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 names arts and letters’ associate dean
IE Business Daily
June 6, 2021

Parastou Feizzaringhalam has been named associate dean of Cal State San Bernardino’s College of Arts and Letters. Also known as Dr. Feiz, Feizzaringhalam will assumer her new post on July 1.

Feizzaringhalam, who specializes in linguistics, joined Cal State San Bernardino’s English department in 2007. She will help implement the college’s strategic plans, lead its assessment initiatives, manage its IT team, and advise the Office of Undergraduate Studies, among other duties.

Read the complete article at “CSUSB names arts and letters’ associate dean.”


Boogaloo movement ‘prototypical of the kind of threat we’ll see going forward,’ CSUSB professor says

The (San Jose) Mercury News/Bay Area News Group

June 6, 2021

Brian Levin, director of CSUSB’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, commented on recent court filings in which federal prosecutors in the Bay Area revealed the most extensive details yet on the investigation into the May 29, 2020, fatal shooting of Federal Protective Service Officer Dave Patrick Underwood in Oakland, and the June 6, 2020 killing of Santa Cruz Sheriff Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller in an ambush in Ben Lomond. Prosecutors allege a militia movement that uses the name “Boogaloo” is responsible.

The Boogaloo movement, whose followers believe America is on the brink of a second civil war, flourished on social media, said Levin, who called the movement “prototypical of the kind of threat we’ll see going forward.”

Extremist movements have moved away from more centralized groups like the Ku Klux Klan, Levin said, toward more fluid subcultures that he said borrow from a “buffet” of ideologies that can become violent faster.

“What it allows for is a kind of ‘create your own ideology’ extremism. … That’s why you’ll see within these subcultures a mix of demographics and sometimes even a mix of political views,” he said. “That’s why we saw an increase in not only the Boogaloo Boys but things like Q[Anon]. When there’s a binding narrative of conspiracy, even if it’s elastic, it can be a place where potentially dangerous people can radicalize others or conspire with similar dangerous folks.”

Read the complete article at “Militia plotted ‘war’ against California cops, impersonating Antifa, taking up arms if Trump invoked Insurrection Act, feds say.”

 

The CSUSB Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism’s latest research on hate crimes against Asian Americans was cited in the following:

 

New Illinois legislation would require Asian American studies in public schools
WSB Radio  Atlanta, Ga.
June 4, 2021

Anti-Asian hate incidents continue to rise across the country, one legislator seeks to combat racism with a new law requiring Asian American studies in public schools. Illinois state Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz said she wants to fight "ignorance" with the Teaching Equitable Asian-American History Act (TEAACH). The legislation would mandate curriculums on the social, political and economic contributions of Asian Americans in the U.S. starting in the 2022-2023 school year. If it passes, it will be the first law of its kind in the nation.

Anti-Asian hate has been on the rise since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Stop AAPI Hate, an organization that tracks anti-Asian hate incidents, received more than 6,600 reports of hate incidents since March 19, 2020.

And reports of anti-Asian hate incidents rose by nearly 150% in major U.S. cities from 2019 to 2020, according to a study from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

 

Young father killed by punch after fender bender in Philadelphia amid spike in anti-Asian violence
People via MSN News
June 4, 2021

Philadelphia father-of-two and restauranteur Wei Lin was only trying to help, and it cost him his life. On May 24, the 28-year-old rushed to the aid of one of his deliverymen moments after the worker got into a minor accident with another motorist. Then, without warning, Lin was viciously assaulted.

The incident is not being investigated as a hate crime, according to police, but it comes amid a nationwide spike in assaults on Asian Americans.

Asian-American hate crimes in major cities rose by 150-percent in 2020 over the previous year, according to a recent report issued by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

 

COVID-19 variants to be named after Greek letters instead of locations
VOA News
June 3, 2021

The World Health Organization is assigning Greek letters to important variants of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.  
The scientific names are hard to say and hard to remember, WHO said in a statement Monday. And pinning them on the place the virus was first detected – such as what happened with COVID-19 -- is stigmatizing and discriminatory.  

After then-President Donald Trump blamed the pandemic on the "Chinese virus" in a mid-March 2020 tweet, anti-Asian hate speech on Twitter spiked, according to a study in the American Journal of Public Health. Other Republicans, including Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert, picked up the rhetoric.

Attacks on people of Asian descent rose 146% in major U.S. cities between 2019 and 2020, according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. 


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