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.   

Society of Vertebrate Paleontology sues the Trump administration for Shrinking Bears Ears National Monument
Brightsurf Science News
Sept. 2, 2026
Stuart Sumida, CSUSB professor of biology serving as president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, was quoted in an article in which the SVP joined with other entities to sue the Trump administration for shrinking the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah.
“The president’s wholesale and thoughtless deprotection of Bears Ears shows a fundamental lack of understanding of its scientific and cultural significance and what it can teach us about the deep time history of our planet.” Sumida said. “Further, it is profoundly insulting to our tribal partners and deeply disrespectful of their culture and history.”

More people across the ideological spectrum now feel that violence is a legitimate means of resolving political disputes
KPFA
Sept. 9, 2026
Brian Levin – founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism and professor emeritus of criminal justice at CSUSB, a criminologist and civil rights attorney – discussed with program host Ian Masters the increase in people who see violence fueled by ideology as legitimate.

He calls himself California’s Luigi Mangione. An arson suspect’s rallying cry sparks furor
Los Angeles Times
Sept. 3, 2026
Brian Levin, criminal justice professor, emeritus, and expert on extremism, was interviewed for an article about the man accused of setting fire to the Kimberly-Clark warehouse in Ontario in April, and how the debate is playing over social media. The suspect says he set the fire to as a stance against corporate greed. Levin said studies have shown that more people across the ideological spectrum in the United States are willing to offer a sympathetic ear to using violence to resolving political disputes than in the past, though many may not resort to such tactics.

The Maya effect: Theorizing beyond Matthew and Matilda effects to an intersectional understanding of collaboration.
Gender & Society
Ethel Mickey (sociology) led a team of researchers who analyzed “62 interviews that center women faculty of color contrasted with three same-rank colleagues (white women, men of color, and white men), we theorize the Maya effect: how unequal crediting for collaborative work is inseparable from both racialized and gendered oppression. The Maya effect theorizes not just the authorship end point, but also how inequalities arise in crediting output, illustrating how each stage of collaboration operates in gendered and racialized ways.”

Gender, Social Ties, and Older Adult Alcohol Use
Innovation in Aging
Eric Vogelsang (sociology) with Zackary Zanotelli, using The Irish Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing, examined “how ‘social ties’ (family characteristics and social participation) predict three measures of alcohol use and abuse among adults aged 50-plus. We also test to what extent alcohol use and its correlates may differ by gender.”

Recognizing and reporting police misconduct across formal and informal pathways. 
Policing: An International Journal
Zachary Powell and Sishi Wu (both criminal justice faculty) published a paper that examined how “Law enforcement agencies rely on civilians to co-produce police accountability by acting as an external monitor for law enforcement conduct. Civilians participate in police accountability by submitting complaints to agencies, but may circumvent formal pathways and report the behavior to informal peers. This paper considers how civilian complaint behavior may contribute to a ‘dark figure’ of police misconduct.

These news clips and others may be viewed at “In the Headlines.”