Conversations on Race and Policing - California State University San Bernardino (CSUSB)

A conversation with Dr. Yelana Sims is Assistant Professor of History at the University of South Carolina. She earned her PhD from University of Massachusetts, Amherst in African American Studies with a Graduate Certificate in Public History; her B.A. is from Vanderbilt University in African American and Diaspora Studies.
 
From her faculty page: "A native of Spartanburg, South Carolina, Dr. Yelana Sims received her undergraduate degree in African American and Diaspora Studies at Vanderbilt University and both her Ph.D. in African American Studies and graduate certificate in Public History from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
"Her research interests include histories of race, technology, and gender and sexuality in the U.S.. Dr. Sims is currently completing her first book manuscript, tentatively titled When the Flesh Knows It Is Flesh: Black Women, Sex Work, and Technology 1880-2000, which examines African American sex workers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and their interactions with technology, focusing on how technological advancements were used to surveil and convict as well as advertise and enrich sex workers of this period. Dr. Sims argues that Black women have been historically utilized as machines of reproduction, physical labor, and meaning-making which has complicated their interactions with technological innovations.
"Dr. Sims enjoys teaching courses on women’s history, African American history and culture, technology histories, and the links between all three. Her research has been supported by the University of Massachusetts Amherst Public History Program, the Harvard University Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, and others."
Series organizers (alphabetical) are Amber Broaden (CSUSB and CSU Dominguez Hills, Psychology), Stan Futch (President, Westside Action Group), Michael German (Brennan Center for Justice), Robie Madrigal (Pfau Library), Dr. Jeremy Murray (CSUSB History), Matt Patino (Crafton Hills College Adjunct Faculty), Dr. Mary Texeira (CSUSB Sociology). Click here to view previous panels in the Conversations on Race and Policing series (link). Thanks to Project Rebound and the CSUSB Pfau Library for their support of this event! Thanks to Thinh Ly, Parker Brooks, and the Information Technology Services team!
 
Thanks to Pfau Library, Project Rebound, and the Information Technology Services team for making this event possible!

Join us in conversation with Gisela Perez Kusakawa, Executive Director of the Asian American Scholar Forum, and Mike German, formerly of the Brennan Center and the ACLU, and former FBI special agent.
Zoom Link: https://tinyurl.com/csusb-corp2026
Our guests will discuss the so-called "China Initiative," launched in the first Trump administration. Of this effort, German wrote, "Ostensibly designed to combat economic espionage and intellectual property theft by Chinese government agents, the program quickly devolved into a campaign of racial profiling and fearmongering that targeted U.S.-based scientists and technologists who were not even suspected of spying or intellectual property theft. The chilling effect it created within the U.S. scientific community continues to threaten American primacy in science and technology."
Find two more insightful pieces about this initiative here:
Caught in the Crossfire: Fears of Chinese–American Scientists (PNAS, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science)
The US Crackdown on Chinese Economic Espionage is a Mess. We Have the Data to Show It. (MIT Technology Review)
Series organizers (alphabetical) are Amber Broaden (CSUSB and CSU Dominguez Hills, Psychology), Stan Futch (President, Westside Action Group), Michael German (Brennan Center for Justice), Robie Madrigal (Pfau Library), Dr. Jeremy Murray (CSUSB History), Matt Patino (Crafton Hills College Adjunct Faculty), Dr. Mary Texeira (CSUSB Sociology). Click here to view previous  and upcoming panels in the Conversations on Race and Policing series (link). Thanks to Project Rebound for their support of this event!

