NOTE: Faculty, if you are interviewed and quoted by news media, or if your work has been cited, and you have an online link to the article or video, please let us know. Contact us at news@csusb.edu.    

CSUSB professor writes about ‘Transforming Rejection’

Psychology Today

Oct. 18, 2021

Anthony Silard, CSUSB assistant professor of public administration, wrote in his blog, The Art of Living Free, about using rejection as a stepping stone to developing healthy relationships.

Silard wrote: “When a ‘friend’ offers you a gift of rejection or aggression, don’t accept it. Move on to find other friendships that have the potential to become the CMSRs (Compassionate, Meaningful, Sustainable Relationships) you need.”

Read the whole blog at "Transforming Rejection."

Oath Keepers is a Second Amendment insurrectionist group, says CSUSB professor

Daily Kos

Oct. 18, 2021

In Riverside County, Sheriff Chad Bianco, who paid a year-long membership with Oath Keepers in 2014, an extremist, anti-government militia organization, adamantly defended the organization in an interview with LAist. He said that despite the arrests of numerous Oath Keepers in the Jan. 6 Capitol siege, he did not consider them a threat to democracy. “Except for a few fringe people, that’s not really what they stand for,” he said. “They certainly don’t promote violence and government overthrow. They stand for protecting the Constitution.”

Brian Levin, director of Cal State San Bernardino’s Center of the Study of Hate and Extremism, told LAist that the Oath Keepers is “a Second Amendment insurrectionist group ... It doesn’t get simpler than that.”

“Second Amendment insurrectionists believe they have a right to armed rebellion whenever they … believe the government is tyrannical,” Levin said. “For [Bianco] to be defending the organization today when he is in the position of enforcing the law is extremely problematic.”

Read the whole article at "Cops who joined Oath Keepers double down after being exposed as far-right extremists."

CSUSB lecturer interviewed about neurodiversity in PR

Provoke Media

Oct. 11, 2021

Jessica Nerren, a public relations lecturer at CSUSB, was previously PR and marketing director at US law firm Berger Kahn, and a long-time publicist for an autism nonprofit in California. She also has a son with autism.
Nerren has a different angle on inclusivity and neurodiversity in PR, since her academic dissertation looked at whether the strategies and advocacy tactics of public relations itself would be effective in increasing understanding of autism in an educational setting, and how to make classrooms inclusive for future teachers during their training.
Nerren said that during the course of her research, perceptions among trainee teachers and professors shifted from an overarching and dominant “this is hard to do,” to being favorable to being inclusive towards neurodiversity — and quickly.

“In disability studies in general, the narrative is that disability itself is a social construction that says disability equals deficit,” she said. “Once we did the work, using the tools of PR, there was a really powerful shift, reframing this social construction so disability — and ASD — was seen as an ‘asset in my classroom.’ And this asset thinking happened in a short time frame: around 45 minutes.”

Read the whole article at "Neurodiversity in PR: From Kryptonite to Superpower." 

This news clip and others may be viewed at “In the Headlines.”