Category: Research

Lynn Comella, Ph.D., is an award-winning researcher and expert on the adult entertainment industry. She is the author of Vibrator Nation: How Feminist Sex-Toy Stores Changed the Business of Pleasure (Duke, 2017) and co-editor of New Views on Pornography: Sexuality, Politics, and the Law (Praeger, 2015). She is the current co-chair of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Adult Film History Scholarly Interest Group, and a member of the editorial advisory boards for the Routledge journal Porn Studies and the University of Edinburgh’s “Screening Sex” book series. Her research has been featured nationally and internationally in outlets that include the New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, Playboy, ABC Nightline, Sydney Morning Herald, Weekendavisen, De Tijd and more. She was the recipient of the 2015 Nevada Regents’ Rising Researcher Award in recognition of early career accomplishments.

Carlo DaVia is a Lecturer in Philosophy at Fordham University, where he also completed his doctorate in Philosophy and master’s degree in Classics. In the summers he is an instructor of classical languages at the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute. During the 2020-21 academic year, he is on leave in order to be a Visiting Scholar at UCLA, as well as a researcher at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach under a DAAD Research Grant. His areas of specialization are ancient philosophy, ethics, and phenomenology.

Carlo is currently working on a number of scholarly articles in those fields, as well as two book projects. The first book, The Event of Meaning (co-authored with Gregory Lynch and under review at Cambridge University Press), attempts to explain the underlying structures that make possible our finding meaningful cultural objects like literary texts and historical artifacts. The second book, tentatively titled Understanding in a Culture of Cancel, tries to provide some guidelines for how we can better understand such cultural objects despite our living in a cancel culture that is deeply suspicious of the possibility that other people, particularly those who do not look or live as we do, have anything meaningful to tell us.

Jacob Fay is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, attached to the Center’s Democratic Knowledge Project Design Studio. There, he heads the Intercollegiate Civil Disagreement Partnership, multi-institution collaboration that trains students to facilitate conversations across political difference with their peers. As a scholar, he is at work developing a political theory of injustice. This project is an extension of his dissertation, Education and Injustice, which won the 2020 Kuhmerker Dissertation Award from the Association for Moral Education. Fay is co-editor with Meira Levinson of Democratic Discord in Schools: Cases and Commentaries (2019) and Dilemmas of Educational Ethics: Cases and Commentaries (2016). Prior to his appointment as a postdoctoral fellow, Fay was a visiting assistant professor at Bowdoin College. He has been a 2017-2018 Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics Pedagogy Fellow, a 2016-2017 Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics Graduate Fellow, and a member of the 2013-2014 Spencer Foundation Philosophy of Education Institute. He holds an Ed.D and M.Ed from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and an MA in American History from Brandeis University. Undergirding all of his work and research are his experiences as a middle school history teacher.

Matthew Griffith is a 4th year Ph.D. candidate at UCLA in Higher Education and Organizational Change. His research interest centers on diversity leaders, institutional politics, and how power and agency function in organizations. For example, his dissertation will study chief diversity officers’ networks to reveal institutional power dynamics and issues with agency within their organization. More broadly, my research seeks to explore and improve the efficacy of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policy, implementation, and strategy.

Prior to pursuing his doctorate, Matthew worked as an administrator in the University of California system. Most recently, he served as the Manager for Strategic Diversity Initiatives at the UC Office of the President, where he led systemwide efforts to improve campus-based diversity, equity, and inclusion issues and developed external, strategic partnerships in order to further diversify and build opportunity pathways for UC faculty, staff, and students.

Beyond his diversity work, Matthew has remained committed to engaged scholarship and teaching. Most notably, during his UCLA tenure, he was the lead graduate researcher and coordinator for the UCLA Prison Education Program, where he worked with UCLA students and currently incarcerated students on research and legislative projects to increase access to higher education for incarcerated individuals. Currently, he teaches the 195CE Community Engagement and Social Change course through UCLA’s Center for Community Engagement– an upper division, experiential learning undergraduate course.

Born and raised in the city of Detroit, Michigan, he is a proud and sometimes overzealous graduate of Detroit Public Schools and the University of Michigan.