 
Peggy Cooper Davis is John S. R. Shad Professor of Lawyering and Ethics Emerita at New York University. She joined NYU in September 1983 after having served for three years as a judge of the Family Court of the State of New York and having engaged in the practice and administration of law during the preceding 10 years. Her scholarly work has been influential in the areas of child welfare, constitutional rights of family liberty, and interdisciplinary analysis of legal pedagogy and process. Davis’s 1997 book, Neglected Stories: The Constitution and Family Values, illuminates the importance of anti-slavery traditions as guides to the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Her recent book, Enacting Pleasure, is a collection of essays exploring the social, cultural, psychological, and political implications of Carol Gilligan’s relational psychology. 
She has also published more than fifty articles and book chapters, most notably in the premier journals of Harvard, Yale, NYU and Michigan law schools. For more than 10 years, Davis directed the Lawyering Program, a widely acclaimed course of experiential learning that distinguishes NYU Law School’s first-year curriculum. She now directs the Experiential Learning Lab, through which she works to develop and test progressive learning strategies and to develop professional education courses that systematically address the interpretive, interactive, ethical, and social dimensions of practice. Davis has served as chair of the board of the Russell Sage Foundation and as a director of numerous not-for-profit, for-profit, and government entities.
Series organizers (alphabetical) are Amber Broaden (CSUSB and CSU Dominguez Hills, Psychology), Stan Futch (President, Westside Action Group), Michael German (Brennan Center for Justice), Robie Madrigal (Pfau Library), Dr. Jeremy Murray (CSUSB History), Matt Patino (Crafton Hills College Adjunct Faculty), Dr. Mary Texeira (CSUSB Sociology). Click here to view previous  and upcoming panels in the Conversations on Race and Policing series (link). Thanks to Project Rebound for their support of this event!

 
Dr. Justin Randolph is Assistant Professor of History at Texas A&M.
 
His recent book, Mississippi Law: Policing and Reform in America's Jim Crow Countryside (University of North Carolina Press, 2025), examines how American police power shaped fights for Black freedom. 
 
"In the segregated American South, policing was war. Rampant police violence came to the back roads and cattle pastures of America’s rural countryside as ideas of race, property, and belonging reshaped the role of government in everyday life. In Mississippi Law, Justin Randolph explores rural law enforcement to explain US racial authoritarianism between the Civil War and the civil rights movement. In Jim Crow Mississippi, the force behind the police officer’s autocracy carried legacies of empire and slavery into the age of agribusiness and automobiles—from state troops and slave patrols to state troopers and highway patrols. But this is no isolated story of individual barbarism. US military and reform traditions informed ruling-class beliefs in thoughtful police improvement through both the state militia and its inheritor, the state police."Black Mississippians fought to raise awareness and defend their loved ones against the violence spawned by paramilitary police reform. Some took up arms against police officers; others imagined a legal off-ramp to remake public safety after Jim Crow. Ultimately, the transformation of what one activist called “Mississippi Law” came with more funding and more authority for policing, a key piece of infrastructure for the age of mass incarceration that followed the civil rights revolution. Recounting the works of both famous and forgotten activists, Mississippi Law is a genealogy of Jim Crow rule and dreams of a safety that might have been and might yet be."
 
“This powerful history of policing in the rural South reveals the origins of law enforcement as white control of Black mobility and freedom. Amid today’s calls for police reform and abolition, this book reminds us why history matters.”—Françoise N. Hamlin, author of Crossroads at Clarksdale: The Black Freedom Struggle in the Mississippi Delta After World War II
 
Dr. Justin Randolph's other research projects include histories of police desegregation, rural debt peonage, the Taser, and 9-1-1. His writing has appeared in scholarly outlets like the Journal of Southern History and Southern Cultures. He has also written for popular outlets such as The Washington Post, The Mississippi Encyclopedia, and the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting. He has received an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowship and prizes from both the Southern Historical Association and Agricultural History Society.
Series organizers (alphabetical) are Amber Broaden (CSUSB and CSU Dominguez Hills, Psychology), Stan Futch (President, Westside Action Group), Michael German (Brennan Center for Justice), Robie Madrigal (Pfau Library), Dr. Jeremy Murray (CSUSB History), Matt Patino (Crafton Hills College Adjunct Faculty), Dr. Mary Texeira (CSUSB Sociology). Click here to view previous panels in the Conversations on Race and Policing series (link). Thanks to Project Rebound and the CSUSB Pfau Library for their support of this event! Thanks to Thinh Ly, Parker Brooks, and the Information Technology Services team!
 
Thanks to Pfau Library, Project Rebound, and the Information Technology Services team for making this event possible!

