor at the University of Southern California, where she teaches courses on food culture and justice in Los Angeles. Dr. Portnoy has published food-related articles and essays in peer-reviewed books and journals. Her latest book is Food, Health and Culture in Latino Los Angeles.

ROBERT GOTTLIEB NOV. 6, 2018 A CONVERSATION ON URBAN ENVIRONMENTS Robert Gottlieb is the author or co-author of 13 books, including Reinventing Los Angeles: Nature and Community in the Global City, and editor of two MIT Press series, “Urban and Industrial Environments” and “Food, Health and Environment.” Gottlieb is an emeritus professor of urban and environmental policy at Occidental College and an activist.

RICK COLE ’78 DEC. 4, 2018 A CONVERSATION ON THE FUTURE OF URBANISM Rick Cole is a progressive leader in Southern California on the major challenges facing cities: reducing inequality, building housing, fighting climate change, ending homelessness and promoting environmental sustainability. The current city manager of Santa Monica has served as mayor of Pasadena and city manager in Ventura and Azusa. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti also chose him to be deputy mayor for budget and innovation.

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DISTINGUISHED SPEAKER SERIES Through the Young Initiative, we also extended invitations to distinguished foreign policy experts, alumni, academics and former government officials to campus to engage in discussion with students and faculty at Occidental. We are proud to offer students the opportunity to connect with individuals who have a demonstrated interest in the field of international relations, international political economy and domestic policy.

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HEIDI NICHOLS HADDAD OCT. 4, 2018 THE HIDDEN HANDS OF JUSTICE: NGOS, HUMAN RIGHTS AND INTERNATIONAL COURTS Heidi Nichols Haddad is a professor of politics at Pomona College. Her research and teaching interests include international relations, international law and courts, human rights, NGOs and global governance. Her work has been published in Human Rights Review, Journal of Human Rights and Global Governance.

KYLE BALLARD ’04 OCT. 5, 2018 COMPLEXITIES OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING Kyle Ballard ’04 is the senior coordinator for reports and political affairs in the U.S. Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (J/TIP), responsible for the production of the annual Trafficking in Persons Report and the U.S. government’s bilateral diplomatic efforts to address modern slavery worldwide. Prior to J/TIP, Ballard was the strategic planner at the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency.

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ANAND GROVER OCT. 17, 2018 INDIAN SUPREME COURT AND DECRIMINALIZING SAME-SEX RELATIONS: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES IN INDIA AND AROUND THE WORLD Anand Grover is a senior lawyer known for legal activism in Indian law relating to sexuality and HIV. He is a founding member of the Lawyers Collective, which represented the Naz Foundation in the recent Section 377 case, decriminalizing same-sex relations in India. He was also the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to health from 2008 to 2014, helping to empower vulnerable groups and ensure meaningful participation of affected communities. He is currently an acting member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy.

SEAN WILENTZ OCT. 26, 2018 SLAVERY AND ANTI-SLAVERY AT THE NATION’S FOUNDING Sean Wilentz is the George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1979. He has written numerous award-winning books and articles including, most notably, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, which was awarded the Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

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STEPHEN WALT FEB. 14, 2019 HOW DID WE GET HERE AND WHERE ARE WE HEADED? REFLECTIONS ON AMERICA AND THE WORLD Stephen Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Affairs at Harvard University. He also served as master of the social science collegiate division and deputy dean of social sciences at the University of Chicago and taught at Princeton University. Walt has served as a guest scholar at the Brookings Institute, resident associate of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, and consultant for the Institute of Defense Analyses, National Defense University and others.

KELLY SIMS GALLAGHER ’95 FEB. 21, 2019 ENVIRONMENTAL DIPLOMACY Kelly Sims Gallagher ’95 is professor of energy and environmental policy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. She is also the director of the Fletcher School’s Climate Policy Lab and Center for International Environment and Resource Policy. Gallagher has served as a senior climate policy adviser in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and as a senior China adviser in the Special Envoy for Climate Change Office of the U.S. State Department under President Barack Obama.

