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.     

Gen Z students, Boomers build bridges at CSUSB Palm Desert Campus
The Desert Sun
Jan. 24, 2022

Before the pandemic, recent high school grads and retirees — both taking courses at California State University San Bernardino's Palm Desert campus — would just walk right by one another. Lacey Kendall, who teaches communications studies at the campus, and Lou Gorfain, a volunteer at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, wanted to do something to change that. 

"There were these two worlds — the old people walking around and these young kids going to Cal State — and never the twain would meet," Gorfain, 79, said. "There was the notion at OLLI that somehow we could close that gap."

Read the complete article at “Gen Z students, Boomers build bridges at CSUSB Palm Desert.”

Podcast: An Indigenous language, back from the brink
Los Angeles Times
Jan. 24, 2022

Native American culture and history have long been ignored or romanticized as vestiges of a lost people — or both.

The Serrano people of Southern California have seen their Indigenous language nearly vanish. But tribe member Ernest Siva has been working to save it. Among his efforts: The octogenarian, contributes to Cal State San Bernardino’s language program.

Listen to the podcast at “Podcast: An Indigenous language, back from the brink.”

Suggested use of Insurrection Act by extremist ‘mind-boggling,’ CSUSB professor says
The Washington Post
Jan. 23, 2022

An article about the founder of a far-right extremist group, the Oath Keepers, being charged with sedition for his alleged role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol quoted Brian Levin, director of CSUSB’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.

“It is hard to put into words how mind-boggling this idea was, to use a statute designed to protect the country from insurrection to support an actual insurrection,” said Levin. The riot aimed to overturn the November 2020 election and give former President Donald Trump the win.

“Whatever you think of him, the president’s words were taken by the more organized and hardened extremists as a call to action,” said Levin of California State University. Trump’s public flirtation with the Insurrection Act fit into what Levin said was a longer, disturbing trend among far-right extremists who oppose the government.

In the 1990s, such “insurrectionist doctrine” was centered largely on a perceived threat to the Second Amendment right to own guns, and more radical advocates declared they would use violence to defend gun ownership, Levin said.

But over time, extremists brought the same logic to all sorts of issues, from federal land regulations to coronavirus restrictions and, in late 2020, to refusing to accept Biden’s electoral victory.

“Insurrectionist doctrine has morphed into a much broader argument that now tries to justify violent aggression against the routine functioning of government,” Levin said. “Last year, it was used as a dagger to interfere with the constitutional and peaceful transfer of power. That’s extraordinarily troubling, and the kind of conduct we see in authoritarian regimes.”

Read the complete article at “How Trump’s flirtation with an anti-insurrection law inspired Jan. 6 insurrection.”

Leaked chats revealing evidence of hate crimes could prove damaging to extremist group, 

CSUSB professor says
Gizmodo 
Jan. 22, 2022

A leak online of internal communications of the extremist group the Patriot Front, could seriously damage the group, experts, including a CSUSB professor, say.

“This kind of leak is devastating, not only because it lays out bare for the world internal maneuvering and gossip, but also more substantial things,” Brian Levin, professor of criminal justice and director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, told Gizmodo. “It furthers internal dissension because previously internal, but institutionally divisive private communications about members and strategy are now open up to view from the entire membership, along with the rest of the world for that matter.”

Read the complete article at “Leaked chats reveal evidence of hate crimes by U.S. fascists.”

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