Just sustainabilities: re-imagining e/quality, living within limits

Julian Agyeman, Professor of Urban, Environmental Policy, and Planning at Tufts University

Thursday, October 29, 2015 at 3:00 PM at Student Center East Room 605

Free lecture, light refreshments provided

RSVP (to gini@uic.edu) recommended, but not required

Questions:  Email Carla Pierre Gini at gini@uic.edu

 

This program is hosted by the UIC Office of Sustainability.

Co-sponsored by:
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS)
The Institute for Environmental Science and Policy (IESP)
Office of the Chancellor
College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs (CUPPA)
Institute for the Humanities
Office of Diversity
School of Public Health
Department of Communication
The Illinois Occupational and Environmental Health and Safety Education and Research Center (ERC)
Great Cities Institute
Social Justice Initiative
Latin American and Latino Studies Program
Gender and Women’s Studies Program
International Studies Program

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Race and Resources: Economic Inequalities from the Household and City Block to the Nonprofit Boardroom

When: Wednesday, October 28, 12-2:00 pm

Where: College of Nursing Event Center, 3rd Floor, 845 S. Damen Ave., Chicago, IL 60612

Panelists from the UIC College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs are:

Kelly LeRoux, Public Administration
Brenda Parker, Urban Planning and Policy
Rachel Webber, Urban Planning and Policy

The Brown Bag Series provides brief but substantive overviews of the research on race, ethnicity, and public policy being produced by UIC scholars and funded by IRRPP. The panelists will discuss their projects, explore the connections between them, and use their work as a way to interrogate the themes in race research that cut across disciplinary lines. Lunch is provided.

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Caught Between Protesters and Israel, Palestinian Security Forces Shift Tactics

A man approached Israeli security forces in the West Bank. Palestinian forces are re-examining their coordination with Israel. Credit Hazem Bader/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A man approached Israeli security forces in the West Bank. Palestinian forces are re-examining their coordination with Israel. Credit Hazem Bader/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The New York Times quotes Andy Clarno, former GCI research scholar and UIC assistant professor of sociology and African American studies, in an article on Palestinian security forces at recent West Bank protests and overall security coordination efforts in the region.

“They are in an impossible situation,” said Andy Clarno, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who has researched security cooperation, referring to the Palestinian security forces. “They are being squeezed on both sides. They are being told to crack down, and the kids see them as the front line of the occupation.”

Full Story from New York Times »

Just One Week Away: City/Cité: A Transatlantic Exchange

cityciteweb

Dear GCI followers,

French intellectual thought and activism has made its way into U.S. conversations since even before Alexis de Tocqueville made his observations of U.S. democracy back in the early 1800s.  Today, U.S. intellectuals and activists readily make use of the ideas of Michel Foucault, particularly his analyses of discourse and the connections between power and knowledge.  Bourdieu, and French post-structural feminists such as Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous have influenced U.S. intellectual methods of analysis. Recently, the work of Thomas Piketty, a French economist, published his notable book, Capital in the Twenty First Century, in which he lays forward the connection between economic growth and the concentration of wealth. Missing in his analysis, and indeed in much of French thought, is the incorporation of race and racial discrimination as a key variable that adds to the explanation of inequality, including income inequality.  U.S. intellectuals and activists have more expansive research and analysis, both historical and current that incorporates race as a key concept for understanding not only income inequality, but dynamics of cities as well.

Great Cities Institute is very excited to be welcoming intellectuals and activists from France in the Symposium, City Cité: A Transatlantic Exchange. The French visitors will participate in panels with both esteemed UIC professors and area activists. Thomas J. Sugrue, our keynote speaker, has written several books on race, inequality and urban policy.  We look forward to his presentation at 11:15 a.m. on “The Urgency of a Transatlantic Exchange.”  Sugrue will also participate in a panel entitled, “Building Bonds of Trust across Racial and Ethnic Lines.”  Other panels will provide insights and discussion on employment issues in an era of austerity and neighborhoods in transition.

