Fair Housing Act at 50:
The Fight Goes On
Last week marked the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Fair Housing Act. The final major legislative accomplishment of the Civil Rights Movement, this act was preceded by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed for an “open housing” law several years before, but severe losses in the 1966 congressional mid-terms, as well as a southern filibuster, prevented that from happening. Although the Kerner Commission Report of February 29, 1968 made a federal open housing law one of its chief recommendations, such a bill seemed to be going nowhere until the assassination of the Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4. With fear of further uprisings in the streets, legislators moved swiftly, and the Fair Housing Act was on President Johnson’s desk a week later. Read the rest of this op-ed, authored by Haas Institute Assistant Director Stephen Menendian, here.
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More Videos from the #Kerner50 Conference
We've uploaded more videos from our recent "Race and Inequality in America: The Kerner Commission at 50" conference. Find the full set of videos here on our YouTube channel, or on this page.
PS: If you attended the conference we would love to receive your feedback! Please take a minute to fill out this survey.
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Johns Hopkins University President Ron Daniels provides remarks followed by the second panel of the conference, titled, "History, Origins, and Legacy of Kerner Commission" with John Koskinen, Fred Harris, Victor Palmieri, and Jay Kriegel.
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Presentation by a student art collaborative which includes Nikko Duren, Dulce María López González, Ashley Holloway, el lee, Lulu Matute, Kiana Nicole Parker.
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This video features a keynote address by Robert Sampson, who is the Henry Ford II Professor of Social Sciences at Harvard University, with an introduction by Stephen Menendian, the assistant director of the Haas Institute.
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This video features the third panel, titled, "Black Lives Matter & Criminal Justice Reform," and features Bill Keller, Sandra Smith, Ronald Davis, Sonya Joseph, and Chris Magnus.
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This video features the fourth panel, on "Housing & Neighborhoods" and features Richard Rothstein, Betsy Julian, Camille Charles, and Myron Orfield.
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Sherrilyn Ifill, the president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc, gives a keynote address.
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New York Times, others pay homage to Saba Mahmood
The New York Times and others have published obituaries following the death of Saba Mahmood, a leading figure in anthropological studies, and member of the Haas Institute's Religious Diversity cluster, who passed away last month from pancreatic cancer. The New York Times wrote that Mahmood, a native of Pakistan, "challenged entrenched notions about secularism and religion, particularly in Muslim societies." Raka Ray, a sociologist at UC Berkeley, wrote about the profound influence Mahmood had on her own thought, in an eloquent piece published in the Economic and Political Weekly journal. The Kashmir Reader, a newspaper based in India, and The Daily Times, based in Pakistan, also published obituaries paying homage to Mahmood. You can also read the Haas Institute's piece on Mahmood's passing here.
A gathering will be held on Monday, April 30 to honor and remember Mahmood's life and work. Details on that event can be found here.
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In the Media
The LA Times last month cited a study co-authored by Rucker Johnson, a member of the Haas Institute's Economic Disparities, and Diversity and Health Disparities clusters, that showed the benefits of increasing investments in the education of children from low-income families. Read the LA Times story here, and Johnson's study, titled "Money and Freedom: CA School Finance Reform," here.
A New York Times editorial marking the 50th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act, which outlawed discrimination in housing, cites the critically-acclaimed book by Haas Institute Senior Fellow Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How the Government Segregated America. Read the editorial here.
In a separate piece, Rothstein published a book review in the Times this month of High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing, by Ben Austen. The book looks at the history and policy around the 23 federally-mandated high-rise towers on Chicago's North Side which were later demolished. Read Rothstein's book review here.
The Mercury News last month quoted Heather Bromfield, a former Haas Institute housing research analyst, in an article about proposed legislation in California to crack down on cities that fail to meet their requirements for building low-income housing. Read the article here.
SciDev.net, a science news site, quoted Samir Gambhir, the director of the Haas Institute's Equity Metrics programs, in a story published in March that shows how mapping techniques are being used around the world to identify areas facing serious problems, including health epidemics. Read that story here.
Research by Hilary Hoynes, a member of the Economic Disparities cluster, is mentioned in a Huffington Post opinion piece about a federal proposal that could move at least 670,000 more children into poverty. Read more here.
A column in the Chicago Maroon, a student newspaper from the University of Chicago, cites research by Economic Disparities cluster member Enrico Moretti, who found that every educated worker job creates five service worker jobs. The column looks at how both Black and white communities have lost manufacturing jobs in the US, which challenges a popular narrative used to explain the results of the 2016 presidential election. Read the column here.
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TOMORROW! Thursday, April 19: The American Cultures Center is organizing an interactive symposium called "'Breathe For Me, Sing for Me': Hip Hop and the Black Lives Matter Movement," from 5-8 PM at 125 Morrison Hall. It's free and open to the public, and will feature Mistah F.A.B., Donte Clark, BLK MGK, and others. For more click here.
Thursday, April 19: Sheldon Danziger, President of Russell Sage foundation, will be speaking on "Anti-Poverty Programs That Work" in an event co-sponsored by the Haas Institute and others. More details on the talk here.
Friday, April 20: The Haas Institute is sponsoring a talk by Noliwe Rooks, Associate Professor of African American Studies at Cornell University, on her book, titled Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education. View details of the talk here.
Wednesday, April 25: We are co-sponsoring an event titled "Tech Profiling, Policing and Disruption of our 'Sanctuary Cities'," a conversation and strategy session with Lara Kiswani, Christina Sinha, Cat Brooks, Stephanie Lacambra, facilitated by Leslie Dreyer. Read more about this event here.
Friday, April 27: Professor Lisa García Bedolla will be speaking on "Taking Back Democracy: Relational Organizing and Political Engagement" at the Women's Faculty Club on the UC Berkeley campus, from 12:00pm - 1:30pm, as part of the Research to Impact speaker series. More details here.
Friday, April 27: Authors Damien M. Sojoyner, Assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at UC Irvine, and Sabina E. Vaught, an associate professor in the Department of Education at Tufts University, will discuss their new books and engage the audience in critical questions about race, power, discipline, and the prison and educational institutions in the United States. Find out more here.
Monday, April 30: There will be a gathering in Downtown Berkeley at the Brower Center to honor the late Saba Mahmood. More details here.
Thursday, May 3: The US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty will be hosting a day-long conference, called "Dramatically Increasing Mobility from Poverty," which will include a keynote by Haas Institute Director john a. powell, and talks by Ai-jen Poo, Raj Chetty, and more. Read more here.
See our Events page for latest details on all our upcoming events.
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