Join us for a conversation with two-time Pulitzer prize winning author and investigative reporter, Eric Lichtblau, who writes about national security and law enforcement affairs. Find his website here, and find his most recent book here: American Reich: A Murder in Orange County, Neo-Nazis, and a New Age of Hate (Hachette, 2026). Lichtblau was featured in an extended interview on Jan. 7 on NPR's Fresh Air at this link.
From Lichtblau's website: 
"He is the author of the best-selling The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler's Men, as well as Bush’s Law: The Remaking of American Justice; and Return to the Reich: A Holocaust Refugee's Secret Mission to Defeat the Nazis. He is currently working on a book on the alarming surge in hate crimes carried out by white supremacists. Lichtblau was a Washington reporter for the New York Times for fifteen years from 2002-2017 and for the the Los Angeles Times for fifteen years before that, concentrating on national security, law enforcement and legal affairs. He earned Pulitzer Prizes in 2018 as part of the New York Times team that examined President Trump's Russia ties, and in 2006 for the Times' stories revealing the existence of the secret NSA surveillance program approved by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11 attack.  His work has also been recognized with numerous other awards, including the Goldsmith Award, the Silver Gavel Award,  and two other Pulitzer-winning teams at the Los Angeles Times. 
"He has also written during his career for The New Yorker, TIME, the Washington Post, The Intercept, and other publications. He has made frequent appearances on CNN, CSPAN, PBS, NPR, BBC, and many other media outlets. He has also given numerous speeches and made appearances at at Harvard University, Cornell, Georgetown, UCLA, the University of Southern California, the University of Oregon, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and many other academic institutions."
Series organizers (alphabetical) are Amber Broaden (CSUSB and CSU Dominguez Hills, Psychology), Stan Futch (President, Westside Action Group), Michael German (Brennan Center for Justice), Robie Madrigal (Pfau Library), Dr. Jeremy Murray (CSUSB History), Matt Patino (Crafton Hills College Adjunct Faculty), Dr. Mary Texeira (CSUSB Sociology). This is event #139 in our ongoing series. Click here to view previous panels in the Conversations on Race and Policing series (link). Thanks to Project Rebound and the CSUSB Pfau Library for their support of this event! Thanks to Thinh Ly, Parker Brooks, and the Information Technology Services team!
 
Thanks to Pfau Library, Project Rebound, and the Information Technology Services team for making this event possible!

Tuesday, February 10, 1pm PST (3pm CST) Join us in the Conversations on Race and Policing series for a discussion with author, Shannon Gibney, and scholar, Dr. Myrl Beam, two voices from Minnesota who have experience in movements for justice and can help us understand recent developments there including mass detentions and killing of protestors by federal agents. Veteran activist and artist, Cat Brooks, will also join the conversation from Oakland.
Zoom at https://csusb.zoom.us/j/388207496
Shannon Gibney is a writer, educator, and activist. She is author of many books, including The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption, which received a Michael L. Printz Honor and a Minnesota Book Award; See No Color and Dream Country, both winners of Minnesota Book Awards; Where We Come From (co-authored), winner of the 2023 Carter G. Woodson Award; Sam and the Incredible African and American Food Fight, and We Miss You, George Floyd. A Bush Artist and McKnight Writing Fellow, Gibney teaches at Minneapolis College, where she was named Educator of the Year in 2023. She lives with her two children in Minneapolis, where she is a sanctuary school team lead with Minneapolis Families for Public Schools (MFPS).
Myrl Beam is a teacher, scholar, and organizer based in South Minneapolis. He is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Women's, Gender, Sexuality Studies Department at Macalester College. The author of the book Gay, Inc.: The Nonprofitization of Queer Politics, he is an oral historian that focuses on queer and trans movements for justice. Beam is currently working on a collaborative public history project called "The Long Fire at Lake and Minnehaha"  that uses community oral history to explore the interconnected histories of activism that gave rise to the Uprising in 2020. That project was named the winner of the 2024 Arcus Places Prize, which celebrates public scholarship on the relationship between gender, sexuality, and the built environment.  Beam lives in South Minneapolis with his partner and two kids where he organizes with Minneapolis Families for Public Schools. 
From her website (link). "Cat Brooks is host of Law & Disorder on KPFA (link) and a long-time performer, organizer, and activist. She played a central role in the struggle for justice for Oscar Grant, and spent the last decade working with impacted communities and families to rapidly respond to police violence and radically transform the ways our communities are policed and incarcerated. She is the co-founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project (APTP) and the Executive Director of The Justice Teams Network. Cat was also the runner-up in Oakland’s 2018 mayoral election, facing incumbent Libby Schaaf."
Series organizers (alphabetical) are Amber Broaden (CSUSB and CSU Dominguez Hills, Psychology), Stan Futch (President, Westside Action Group), Michael German (Brennan Center for Justice), Robie Madrigal (Pfau Library), Dr. Jeremy Murray (CSUSB History), Matt Patino (Crafton Hills College Adjunct Faculty), Dr. Mary Texeira (CSUSB Sociology). Click here to view previous  and upcoming panels in the Conversations on Race and Policing series (link). Thanks to Project Rebound for their support of this event!