Frank LoMonte is a professor at the University of Florida, where he teaches media law and runs the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information, a think-tank dedicated to producing practical research about the law of access to civically essential information. At the Brechner Center, he serves as publisher of The Journal of Civic Information, a quarterly peer-reviewed journal of practical scholarship, and as executive producer of "Why Don't We Know," a podcast focusing on secrecy in government. He previously worked for nine years as executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Washington, D.C., providing legal support for journalism students and educators facing press freedom issues.

LoMonte is a 2000 magna cum laude graduate of the University of Georgia School of Law, clerked for federal judges on the Eleventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and the Northern District of Georgia, and practiced law with Sutherland LLP in Atlanta. During 2014, LoMonte taught as the Otis Brumby Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Georgia School of Law. Before becoming a lawyer, LoMonte worked as an investigative reporter and political columnist for newspapers in Florida and Georgia. His research on First Amendment and open-government issues has been widely published in scholarly journals including the Case Western Reserve Law Review, Kansas Law Review, Nebraska Law Review and others, and he is the legal correspondent for the Poynter Institute on issues of press freedom and accessibility of information.

Ryan A. Miller, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and Higher Education Program Director at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he teaches courses on higher education leadership, college student development, and student affairs administration. His research interests focus on (1) the institutionalization of diversity and equity initiatives within colleges and universities, including bias response teams, and (2) the experiences of minoritized social groups in higher education, with emphasis on identities of disability, sexuality, and gender, as well as intersecting social identities. Miller has published more than 30 journal articles and book chapters in outlets including The Review of Higher Education, Journal of College Student Development, and Journal of Diversity in Higher Education.

Miller received the 2016 Melvene D. Hardee Dissertation of the Year award from NASPA for his research about LGBTQ students with disabilities and the 2019 Early Career Faculty award from the UNC Charlotte Cato College of Education. He was recently named an Emerging Scholar (2021-2023) by ACPA College Student Educators International. Prior to becoming a faculty member, Miller worked professionally in higher education for eight years in the areas of student affairs, bias response, federal TRiO programs, LGBTQ affairs, affirmative action/EEO, intergroup dialogue, and institutional research. Nationally, he serves as program chair for the Council for the Advancement of Higher Education Programs, associate editor of the College Student Affairs Journal, and editorial board member for the Journal of College Student Development and Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice.

Dr. Teri Platt is currently an Associate Professor of Public Administration, Faculty Associate for the Center for Cancer Research and Therapeutic Development, and the Director of the Isabella T. Jenkins Honors Program at Clark Atlanta University. She has over 15 years of teaching experience in public policy, research methodologies, and American government. Dr. Platt actively supports student voter and civic engagement through partnerships and collaboration with the Andrew Goodman Foundation, ALL IN Democracy Challenge, and as a member of the advisory board for the Students Learn, Students Vote coalition. The research of Dr. Platt explores the intersections of social determinants of health, civic engagement, and self-efficacy. Dr. Platt has presented over 25 professional papers on topics ranging from analysis of political leadership, the political implications of demographic shifts in urban areas, and policy analyses of federal and local policies designed to address urban decline. Her upcoming book titled People and Places: Urban Political Landscapes in America provides a comprehensive assessment of the impacts and implications that demographic and population shifts over time on city politics and urban policy agendas.

Amy Werbel serves as Professor of the History of Art at the State University of New York-Fashion Institute of Technology. For the past twenty years, her research has concentrated on censorship at the intersections of law and culture, and particularly in relationship to freedom of artistic and sexual expression. Her most recent book, Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock (Columbia University Press, 2018), was awarded the 2019 Peter C. Rollins Book Prize of the Northeast Popular and American Culture Association. Werbel's previous book publications include Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (Yale University Press, 2007), which was designated an “Outstanding Academic Title” by Choice magazine. Professor Werbel has lectured nationally and internationally on the damaging impact of censorship not only on artistic expression but also on pluralism and democracy more generally, including during two appointments as a Fulbright Scholar to China (2011-2012) and to the United Kingdom (2019-2020). She was honored to receive the 2018-2019 State University of New York Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship.

