Zócalo Public Square

Live from the ASU California Center: Legal scholars Jody David Armour of USC and Eugene Volokh of UCLA, attorney Jean-Paul Jassy, and Battinto L. Batts Jr., dean of the ASU Cronkite School, visit Zócalo to discuss how we might protect free expression while also protecting our society from the misuse of that freedom. Tonight’s event is moderated by Los Angeles Times editorial writer Carla Hall.

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The struggle to limit carbon emissions often pits sustainable energy against fossil fuels. But does it have to be this way? As Kartikeya Singh writes in a new essay for Issues in Science and Technology, India’s carbon-heavy government ministries have shown a surprising ability to engineer deep change: the nation brought electricity to over half a billion citizens between 2009 and 2019, then presided over a grid where wind and solar became cheaper than power from coal. Could these ministries—which employ 20 million people—transform the country’s energy sector to be ecologically and economically sustainable? Instead of pinning all our hopes on technology, entrepreneurs, and politicians, what can the world accomplish by harnessing fossil fuel bureaucracies for the future?

Center for Strategic and International Studies senior associate Kartikeya Singh visits Zócalo to ask how bureaucracies might embrace obsolescence and reinvent themselves to address today’s most urgent problems. This Zócalo/Issues in Science and Technology event was streamed online on Thursday, February 17, 2022 and moderated by Issues editor-in-chief Lisa Margonelli.

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While smog in Los Angeles and wildfire smoke in San Francisco dominate headlines, California’s rural communities are also besieged by a constellation of forces that foul their air. In the San Joaquin Valley, one of the most polluted parts of the state, one in six children have asthma, and the impacts of air pollution cost the region $3 billion annually. Air quality is a statewide issue—more than half of California’s counties fail to meet federal pollution standards. But the burden isn’t evenly distributed: Black and Latino people are exposed to about 40 percent more fine particulate matter from cars, trucks, and buses than white Californians, and low-income communities about 20 percent more than their higher-income counterparts.

What would it take for the more privileged parts of California to reduce air pollution that disproportionately affects low-income and rural communities around the state? What political and economic strategies have succeeded in improving air quality locally and statewide? And can people and organizations fighting for clean air find inspiration from coalition-building and organizing efforts in other arenas?

Former California Air Resources Board chair Mary Nichols, Central Valley Air Quality Coalition executive director Catherine Garoupa White, and USC sociologist and “Solidarity Economics” author Manuel Pastor visited Zócalo to discuss how we can help all Californians breathe easier. This event was streamed live from the ASU California Center in the historic Herald Examiner in downtown Los Angeles on January 27, 2022 and was moderated by KQED correspondent Saul Gonzalez.

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It feels like it’s time for something new. Facebook and Kanye just changed their names. More than half of Americans want to change jobs, and one-third want to switch careers. Businesses are reinventing the way they operate. And social movements are trying to create new systems that are anti-racist and sustainable. Isn’t all this easier said than done? Even after confronting the challenges of the past year and a half, we are finding that our old ways are more deeply entrenched than we expected.

What do we need—individually and collectively—to start new chapters and rebuild? Which rituals and practices have societies around the world used to successfully start over? And what sort of new beginning does this current moment require of all of us? Artist and co-founder executive director of Homeboy Art Academy Fabian Debora, TransLatin@ Coalition president and CEO Bamby Salcedo, and UCLA distinguished professor and psychology department chair Annette L. Stanton visited Zócalo to explore the best ways to make a fresh start. This event was streamed live from the ASU California Center in the historic Herald Examiner in Downtown Los Angeles on December 7, 2021 and was moderated by Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo Arellano.

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Pretty much every dinosaur skeleton you see has been painstakingly excavated from rock by people with precision, skill, and creativity. What they don’t have are paleontology degrees, and what they don’t get is money or credit. In fact, fossil preparators are mostly enthusiastic volunteers who come from all different backgrounds and receive their training on the job. Their unsung work creates the foundation of scientific knowledge about life, environment, and evolution. This veritable army of citizen scientists has a great deal to teach professional researchers, who are struggling to connect with the public. Could studying and emulating the paths these technicians take to the lab help make scientific disciplines more inclusive? Why are fossil preparators outliers in serious scientific research? And might adopting outreach efforts akin to the glass-walled natural history museum labs where preparators work help build public trust in science?

University of Virginia social scientist Caitlin Donahue Wylie, author of “Preparing Dinosaurs: The Work Behind the Scenes” and a new essay on the topic, visited Zócalo to talk about the power of looking beyond Ph.D.s and publications to recognize and connect to all who contribute to scientific knowledge. This Zócalo/Issues in Science and Technology event was moderated by Issues editor-in-chief Lisa Margonelli.

Read more about our panelists here: https://zps.la/3cjL6OA

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Calls are growing for the dismantling of the meritocracy—educational systems and economic structures that claim to elevate individuals based on merit, but instead favor those with wealth or racial privilege. As elites turn against the very merit-based systems that elevated them, governments, corporations, schools, and other entities are extending old policies—like affirmative action—and embracing new initiatives for equity and inclusion. But as we rid our society of standardized tests, “gifted” schools and programs, and traditional corporate hierarchies, finding new methods of evaluation and promotion is proving difficult. What value, if any, do the ideas of merit and merit-based decision-making retain in this moment of reassessment? What were the origins and intentions of those who created merit-based systems for scholarships and federal employment, and how have those systems fallen short? Do today’s profound social inequalities reflect a fundamental failure of the idea of meritocracy, or a corruption of an ideal that needs mending?