Dr. Bocar A. Ba is Assistant Professor of Economics at Duke University, and Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). He is an applied microeconomist studying law enforcement, crime, and inequality. His research examines policing as a critical entry point into the legal system, particularly for marginalized communities, and explores how different stakeholders—police, civilians, unions, media, firms, and policymakers—shape law enforcement behavior and resource allocation. His work, grounded in labor economics and political economy, focuses on use of force, police misconduct, spending, and police alternatives. In collaboration with the Invisible Institute, he co-developed the Civic Police Data Project, a platform that collects data on Chicago police officers, including misconduct, use of force, and awards. He also serves as an advisor to several other platforms tracking police performance and behavior, such as policescorecard.org, policedata.org, Mapping Police Violence, and dontcallthepolice.com, which provides vetted alternatives to policing across the U.S. and Canada. His work has been published or accepted in top journals, including American Journal of Political Science, Science, Journal of Labor Economics, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Urban Economics, Journal of Economic Perspectives, and American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. Bocar holds a BSc in Economics from the Université du Québec à Montréal, an MA from the University of British Columbia, and an MPP/PhD from the University of Chicago. Find Dr. Ba's recent publications here, including "Officer-Involved: The Media Language of Police Killings," in the Quarterly Journal of Economics (May 2025). Find more about Dr. Ba's research here, including research grants from the National Science Foundation and more. Dr. Ba is on leave at the Princeton Center for the Study of Democratic Politics for the 2025-26 academic year. Find his website here.
Series organizers (alphabetical) are Amber Broaden (CSUSB and CSU Dominguez Hills, Psychology), Stan Futch (President, Westside Action Group), Michael German (Brennan Center for Justice), Robie Madrigal (Pfau Library), Dr. Jeremy Murray (CSUSB History), Matt Patino (Crafton Hills College Adjunct Faculty), Dr. Mary Texeira (CSUSB Sociology). Click here to view previous  and upcoming panels in the Conversations on Race and Policing series (link). Thanks to Project Rebound for their support of this event!

In Conversation with Dr. Brianna Nofil (William & Mary), author of "The Migrant's Jail: An American History of Mass Incarceration" (Princeton, 2024)
 
Thanks to Pfau Library, Project Rebound, and the Information Technology Services team for making this event possible!
 
Dr. Brianna Nofil is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at William & Mary.
 
Her recent book, The Migrant's Jail: An American History of Mass Incarceration (Princeton, 2024), "demonstrates how a century of political, economic, and ideological exchange between the immigration bureaucracy and the criminal justice system gave rise to the U.S.’ vast immigration detention system, and how the federal government relied on sheriffs, police, and local governments to make mass deportations possible." The book has won numerous accolades including the Frederick Jackson Turner Award and the Ellis Hawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians. Dr. Nofil's work was featured prominently on a recent installment of NPR's Throughline, "The Business of Migrant Detention," which connected her historical analysis with current events.
 
Find Dr. Nofil's website here. Her faculty page at William and Mary is here, and find the book here.
 