Dr. Werbel has been awarded fellowships and scholarships by numerous institutions, including the Frick Center for the History of Collecting, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and Metropolitan Museum of Art. She earned her Bachelor’s degree at Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges and her MA and PhD degrees at Yale University.

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Ernesto Arciniega is pursuing his Ph.D. in Hispanic Literatures at UCLA and currently serves as Vice Chair of the University of California Graduate and Professional Council (UCGPC). Ernesto served as board member on the AS-UCLA Board of Directors, a student-run, non-profit with an $80 million budget that governs UCLA’s student publications and media, UCLA’s student services, facilities and restaurants, and UCLA’s trademark and licensing.

Ernesto graduated with a B.A. in Spanish Peninsular and Latin American Literatures (Summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) from UC Berkeley in 2016 and earned his Master’s degree in Hispanic Literatures from UCLA in 2018. Ernesto’s primary research interests are Contemporary Mexican and Chicanx literatures and cultures, border studies, Mexican immigration to the United States, and protest art.

Ernesto was born and raised in Tepic, Mexico and moved to San Diego, California in 2007. Ernesto is a strong advocate for social justice and immigrants’ rights: He has worked with different Hispanic/Latinx organizations at UC Berkeley and UCLA. He worked as Student Researcher for UC Berkeley’s Restorative Justice Center (2014) and as President of UC Berkeley UARLL (2015). Ernesto is the founder and former President of UCLA Hispanic Latinx Graduate Students Association (2017-2019), was the inaugural GSA Director of Diversity, Inclusion and Community Engagement (2018-2019) and has contributed as Student Advocate (STAR) to the UC Board of Regents. Today, Ernesto is an elected Councilmember for the North Westwood Neighborhood Council in the 5th District of the City of Los Angeles, where he advocates for building student affordable housing, improving public transportation and fighting for Westwood’s disfranchised.

Banks received her Ph.D. in Cultural Foundations of Education and a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Women’s Studies, from Syracuse University. She specializes in sociology of education, cultural studies, and qualitative research. Committed to educational reform and inclusion, Banks draws from educational theory, feminist theory, and critical race theory in her work and in her teaching, research, and writing. Her book Black Women Undergraduates, Cultural Capital and College Success (Peter Lang, 2009) expands the concept of cultural capital and provides practical ways colleges and universities can recognize and utilize the cultural capital of all students. She is the co-author of the edited text, Teaching, Learning and Intersecting Identities in Higher Education (Peter Lang, 2012). This book utilizes voices of scholars and students from a range of academic disciplines to analyze the ways divergent identities and experiences infiltrate the classroom. Her newest project entitled, “No Justice! No Peace! College Student Activism, Race Relations and Media Cultures” examines the implications of changing tides of student activism for college campuses. Banks has produced scores of articles, book chapters, and presentations and has won a wide array of honors, awards, and scholarships. A graduate of Monroe Community College she was inducted into Monroe’s Hall of Fame.

My scholarship is centered on exploring those organizational contexts and characteristics of higher education institutions that encourage individuals (students, faculty, staff) and universities (as organizational actors) to confront our collective democratic challenges which typically arise in the form of: cultural contestations, competition over sustainability of actions, disparities in natural and economic resources, human rights concerns, and deficiencies in legal or political processes. This focus has prompted me to study the campus characteristics that contribute to campus-based activism, factors shaping individual students’ acquisition of civic commitments and skills, campus administrators’ roles in creating inclusive educational environments for undocumented immigrant college students, and senior campus administrators’ displays of public advocacy for diversity and inclusion, among others. I apply an interdisciplinary perspective to these topics, drawing from the study of organizations, social movements and collective action, as well as individual identity development. While my theoretical approach is coherent, the topics I have pursued are somewhat diffuse. I submit however, that this variety of topics is revealing of the philosophy that guides my work: I aim to help colleges, and the people that comprise them, navigate real-life dilemmas that manifest on account of coexisting in a pluralistic democracy. As I often remind my students, rigorous educational research requires that it also be relevant to practice and to the context in which the research findings are likely to be applied.