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JEREMY KAGAN MARCH 26, 2019 CLIMATE REALITIES: FACTS AND FIXINGS Jeremy Kagan is a film and television director, writer and producer. He is the founder of the Change Making Media Lab and a professor at the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. He is also the chairman of special projects for the Directors Guild of America. His talk highlights a visual representation based on work on Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project.

DAVID GOLDBLATT APRIL 1, 2019 A GLOBAL HISTORY OF SOCCER David Goldblatt is a university lecturer, sociologist, journalist and author. In 2015, Goldblatt won the William Hill Sports Book Award of the Year for The Game of Our Lives; he has been acclaimed by the Sunday Times as “the best football historian there has ever been.”

KELEBOGILE ZVOBGO APRIL 9, 2019 THE WORLD BANK AS AN ENFORCER OF HUMAN RIGHTS Kelebogile Zvobgo is a provost’s fellow in the social sciences and a Ph.D. candidate in political science and international relations at the University of Southern California. She is also a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. Her research focuses on quasi-judicial bodies that have proliferated across the globe to fill the gaps left by domestic and international law and courts. Her research also extends to truth commissions and international development banks’ compliance mechanisms.

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ANGELA STENT APRIL 17, 2019 RUSSIA AGAINST THE WEST Dr. Angela Stent is a foreign policy expert specializing in U.S. and European relations with Russia and Russian foreign policy. She is professor of government and foreign service at Georgetown University and director of its Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies.

TERRA LAWSON-REMER APRIL 25, 2019 FULFILLING SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC RIGHTS Dr. Terra Lawson-Remer is founder and managing partner of Catalyst Project, specializing in the development of innovative public policies, social change strategies and high-impact organizations.

She is also a faculty fellow at the University of California San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Lawson-Remer also served as senior adviser in the U.S. Department of the Treasury during the Obama administration.

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BARACK OBAMA SCHOLARS PROGRAM SPEAKERS SERIES

DAVID PLOUFFE OCT. 19, 2018 HIGH STAKES: BREAKING DOWN THE 2018 MIDTERM ELECTIONS David Plouffe is the former campaign manager and White House senior adviser to President Barack Obama ’83 and the current policy and advocacy chief for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

“High Stakes: Breaking Down the 2018 Midterm Elections” examined the possible outcomes of the first midterm election of the Trump presidency, with control of the House and even the Senate in play.

“Everything that affects you is based on who you elect,” David Plouffe told a packed Choi Auditorium as the inaugural speaker in the College’s new Barack Obama Scholars Program Speakers Series.

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BEN RHODES APRIL 18, 2019 THE WORLD AS IT IS Ben Rhodes, former deputy national security adviser to President Barack Obama ’83 and author of a best-selling White House memoir, The World As It Is, was the second speaker in the Barack Obama Scholars Program Speaker Series. As one of the longest-serving members of the Obama administration, Rhodes participated in nearly all of the president’s key decisions, overseeing all national security communications, speechwriting, public diplomacy and global engagement programming. Prior to joining the Obama administration, in 200708 Rhodes was a senior speechwriter and foreign policy adviser to the Obama campaign. He had previously worked as special assistant to Lee Hamilton at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, where he helped draft the Iraq Study Group Report and the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

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GLOBAL LGBTQ SPEAKER SERIES In addition, the McKinnon Center for Global Affairs was the site of the Oxy Global LGBTQ Speaker Series this academic year thanks to the vision and guidance of Diplomacy & World Affairs faculty member Professor Phillip Ayoub.

This series discusses queer politics and identity in an international context. Invited speakers are devoted to highlighting research on global, state and local perspectives concerning LGBTQ rights and questions of sexuality.

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DENNIS ALTMAN FEB. 5, 2019 MISSING IN ACTION? THE U.S. AND GLOBAL QUEER POLITICS Dennis Altman is a professorial fellow at LaTrobe University in Australia and the author of 13 books, including Homosexual: Oppression & Liberation; Global Sex and (with Jon Symons) Queer Wars.

He has been visiting professor of Australian studies at Harvard and president of the AIDS Society of Asia and the Pacific. He is also a patron of the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives.

