UO Today

Chuck Collins, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC, directs their Program on Inequality and coedits Inequality.org. He is author of Is Inequality in America Irreversible? Collins discusses the roots of economic inequality and the racial wealth divide in the United States and describes how social welfare policies can remedy inequality. He offers solutions that would reverse the concentration of wealth and power.

Autumn Shafer, assistant professor of Public Relations in the School of Journalism and Communication, talks about her enthusiasm for teaching and engaging undergraduate students in research. Shafer discusses some her research projects that aim to develop effective messaging about health promotion. She and her students developed a successful campaign to improve students' understanding of sexual consent. Shafer and her colleague Jesse Abdenour are recipients of a 2019 Faculty Research Award. Their project will focus on how journalists report on concussions among young athletes and develop strategies to create more effective narratives.

Justin Driver, the Harry N. Wyatt Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, discusses his book The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind. He talks about how the law and courts shape public education in America. Driver gave a lecture titled “Are Public Schools Becoming Constitution-Free Zones?” on April 8th, 2019 as part of this year’s African American Workshop and Lecture Series.

Philip Scher, professor of Anthropology and Folklore and Public Culture, organized the exhibition "Visual Clave: The Expression of the Latino/a Experience through Album Cover Art, 1940-1990" at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. Scher discusses the social and cultural influences that have shaped Latin music and the iconography used by the album cover artists. The exhibition is on view through April 21st, 2019.

One of the most horrific—and least acknowledged—effects of mass incarceration is the epidemic of mental illness in our jails and prisons. Alisa Roth, journalist and author of Insane: America’s Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness, will explain how this happened—and how we can fix it.

Journalist Alisa Roth is the author of Insane: America’s Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness, an investigation into the crisis of mental illness in the US criminal justice system. A former staff reporter at Marketplace, Roth’s work has also appeared on NPR, and in The New York Times and New York Review of Books.

Journalist Alisa Roth is author of Insane: America's Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness. She discusses the mental healthcare crisis in the U.S. criminal justice system. Roth gave a talk at the UO titled "America's Hidden Mental Health Crisis" on March 12, 2019 as the 2018-19 Lorwin Lecturer in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

José M. Cortez, assistant professor of English at the University of Oregon, discusses his approach to the teaching of writing and rhetoric to students from diverse backgrounds. He talks about the importance of creating a scholarly community and wrapping students into research. He shares that the UO's commitment to diversity and inclusion, the SAIL program, and research opportunities for undergraduates are some of the things that attracted him to the faculty at the UO.

Cheryl Harris, the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the UCLA School of Law, discusses how she came to the law and the argument she presents in her influential Harvard Law Review article "Whiteness as Property." She also talks about Derrick Bell and how he inspired her work. Harris gave the UO School of Law's Derrick Bell Lecture on February 19, 2019. Her talk titled "Affirmative Action Chronicles: From the Era of Colorblindness to White Nationalism" was part of this year's African American Workshop and Lecture Series.

Writer Karen Thompson Walker, assistant professor of Creative Writing at the University of Oregon, is author of the New York Times bestselling novel The Age of Miracles and most recently The Dreamers, which was published in January 2019. Thompson Walker reads from The Dreamers and discusses her writing.

Yvette Alex-Assensoh, Vice President for Equity and Inclusion and professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. She talks about her role as the UO's chief diversity officer. Alex-Assensoh discusses how the UO encourages enrollment of underrepresented minority students and its efforts at diversifying the faculty. She also talks about how the UO supports undocumented students.