UNIVERSE
A Call to Action O
n October 27, 2017, UHS’s Alumni Association sponsored the first event in a new series called “Runway Lecture.” Built neither for airplanes nor couture, this runway is made to give you, our audience, the fuel to “take off ” and participate in social justice in your professional life, as volunteers, and at home with family and friends. Held at the downtown Olympic Club, the business-day lunch gathering brought together nearly 100 alumni and current parents for a timely conversation about race and politics.
Our speaker was Professor Ian Haney López, who holds an endowed chair as the Earl Warren Professor of Public Law at the University of California, Berkeley and teaches in the areas of race and constitutional law. His most recent book, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class (Oxford, 2014), describes how for fifty years politicians have exploited racial pandering to build resentment toward government, fooling voters into supporting policies that favor the very wealthiest while hurting everyone else. Haney López
came to campus in November of 2016 immediately following the election to speak with students. He galvanized the student body and inspired students to speak up and protest policies they disagree with.
current climate of unbridled racism as politics-as-usual and part of the normal cycle between Democrats and Republicans, but instead to recognize it as an existential crisis that threatens democracy.
Haney López’s clear explanation of decades of insidious behavior is now seen as a prescient foretelling of the 2016 presidential election and a clarion call to action for those who find the analogy contemporary and relatable.
“There is a mistaken belief that racism only affects communities of color. The deep social divisions that bedevil our society don’t reflect the American people, they reflect a strategy among our politicians. What will happen to ‘us’ when social divisions are purposefully deepened, and anger is purposefully fueled and stoked? What will happen
Haney López appealed to the audience to stop seeing the
Coming together rests on us to have a shared vision
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