“The Aristocracy of Talent” author and The Economist political editor Adrian Wooldridge, Columbia University sociologist Jennifer Lee, and Malissia R. Clinton, vice president, general counsel and secretary at The Aerospace Corporation, visited Zócalo to explore whether there is any merit left in meritocracy. This Zócalo event was moderated by New Yorker staff writer Nicholas Lemann.

Read more about our panelists here: https://zps.la/3cjL6OA

For a full report on the live discussion, check out the Takeaway: https://zps.la/3wX4oor

Visit https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/ to read our articles and learn about upcoming events.

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We are failing Americans without college degrees. Research shows that up to 30 million workers without four-year degrees are drastically underpaid, and have the skills to earn 70 percent more than what they’re currently making. What accounts for this failure of the labor market? One problem is that traditional resumes don’t show or verify the full range of a worker’s skills—including those gained in the military and volunteer work, not to mention family businesses and caretaking. But there’s a promising digital fix that could help: learning and employment records. LERs are digital profiles that allow individuals to document their knowledge and skills, no matter how they were acquired—and have the potential to transform hiring while fueling innovation. What is an LER, and how can it be used to record everything you’ve ever learned? How can this technology be designed and implemented to create more jobs with good wages? And what will it take to design and implement LERs that make the labor market fairer to all workers instead of reinforcing existing social, educational, and digital divides?

Workcred senior director of research Isabel Cardenas-Navia, co-author of a new essay on LERs, visited Zócalo to talk about reconstructing credentialing around a system that recognizes—and even encourages—non-traditional learning and diverse career paths. This Zócalo/Issues in Science and Technology event was moderated by Issues editor-in-chief Lisa Margonelli.

Read more about our panelists here: https://zps.la/3cjL6OA

For a full report on the live discussion, check out the Takeaway: https://zps.la/LERs

Visit https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/ to read our articles and learn about upcoming events.

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Over the past year, directors of cultural institutions across Los Angeles have announced their retirements, which means a new generation of cultural leadership is upon us. But despite a desire for change that seems nearly universal, new directors must still answer to many of the same funders and face the same pressures as their predecessors—to raise money or sell tickets, to scale up, to stay relevant—all while navigating post-pandemic reopenings and reckonings around race and inclusion. What does Los Angeles need from its new guard of cultural leaders? What obstacles do their institutions face, and how can these new faces surmount them? Will all of the city’s culture centers even survive?

California African American Museum executive director Cameron Shaw, Inner-City Arts president and CEO Shelby Williams-González, and MAK Center for Art and Architecture director Jia Yi Gu visited Zócalo to discuss the change they plan to be and want to see in one of the world’s most vibrant cultural capitals. This Zócalo/Helms Bakery District event was streamed live from Helms Design Center on September 29, 2021 and was moderated by architecture and design journalist Frances Anderton.

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To merely open a bank account or secure a driver’s license, people around the world face one common barrier: paperwork. Americans, in fact, spend 11.4 billion hours a year on federal paperwork alone. Harvard legal scholar Cass R. Sunstein, former administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, has a name for this kind of drudgery: sludge. Sludge, he argues, doesn’t just cost time, money, and dignity—it does an immense amount of damage to society’s most vulnerable people. Bureaucratic red tape—“volokita” as it’s known in Russian—hinders everything from gaining access to food to securing healthcare. How could less paperwork help the least wealthy, least healthy, and least educated improve their station in life? Have any countries or institutions figured out what it would take to make this happen?

Sunstein, author most recently of “Sludge: What Stops Us from Getting Things Done and What to Do about It,” visited Zócalo to talk about eliminating the piles of paperwork obscuring our path to a more equal world. This Zócalo/Pacific Council on International Policy event was moderated by New York Times assistant metro editor Nikita Stewart.

Read more about our panelists here: https://zps.la/3cjL6OA

For a full report on the live discussion, check out the Takeaway: https://zps.la/3tsXuWs

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The United States has more firearms (390 million) than people (325 million), routinely experiences mass shootings, and suffers rates of gun violence far higher than other wealthy countries. California has touted itself as a safer model, with the most gun regulations in the country, the 44th lowest rate of gun violence among the 50 states, and a 9 percent decrease in gun deaths over the last decade, compared to an 18 percent increase nationwide. Has California—with its diverse mix of dense urban centers and rural communities—found strategies that could reduce gun violence around the country? How vulnerable are California’s laws and strategies to federal judges bent on rolling back gun controls, including the state’s longstanding ban on assault weapons? And what can California—which has seen gun ownership and deaths rise amidst the COVID-19 pandemic—do now and in the future to reduce gun injuries and deaths even further?

California Assemblymember Phil Ting, UC Davis Medical Center emergency medicine physician and Violence Prevention Research Program director Dr. Garen J. Wintemute, and Hope and Heal Fund executive director Brian Malte visited Zócalo to examine the most effective ways to keep Californians and Americans safe from one of the leading causes of death in the nation. This Zócalo/California Wellness Foundation event was moderated by Guardian senior reporter Lois Beckett.

Read more about our panelists here: https://zps.la/3cjL6OA

For a full report on the live discussion, check out the Takeaway: https://zps.la/3y2ZvJG

Visit https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/ to read our articles and learn about upcoming events.

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