HE HUSTLES

Jonathan Jay Dubois, Ph.D., received his doctorate in Anthropology from UC Riverside in 2017. For over ten years, he has been teaching courses focused on race and gender at CSU San Bernardino and CSU Northridge In addition to his academic pursuits, Jonathan has dedicated over two decades to practicing and honing his skills in the healing arts. His extensive experience in both academia and healing has uniquely positioned him to contribute to the growth, guidance, and realization of the Compassionate Transformation Community's vision as Executive Director Jonathan is thrilled to combine his academic research expertise and practical life skills to make a meaningful impact within the CTC community

How did you get your start into Anthropology?

I dropped out of college the first time through and became a theatrical carpenter and then a technical director for theaters in Boston This work did not satisfy me, and when I did some internal searching, I discovered that I had already been reading about ancient cultures for some time. I decided to go back to college and got my degree in anthropology It is well-suited to me because it is the holistic study of humans. Humans are endlessly fascinating and often perplexing

I especially love our tendency to express our yearning for connection with others and the world around us, so in graduate school, I focused on ancient art Along the way I discovered that there is a vast diversity of ways to be human and to express ourselves I have a passion for digging into human nature, especially our need for each other, and I bring this passion into the classroom I love to ask about why we evolved to be the most social species on the planet The answers often surprise my students and me!

You have been educating others on race and gender for over a decade, what big lesson do you hope students take away from your course?

Two things:

Diversity is amazing! That’s not just a PC trope, it’s backed by science Evolution has been moving toward greater diversity since life has existed on this planet If you think about it, life started as single-celled organisms and evolved into a bewildering complexity and diversity of life! We are a microcosm of this larger expression of life. We are the first species that we know of that had unique cultural expressions and identifiers based on our group identity from the time we first