Ryan Coonerty is on the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors and the two-time former Mayor of Santa Cruz. He is also an entrepreneur, author, and educator. He is currently the host of "An Honorable Profession" podcast and a long-time lecturer in Legal Studies, Politics and Jewish Studies at UC Santa Cruz. He is a guest lecturer at the Panetta Institute at CSU Monterey Bay and Santa Clara University. Previously, he cofounded NextSpace Coworking, co-authored of The Rise of the Naked Economy – How to Benefit from the Changing Workplace and wrote Etched in Stone – Enduring Words from our National Monuments. Ryan was selected by the Aspen Institute to be a Rodel Fellow in Public Leadership as one of "the nation’s most promising young elected officials.”

Ryan is a contributor to Governing Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post and numerous publications. In addition, he is a frequent speaker at conferences on government, education, planning and business. He graduated from Santa Cruz’s public schools and the Honor’s College at the University of Oregon. He received a master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law.

Jill Dunlap, PhD, is Director for Research and Practice at NASPA-Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. Prior to NASPA, Jill was the Director for the CARE Office at the University of California, Santa Barbara, during which time she served on the Presidential Task Force to End Sexual Violence. She completed her PhD in Political Science and Public Administration and her dissertation work focused on the students impacted by sexual violence on campus. Jill’s research can also be found in several publications, most recently in Contested Issues in Troubled Times: Student Affairs Dialogues on Equity, Civility, and Safety. Jill has consulted with many national organizations, including the National Organization for Victim Assistance, Victims’ Rights Law Center, and the Department of Defense.

Alice Yau, PhD, is an Asian-American police officer for the Chicago Police Department (CPD). As an instructor and mentor, Alice is committed to advocating for underrepresented and marginalized populations within CPD and the greater community. Alice is committed to evidence-based research, curriculum development, and contributing to education. Alice has developed evidence-based law enforcement curriculum and has taught less-than-lethal tactics, use of force, and 4th Amendment rights to city, county, and university police departments for 12 years. Alice teaches police curriculum to reinforce the importance of professionalism, integrity, courage, dedication, and respect while on and off duty. Alice maintains her commitment to service through volunteer roles with the Asian Law Enforcement Association, Lesbian Gay Police Association and Gay Officers Action League of Chicago, CPD Run to Remember and Misericordia.

Dr. Flores is proud to be a lifelong product of the California public education system, from K-12, to college, to her doctorate in Urban Planning from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor at California State University Long Beach. Dr. Flores teaches in the Social and Cultural Analysis of Education graduate program, where she trains students as emerging scholars and practitioners focused justice, power, and resistance. She draws on current and community events to anchor academic ideas in everyday life, and uses critical pedagogies in her courses to engage students in deep analyses of social and educational inequities at global and local levels.

In her research Dr. Flores examines issues related to gender-based harassment experienced online, in public spaces, and at academic conferences. She has written journal articles and given scholarly presentations about gendered public space, street harassment, and most recently the targeted harassment of faculty members. As someone committed to public scholarship and civic engagement, she is recognizes the ways in which targeted harassment may silence faculty, leading them to self-censorship. Dr. Flores is a past fellow with The OpEd Project, and her public writing has been featured in national outlets such as the The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, Ms. Magazine Blog, YES! Magazine and Progressive Planning Magazine. Before returning to academia, Dr. Flores worked as a political messaging strategist and jury consultant, conducting pre-trial focus group research for legal cases in more than thirty states.

Nick Havey is a PhD candidate in the Higher Education and Organizational Change program in the Department of Education at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research interests fall under three areas: the intersection of whiteness and queerness, queer romantic and sexual politics, and student political organizations and political engagement. He works with Mitchell J. Chang (Professor of Education and Asian American Studies) and is an Editorial Assistant for the Journal of Higher Education.
In addition to ongoing work investigating how queer college students respond to a lack of sexual education through community building and self-study and how queer white men on college campuses understand and describe race and racism, Nick is working on a larger group of projects focused on campus political actors.