CHELSEA MOORE FEB. 28, 2019 IN PURSUIT OF THE PERVERT: SEXUAL DANGEROUSNESS AND THE EXPANSION OF PUNITIVE STATE POWER Chelsea Moore is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington. Her current research focuses on the relationship between law and the regulation of sexuality, with a particular emphasis on sex-offense laws. Moore is a Comparative Law and Society Studies Center Fellow and a Washington Institute for the Study of Inequality and Race Fellow.

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SA’ED ATSHAN APRIL 18, 2019 QUEER MOVEMENTS IN PALESTINE AND THE BROADER MIDDLE EAST Sa’ed Atshan is an assistant professor of peace and conflict studies and an LGBT, Palestinian, Quaker human rights activist. He received a Ph.D., M.A. and MPP from Harvard University and a B.A. from Swarthmore College. He previously served as a postdoctoral fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies. This talk presented parts of his forthcoming book, Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique. The book traces the rise of the LGBTQ movement in Palestine and how it has become a global queer Palestinian solidarity movement. Atshan’s visit and talk at Oxy was sponsored by Students for Justice in Palestine, the Sexuality and Gender Acceptance Club, the Young Initiative and the Diplomacy & World Affairs and Politics departments.

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CAMPUS COLLABORATION We celebrate the many partnerships between academic departments, programs and individuals within the McKinnon Center for Global Affairs, as well as on and off campus.

Through these partnerships, we are able to provide quality experiences and learning opportunities for Oxy students and faculty. The following events and programs are indicative of the creative and interdisciplinary nature of such collaborations within campus and with our community partners.

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MILLION DOLLAR HOODS NOV. 27, 2018 Panel + Workshop Occidental’s Institute for the Study of Los Angeles (ISLA) and the Center for Community Based Learning (CCBL) co-hosted a participatory workshop and presentation by Kelly Lytle Hernandez and a team of student researchers from the Million Dollar Hoods Project, as part of a series of events curated by ISLA Visiting Scholar Vicki Ruiz.

Million Dollar Hoods maps the fiscal and human cost of mass incarceration by showing how much the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and the Los Angeles Police Department spent on incarceration between 2010 and 2015.

These maps do not show where arrests are made. Rather, the maps show the neighborhoods where persons arrested by LASD and LAPD live and how much LAPD and/or LASD spent to incarcerate them. Currently highlighted on the map are the 31 neighborhoods where LAPD and LASD spent at least $6 million between 2010 and 2015.

Kelly Lytle Hernandez is a professor of history and African American studies at UCLA. She is also the interim director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. One of the nation’s leading experts on race, immigration and mass incarceration, she is the author of the award-winning books, Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol (University of California Press, 2010), and City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles (University of North Carolina Press, 2017). City of Inmates won the 2018 James Rawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians, the 2018 Athearn Prize from the Western Historical Association, the 2018 John Hope Franklin Book Prize from the American Studies Association and the 2018 American Book Award.

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BIRD LA DAY MAY 4, 2019 The Moore Lab hosted a free site event for the citywide Bird LA Day. Beginning with a morning bird walk, participants then were able to engage in an exhibit of our amazing 3D bird visualizations on the Media Wall and view real bird specimens.

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OXY’S CULTURAL STUDIES PROGRAM The Cultural Studies Program’s annual theme for the 2018-19 year was Global Cities/Local Realities.

This theme was inspired by Occidental College’s ongoing partnership with the City of Los Angeles on the Global Ambition — Local Action Initiative for the implementation of the U.N. 2030 Agenda.

Working in conjunction with the Young Initiative and Oxy’s Cultural Studies Program, we curated a lecture series that highlighted this theme. Margo Okazawa-Rey, Pardis Mahdavi, Jasper Wong and Manuel Pastor came to campus to discuss how global cities, including Los Angeles, uniquely experience global challenges such as poverty, climate change and sustainability. In addition, we hosted a concert from Bedouin X and Los Jornaleros del Norte.

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BEDOUIN X AND LOS JORNALEROS DEL NORTE OCT. 19, 2018 #BANNED CULTURES CONCERT Bedouin X continues the tradition of socially and politically conscientious music that sprang up in the African parts of the Arab world. Los Jornaleros del Norte, or the Day Laborer Band, was created to inform, educate, organize and mobilize day laborers while denouncing the abuses committed against them. This concert was sponsored jointly by the Cultural Studies Program, Music department, Latino/a and Latin American Studies department and the Young Initiative.

