Faculty in the News, Dec. 19

CSUSB anthropology professor part of research team reexamining settlement of Caribbean
Science Advances
Dec. 18, 2019
 
Nicholas Jew, a CSUSB assistant professor of anthropology, is one of the authors of a research article that reexamined the human settlement of the Caribbean by evaluating more than 2,400 radiocarbon determinations from the more than 50 islands in that region.   
 
Jew and his fellow researchers “collated 2484 radiocarbon determinations, assigned them to classes based on chronometric hygiene criteria, and constructed Bayesian colonization models of the acceptable determinations to examine patterns of initial settlement. Colonization estimates for 26 islands indicate that (i) the region was settled in two major population dispersals that likely originated from South America; (ii) colonists reached islands in the northern Antilles before the southern islands; and (iii) the results support the southward route hypothesis and refute the ‘stepping-stone model.’”
 
Read the complete article at “Reevaluating human colonization of the Caribbean using chronometric hygiene and Bayesian modeling.”

CSUSB professor’s comments on ‘antifa’ activity included in photo documentary domestic terrorism
Intelligencer/New York Magazine
Dec. 19, 2019
 
Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University,  San Bernardino, was quoted in an article that accompanied photos by Mark Peterson who “has documented this year, traveling the country to surface the extent of the (domestic terrorism) activity and catalogue the most dangerous ideologies.”
 
Levin is quoted in the section titled “Rallying in Major Cities,” which described an Aug. 17 clash in Portland between a far-right group and a radical left-wing group known as the “antifa.”
 
The article said: “Critics, led by Fox News, often compare antifa with violent far-right groups, calling it the radical left’s violent mob. But statistically the equivalency is unsubstantiated. ‘We counted a representative sample of antifa attacks and threats on MAGA supporters,’ said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University at San Bernardino. ‘The bottom line is we haven’t seen any hard-left or antifa homicides.’”
 
Read the complete article at “A Year Inside a Growing American Terrorist Movement.”

This news clip and others may be found at “In the Headlines” at inside.csusb.edu.