Co-Sponsored Events for Winter/Spring 2011

Uncommon Common Ground: Race and America's Future
A presentation from Stewart Kwoh and Manuel Pastor

Thursday, April 28, 2011
1:15 PM
George C.S. Benson Auditorium

Stewart Kwoh is the president and executive director of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California (APALC). In 1998, he was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow. Reflecting Kwoh's commitment to improving human relations between and among racial groups in Los Angeles, APALC has pioneered the development of programs, coalitions and projects that build bridges with other racial groups. One of its programs,Leadership Development in Interethnic Relations, has been featured several times in the Los Angeles Times and other media outlets. Kwoh earned his Bachelor of Arts at UCLA and his Juris Doctorate degree from the UCLA Law School. He serves on the board of numerous organizations, including The California Endowment, the California Wellness Foundation, the Fannie Mae Foundation and the United Way of Greater Los Angeles. He was chair of the board of directors of The California Endowment—the largest health foundation in California—from 2000–2002. He is also vice-chair of the board of directors for the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium (NAPALC), the country's first national pan Asian civil rights organization.

Manuel Pastor is professor of Geography and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California where he also serves as director of USC's Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) and co-director of USC's Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII). Founding director of the Center for Justice, Tolerance, and Community at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Manuel holds an economics Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and has received countless fellowships. In recent years, his research has focused on the economic, environmental and social conditions facing low-income urban communities in the U.S. His most recent book, co-authored with Chris Benner and Martha Matsuoka, is This Could Be the Start of Something Big: How Social Movements for Regional Equity are Reshaping Metropolitan America (Cornell University Press, 2009). Previous volumes include Staircases or Treadmills: Labor Market Intermediaries and Economic Opportunity in a Changing Economy (Russell Sage, 2007); Searching for the Uncommon Common Ground: New Dimensions on Race in America; and Regions That Work: How Cities and Suburbs Can Grow Together. He served as a member of the Commission on Regions appointed by California's Speaker of the State Assembly, and in January 2002 was awarded a Civic Entrepreneur of the Year award from the California Center for Regional Leadership. He is currently a member of the Regional Targets Advisory Committee for the California Air Resources Board and is also a member of the Building Resilient Regions research network sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation.

Co-sponsors: The Latino/a Roundtable, Sociology at Pitzer College, and the Munroe Center for Social Inquiry at Pitzer College.