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U.N. WEEK 2019 GENDER, SEXUALITY AND COLLECTIVE ACTION Oxy’s United Nations Week is an annual project jointly sponsored by the Young Initiative on the Global Political Economy, the William and Elizabeth Kahane United Nations Program at Occidental College, the McKinnon Center for Global Affairs and the Diplomacy & World Affairs department. Students and faculty invited a diverse array of global experts, academics and foreign policy officials to discuss gender, sexuality and collective action in the context of the United Nations.

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THE U.N. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS: A GENDER PERSPECTIVE AND CALL TO ACTION Ambassador Melanne Verveer provided the keynote address for U.N. Week. She is the executive director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security. She served as the first U.S. Ambassador for Global Women’s Issues, a position to which she was nominated by President Obama, and developed the U.S. National Action Plan on WPS. Ambassador Verveer discussed the U.N. SDGs from a gender perspective, highlighting the global progress that has been made toward achieving gender equality while recognizing the work that remains to be done.

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In addition to Ambassador Verveer’s keynote lecture, U.N. Week activities included: A student-organized photo exhibit titled “Taking Up Space: A Photo Collection Celebrating Resiliency,” which aimed to celebrate the diversity of the Oxy community and to offer an opportunity for participants to reflect on what it means to engage in collective action across differences.

A panel featuring alumni of the 2018 Kahane U.N. Program, which centered on their task force work on gender and sustainable development with the U.N. Development Program in Costa Rica.

A panel that spotlighted the efforts of student community leaders to promote positive social change related to gender and sexuality on campus and in the L.A. community, featuring Roz Jones (DWA ’18) of #MeToo International and A Band of Voters; Rachel Hayes ’21, a co-founder of the Sexuality and Gender Acceptance Club (SAGA); Sandy Pattison ’19 of Project SAFE and AWARELA; and Waruguru Waithira ’19 of Oxy Arts Initiate!

“Data Science Day,” organized by the Center for Digital Liberal Arts, which combined a panel on careers in data science with breakout, hands-on workshops led by local experts that introduced students to the kinds of humanist and social questions that can be answered with data science.

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U.N. Week this year was notable for the effort by its organizers to build relationships with community partners and make connections to the U.N. meaningful to departments across campus while harnessing the energy and creativity of Oxy students. The events together opened up important opportunities for community dialogue on how the building of inclusive collective action aimed at realizing the human rights of all can best be supported at a time of considerable political turmoil in the United States.

Laura Hebert

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Associate Professor of Diplomacy & World Affairs Kahane U.N. Program at Occidental College Committee Co-Chair

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U.N. WEEK ALSO INCLUDED PANELS FEATURING OCCIDENTAL FACULTY AND COMMUNITY PARTNERS.

NOT JUST ACADEMIC: OXY FACULTY’S WORK TO PROMOTE GENDER EQUALITY Panelists Jennifer Piscopo, Erica Preston-Roedder and Vicki Ruiz participated in a faculty panel discussing how Oxy faculty have worked to promote gender equality in the field of academia.

Jennifer Piscopo is an assistant professor of politics and Erica Preston-Roedder is a Mellon postdoctoral fellow in philosophy at Occidental College. Vicki Ruiz is a distinguished professor at UC Irvine and visiting scholar at the Institute for the Study of Los Angeles (ISLA).

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INTERSECTIONALITY, INEQUALITY AND COLLECTIVE ACTION Panelists Alia Ali, Jeanne Holm, Malliga Och and Funmilola Fagbamila participated in a discussion on intersectionality, inequality and collective action, advocating for action on gender issues in their fields.

Alia Ali is a Yemeni-Bosnian-American multimedia artist and visual storyteller. Jeanne Holm is deputy CIO for the City of Los Angeles and a leader in Los Angeles’ Time’s Up movement. Malliga Och is an assistant professor in the global studies and languages department at Idaho State University and an expert on the CEDAW Cities (C4C) movement in the United States. Funmilola Fagbamila is a Nigerian-American scholar, activist, playwright and artist.