There is some urgency in this transatlantic exchange as transatlantic trade agreements are being debated on both sides of the ocean with much at stake including the well being of local economies and communities.  Austerity policies, exacerbated inequalities, concentration of wealth, rising violence, and threats to well being are all topics that will be discussed during this very important symposium.  Please join us for Day One at UIC.  If you are able, you can also head down to the University of Chicago for Day 2.  We thank the Consulate General of France in Chicago for this wonderful partnership and invite you all to join us.  Please see this link for more information and to RSVP.

Sincerely,
Teresa Córdova
Director

English Department Colloquium: New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina

Friday, Oct 23 (3-5pm)

Cedric Johnson, (African-American Studies, UIC) & Touré Reed (History, Illinois State Univ.).

The authors will discuss their recent articles published in Nonsite.org: “Working the Reserve Army: Proletarianization in Revanchist New Orleans” and “Why Moynihan Was Not So Misunderstood at the Time: The Mythological Prescience of the Moynihan Report and the Problem of Institutional Structuralism“

Location: Room 2028, University Hall, 601 S. Morgan Street (Halsted/UIC Blue Line CTA stop, building near the corner of Harrison St & Morgan St)

Time: Fridays, 3pm-5pm

 

Also, looking to the weeks ahead, the next speaker will be:

Fri, Oct 30

Harris Feinsod (English and Comparative Literary Studies, Northwestern University; Early Career Fellow, University of Pittsburgh Humanities Center, 2015-6). “Hazarding the Poetry of the Americas.”

For more details on English Department Colloquium events for the year, view the schedule here.

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Chicago Area Leadership Development

GCI’s Director of Neighborhoods Initiative, Thea Crum, partnered with the Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement (IPCE) to publish a report on the system of leadership development programs in the Chicago area. The study was driven by a commitment to support a new generation of civic leaders and to encourage a more “inclusive paradigm of public service leadership” by determining what opportunities currently exist for leadership development and where there are challenges or gaps in the system.

Overall, the study identified 166 leadership development programs in the Chicago area, administered online surveys with 66 programs, and conducted 16 individual interviews with program directors or coordinators. Three overarching categories of leadership development programs emerged, revealing important differences obscured by the general leadership landscape trends, including:

  • Student programs (53 total) that are primarily based at universities or colleges and target 18- to-24-year-old undergraduate college students, regardless of race, sex, or community. These programs tend to focus on the internal, individual dimensions of leadership, such as self-awareness, integrity, and creating a personal vision.
  • Professional programs (54 total) that are primarily geared towards college-educated, working professionals between the ages of 25 and 34 looking to advance their careers. They prioritize professional relationship building and networking activities and offer alumni events.
  • Community programs (58 total) that intentionally target participants based on race, geographic community, and income, regardless of educational background. Participants join these programs to improve their community, and these programs prioritize building community organizing, political leadership, and community visioning skills.

The study examined the purpose of programs, the participant selection process, whether the program had a specific target population, and the program design. The research identified the need for increased and intentional efforts to target and recruit people of color, women, and low-income individuals for leadership development programs to better reflect the diversity of the Chicago region and improve the diversity of public leadership overall. Additional findings include the need for collaboration between programs, expansion and support for leadership development programming models that include a more holistic approach to leadership development, and the development of standardized evaluation metrics. The full report can be found here.

About the Author:
Thea Crum, GCI Director of Neighborhoods Initiative: As the Director of GCI’s Neighborhoods Initiative, Thea works in collaboration with community-based organizations, elected officials, and university faculty, staff, and students to provide training, technical assistance, and applied research on community and economic development projects. She is the lead staff person on the Participatory Budgeting Chicago initiative and is a member of the North American Participatory Budgeting Research Board.

Role of Public Transportation in the Community

Is public transportation a business or social service? That’s among the topics to be addressed during “The Role of Public Transportation in the Community,” a seminar October 15 hosted by the Urban Transportation Center. Featured speaker will be David Spacek, IDOT deputy director of Transit for Public Transportation Programs. The event begins at noon and will be held in CUPPA Hall Room 110. Visit — utc.uic.edu/current-utc-events/.

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