Series organizers (alphabetical) are Amber Broaden (CSUSB and CSU Dominguez Hills, Psychology), Stan Futch (President, Westside Action Group), Michael German (Brennan Center for Justice), Robie Madrigal (Pfau Library), Dr. Jeremy Murray (CSUSB History), Matt Patino (Crafton Hills College Adjunct Faculty), Dr. Mary Texeira (CSUSB Sociology). Click here to view previous panels in the Conversations on Race and Policing series (link). Thanks to Project Rebound and the CSUSB Pfau Library for their support of this event! Thanks to Thinh Ly, Parker Brooks, and the Information Technology Services team!

In Conversation with Dr. Menika Dirkson (Morgan State), author of "Hope and Struggle in the Policed City: Black Criminalization and Resistance in Philadelphia" (NYU Press, 2024)
 
Dr. Menika Dirkson is Associate Professor in the Department of History and Geography at Morgan State University in Maryland. Dr. Dirkson is a Philadelphia native, and earned her PhD in History at Temple University. Find out more about her upcoming work here.
 
Her recent book, Hope and Struggle in the Policed City: Black Criminalization and Resistance in Philadelphia (NYU Press, 2024), "explores how concerns about poverty-induced Black crime cultivated by police, journalists, and city officials sparked a rise in tough-on-crime policing in Philadelphia." The book received an Honorable Mention (2025) in the Joe Trotter First Book Award category, given by the Urban History Association. In her review, UPenn's Akira Drake Rodriguez noted that Dirkson's book, "offers a strong argument for how self-reinforcing anti-crime policies perpetuate increasing violence and crime in over-policed and surveilled communities. Through an abolitionist framing and methodology, the book challenges declension narratives of majority-Black cities that suggest policing was a response to, as opposed to the cause of, destabilized and disinvested Black communities." Find Dr. Dirkson's website here, and her faculty page at Morgan State here. And find the book here at the publisher's website.
 
Series organizers (alphabetical) are Amber Broaden (CSUSB and CSU Dominguez Hills, Psychology), Stan Futch (President, Westside Action Group), Michael German (Brennan Center for Justice), Robie Madrigal (Pfau Library), Dr. Jeremy Murray (CSUSB History), Matt Patino (Crafton Hills College Adjunct Faculty), Dr. Mary Texeira (CSUSB Sociology). Click here to view previous  and upcoming panels in the Conversations on Race and Policing series (link). Thanks to Project Rebound for their support of this event!

In Conversation with Dr. Stefan M. Bradley (Amherst College), author of "If We Don't Get It: A People's History of Ferguson" (The New Press Press, 2025)
 
     Dr. Stefan M. Bradley is Charles Hamilton Houston '15 Professor of Black Studies and History, and is the Department Chair of Black Studies at Amherst College. This event will be hosted and moderated by Dr. Marc Robinson of the CSUSB History Department.
     In Dr. Bradley's new book, If We Don't Get It: A People's History of Ferguson (The New Press, 2025), he writes about the 2014 police murder of the Black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the resulting protest movement. Through oral interviews and media analysis, Bradley reveals "a rich story with deep relevance for the protests of our own time," and the book "offers a gripping account of how young activists, without previous political experience, succeeded in changing our national political narrative."
 
     UCLA Professor Robin D.G. Kelley praised Dr. Bradley's new book: "An honest, incisive, personal account of those fateful weeks following Michael Brown’s death. Refusing to evade difficult questions and criticism, Stefan Bradley crafts a compelling portrait of a movement the media missed: a multigenerational, multiclass, politically sophisticated community in action, not just in the streets but against a rapacious and racist system. A powerful reminder of why all roads from our current struggles for Black freedom and abolition lead back to Ferguson."
 
     Find Dr. Bradley's website here., and his faculty page at Amherst is here. The book, If We Don't Get It: A People's History of Ferguson, is available from The New Press here. Series organizers (alphabetical) are Amber Broaden (CSUSB and CSU Dominguez Hills, Psychology), Stan Futch (President, Westside Action Group), Michael German (Brennan Center for Justice), Robie Madrigal (Pfau Library), Dr. Jeremy Murray (CSUSB History), Matt Patino (Crafton Hills College Adjunct Faculty), Dr. Mary Texeira (CSUSB Sociology). Click here to view previous panels in the Conversations on Race and Policing series (link). Thanks to Project Rebound for their support of this event!