Message from the Dean

MAGAZINE OF THE UCLA SCHOOL OF EDUCATION AND INFORMATION STUDIES

SUMMER 2021

Christina Christie, Ph.D. UCLA Wasserman Dean & Professor of Education, UCLA School of Education and Information Studies

Laura Lindberg Executive Director External Relations, UCLA School of Education and Information Studies

EDITOR

Leigh Leveen Senior Director of Marketing and Communications UCLA School of Education and Information Studies lleveen@support.ucla.edu

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Joanie Harmon Director of Communications UCLA School of Education and Information Studies harmon@gseis.ucla.edu

John McDonald Director, Sudikoff Family Institute jmcdonald@gseis.ucla.edu

Alex Polner

DESIGN

Robin Weisz Design

© 2021, by The Regents of the University of California

seis.ucla.edu As this summer issue of our magazine is published, we mark the one-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department, and the 100-year anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, in which a racist White mob staged a violent attack that decimated a thriving Oklahoma community (the center of which is often referred to as “Black Wall Street”) and where as many as 300 Black Americans were killed. Though these horrific events took place nearly a century apart, the parallels between them go beyond the obvious themes of racism and violence. The events remind us that the power to reconstruct, record and share our stories impacts our role in determining what counts as “history.”

The video documentation of Floyd’s brutal murder last year by 17-year-old Darnella Frazier and the collection of survivor accounts by community witnesses in Tulsa in 1921 and after have made possible the pursuit of justice and reparations. They are also invaluable historical documents that force us, as a nation, to face the consequences of ignorance, prejudice and hate. It bears noting that two of the most crucial documentarians of the Tulsa Race Massacre, Mary E. Jones Parrish and Eddie Faye Gates, were educators.

Mary E. Jones Parrish’s Events of the Tulsa Disaster (1923) was a collection of first-person recollections of the massacre, and the first published account of the event. She was one of the earliest users of the phrase “Negro’s Wall Street” to describe the vibrant Greenwood community in Tulsa destroyed by White mob violence. Among the businesses lost were Tulsa’s two Black-owned newspapers, the Tulsa Star and the Oklahoma Sun. Without local Black press to report the facts of the event, it’s little wonder that Parrish’s book became important source material for the writings on it that followed. In Events of the Tulsa Disaster, Parrish contextualized what happened to Greenwood in relation to recent attacks on Black communities in other cities, challenged false narratives of the event, and even offered policy solutions to avert future tragedies of this nature.

In the late 1990s, retired Oklahoma history teacher Eddie Faye Gates was appointed to a state-sanctioned task force investigating the Tulsa Race Massacre. In her work with the Tulsa Race Riot Commission, she interviewed over 100 massacre survivors living across the country. Her video interviews are now available to view online and her research materials have been donated to the Gilcrease Museum in North Tulsa.

Teachers across the United States have quickly responded to the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement by engaging students in discussions of structural racism and social justice. Some school districts have implemented anti-bias training for educators and now require the teaching of history specific to marginalized peoples. Even before Floyd’s murder in 2020, some districts had mandated for curriculum use the 1619 Project, a critically acclaimed longform story project by the

New York Times Magazine which, “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.”

For decades after the Tulsa Race Massacre, the students in Oklahoma schools were not required to learn about that devastating part of their history. In 2019, the Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission helped expand academic standards on the massacre and Oklahoma history classes were, for the first time, required to teach about the destruction of the Greenwood neighborhood and its significance as a center of Black wealth. Many teachers who are now educating their students about the Tulsa Race Massacre had never learned about it when they were themselves students in the Oklahoma public school system.

In reaction to these and other gains, conservative leaders in at least half a dozen states have recently introduced legislation to block the teaching of Critical Race Theory, with bills in Arkansas, Iowa, and Mississippi specifically citing the 1619 Project as “racially divisive” and an attempt to deny the “fundamental principles upon which the United States was founded.”

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt signed House Bill 1775, a state law prohibiting public school teachers from discussing Critical Race Theory or using lessons that could cause an individual to “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex.” While the law doesn’t prohibit teaching about the Tulsa Race Massacre, it’s clearly designed to restrict fact-based discussions about the history of racism in America.

Our ability to teach and learn about systemic racism is under constant attack. Despite progress made in the name of equity in education on the federal level under the new administration, some states—arguably those most in need of more equitable teaching practices and curricula—are in real danger. These setbacks come at a time when students and teachers are already struggling with challenges brought about by the pandemic, challenges that include teaching critically about incredibly painful and complex topics outside of the classroom space, and without the humanizing effect of in-person learning.

These vulnerabilities and challenges make the scholarship of our own academic community around issues of racism, equity and inclusion all the more crucial and relevant, as you’ll see reflected in the contents of this issue.

Our cover story highlights the work of Information Studies Professor Leah Lievrouw, who served as co-editor of a new book, the Routledge Handbook of Digital Media and Communication. As concerns grow about the influence and impact of social media, this critical new work draws together the work of scholars from across the globe to examine the forces that shape our digital social lives and further our understanding of the sociocultural impact of digital media.

In a year where the issue of racism has been front and center, we highlight a new book by UCLA Professor Daniel G. Solórzano and CSU Long Beach Associate Professor Lindsay Pérez Huber, Racial Microaggressions: Using Critical Race Theory to Respond to Everyday Racism. The book offers insight into the everyday racism often experienced by people of color, as well as suggestions for responding to racial microaggressions.

As school campuses closed down over 14 months ago, educators struggled to find and connect with students. In some schools and classrooms, absenteeism among students greatly increased. Research by UCLA Education Professor Lucrecia Santibañez and her colleague Cassandra Guarino of UC Riverside, published by Policy Analysis for California Education, examined data from the CORE Districts in California to approximate the impact of the pandemic by analyzing how absenteeism has affected students in the recent past. The findings highlight the implications of increased absenteeism for academic and social emotional outcomes amid the pandemic.

UCLA Education Professor and Associate Dean for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Cecilia Rios-Aguilar examined the impact of the pandemic on Early Career Scholars and doctoral students in the brief Voices from the Field. She was joined by a team of colleagues in the American Education Research Association to conduct this work.

One of the greatest challenges of the pandemic has been the closure of K–12 school campuses across Los Angeles and beyond. In the article School Campuses Closed Due to COVID-19: Teachers Talk About Challenges, Progress and Commitment Amid Pandemic, teachers in UCLA affiliated K–12 schools share their experiences and reflections of a year of remote teaching. Campuses may be closed, but students are learning.

New research by Earl Edwards and his colleagues at the UCLA Black Male Institute, Unseen and Unsupported Students in Charter Schools, looks into the experience of homeless students attending charter schools in Los Angeles County over the past year. Among their findings: high rates of chronic absence, and lower graduation rates for homeless students attending charter schools compared to non-charter public schools.

UCLA Information Studies Professor Michelle Caswell has published a new book, Urgent Archives: Enacting Liberatory Memory. The book argues that “archivists can and should do more to disrupt white supremacy and heteropatriarchy beyond standard liberal archival solutions.” In this issue we highlight excerpts from the first chapter, “Community Archives: Assimilation, Integration, or Resistance?”

Despite obstacles presented by the pandemic, our scholars have continued to engage in research and action that shed light on the challenges we have faced during the past months and that will confront us as we move forward. This work informs and reflects the spirit of our time and is deeply relevant to current national conversations around equity and justice, and we are proud to share it with you in this issue of our awardwinning magazine.

In unity, —Tina