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SELECT HIGHLIGHTS FROM DIPLOMACY & WORLD AFFAIRS FACULTY We are committed to supporting the research, projects and activities of our faculty. Here’s an inside look into a few of our Diplomacy & World Affairs faculty members’ work during the summer.

In addition, the department welcomes Professor Madeline Baer, who joined us on campus in fall 2019. Baer is teaching courses in global political economy, human rights and water policy. Her research focuses on the global politics of water governance, states’ foreign policy on economic and social human rights, and the human right to water.

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PHILLIP AYOUB Phillip Ayoub’s summer plans included catching up on research and professional service activities, as well as working as a mentor for an Oxy SRP student (Jack Fernandes) and a dissertation committee member for a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas Austin (Kristopher Velasco). He also served as external examiner at Swarthmore College in May, gave a talk at the University of Exeter, and participated in the Council of European Studies Annual Meeting in June and the European Conference on Politics and Gender in July.

Additionally, Ayoub taught social sciences at the Berlin Summer School.

ANTHONY CHASE Anthony Chase’s summer research focused on an article project — “Stable Transitions or Human Rights — Informed Transformations? Lessons from postArab Spring Egypt for Colombia” — and a fall 2019 workshop that will be held at Occidental on interdisciplinary approaches to human rights (co-organized with former Occidental professor Huss Banai, former Oxy and DWA student Pardis Mahdavi, and with the participation of other DWA professors who work on human rights). Chase also helped to celebrate and honor Oxy and DWA alumnus Kyle Ballard ’04, who was awarded the Alumni Seal Award for Service to the College at Alumni Reunion Weekend in June. Additionally, he continued to work with another Oxy and DWA alumna, Sara El-Amine ’07, on the Young Initiative Project on Pluralist Democracy. Lastly, he is in touch with yet another Oxy and DWA alumna, Madeline Rose ’11, about having her visit campus in the fall for a talk about her work on peace building.

Chase is also working on the first project (The Organization of Islamic Cooperation and Human Rights) to critically examine the OIC through an academic lens. In the opening chapter, he presents a theoretical and conceptual framework for analyzing and understanding the OIC and human rights.

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LAN CHU Over the summer, Lan Chu was part of the teaching faculty for Oxy’s Multicultural Summer Institute whose theme was “Defamiliarizing Identity.”

The summer months also were dedicated to researching the Catholic Church’s position on climate change and the U.S.-Mexico border wall crisis. Both topics are part of a larger book manuscript project, which focuses on the foreign policy of the Catholic Church.

SOPHAL EAR Sophal Ear has been named a recipient of the 2019 Tobis Medal, bestowed annually by the UC Irvine Interdisciplinary Center for the Scientific Study of Ethics and Morality to people prominent in their chosen field who have also given back to society. Previous winners have included President Barack Obama ’83 and First Lady Michelle Obama.

Ear is an expert on China’s influence in Cambodia. He is regularly quoted in such outlets as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Economist, the BBC and the South China Morning Post.

His next book, Viral Sovereignty, on the politics of diseases and why countries declare or don’t declare outbreaks, is under external review at a university press.

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LAURA HEBERT Laura Hebert spent her summer catching up on journal peer review requests and working on the final chapters of her book manuscript, titled Gender & Human Rights in a Mobile, Global Era. In particular, she will be wrapping up two chapters that are applying an intersectional, non-binary human rights lens to the topics of commercial sex and the labor trafficking of Third Country National men by military contractors employed by the U.S. government.

MOVINDRI REDDY Before her spring 2020 sabbatical, Movindri Reddy continued to work on a book manuscript about post-revolutionary southern Africa specifically focusing on Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe. She presented a paper at a conference on Forced Labor and Migration at the University of Fiji in July. In August she was in southern Africa for field research. While at Oxy during June and July, Reddy supervised two DWA majors through the Undergraduate Research Program: Nora Healey (Revolutions and Social Movements: Hungary and Right-Wing Movements) and Thomas Robertson (Social Movements and Transnational Networks: Anti-LGBT Internet Influences in Africa).

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