His ongoing political work considers the key predictors that explain why students change their political orientation over the course of college and how students across the political spectrum engage in campus political discourse and understand themselves as political actors, particularly in reference to students identifying at the other end of the spectrum, and how they develop and implement rhetorical and political repertoires. This qualitative, in-depth work is paired with a big data project that looks at politically engaged students’ information networks on Twitter, what news sources are central to these networks, and how these sources are impacting media literacy and, subsequently, informed civic engagement for the contemporary student. Future work will similarly consider faculty and staff information networks and implications for campus political discourse.

Jennifer Lambe is an associate professor in the Communication Department at the University of Delaware, ​with a joint appointment in the Legal Studies minor. She is a ​founding faculty member of the UD Center for Political Communication and is directing the center’s Initiative on Free and Responsible Expression. Lambe received her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota​ in 2000​.

Her research and teaching focus broadly on media and democracy. Her areas of interest include (a) freedom of expression, both domestically and internationally; (b) media policy/law/ethics; and (c) the effects of media. ​In 2017 she co-authored the second edition of Media Effects and Society with Elizabeth M. Perse. ​Other current and recent projects include a forthcoming book, tentatively titled Remedies for Hate Speech, improved measurement of public (and campus) willingness to censor, updating measurement of political tolerance, public opinion about celebrity and athlete free speech, net neutrality and campaign finance issues.

Lambe has been partnering with the Vice Provost for Diversity at the University of Delaware for four years to provide regular campus programming about the tensions between free speech and hate speech. Their largest collaboration was a two-day symposium entitled “Speech Limits in Public Life: At the Intersection of Free Speech and Hate.” The program involved 19 keynote speakers and panelists from a variety of academic disciplines, lawyers, non-profit advocates, a college student who developed an anti-bullying app, and a former hate group member who is now an anti-hate activist.

Dr. Elizabeth Niehaus is Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Administration at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln. Her current research focuses on how we can create and improve educational environments to facilitate student learning and development in higher education, with a particular emphasis on the intersections of issues of free speech, academic freedom, and campus climate. Dr. Niehaus’s other research interests include study abroad, international education, graduate student and faculty professional development, and service-learning programs. At the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, Dr. Niehaus teaches courses on diversity issues in higher education, college student development, research methods, and free speech and campus climate.

Dr. Niehaus earned her Bachelor’s degree in Linguistics from the University of Virginia, her Master’s degree in American Culture Studies from Washington University in St. Louis, and her PhD in College Student Personnel Administration from the University of Maryland, College Park. She has published her research in a wide variety of scholarly and practitioner-oriented outlets, including the Journal of College Student Development, The Journal of Higher Education, the Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice, and Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad. She has received a number of grants to further her research on alternative breaks, short-term study abroad, and tertiary student engagement and development in Trinidad and Tobago, and was a recipient of the 2017 Excellence in International Research and Service to the International Community Awards from ACPA: College Student Educators International.

Brian Soucek is Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis. He is a graduate of Boston College (B.A., Philosophy and Economics); Columbia University (Ph.D., Philosophy), where he was awarded the Core Preceptor Prize for his teaching; and Yale Law School (J.D.), where he was Comments Editor for the Yale Law Journal and won the Munson Prize for his work in the school’s immigration clinic. Prior to law school, Soucek taught for three years at the University of Chicago, where he was Collegiate Assistant Professor and Co-Chair of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts. After law school, he clerked for the late Mark R. Kravitz, United States District Judge for the District of Connecticut, and the Hon. Guido Calabresi of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

Professor Soucek’s research and teaching spans constitutional law, particularly Equal Protection and the First Amendment, LGBT rights, asylum/refugee law, civil procedure, and law and aesthetics. His writing has been cited by the Sixth and Seventh Circuits; referenced and excerpted in leading casebooks in Immigration Law, Sexual Orientation Law, and Civil Procedure; discussed by the Wall Street Journal; and honored with the Dukeminier Award from UCLA’s Williams Institute for the year’s best article on sexual orientation and gender identity law. Professor’s Soucek is an elected Trustee of the American Society for Aesthetics; he is the Chair-Elect of the American Association of Law Schools Section on Law and Humanities; and he is currently serving as the Vice Chair of the University of California’s systemwide Committee on Academic Freedom.