Events By Quarter
Honoring Femme Indigenous Energy
Luther Richmond, McKinley McPherson, Vivian LaPena
MCC Lounge
Please join us in honoring femme Indigenous energy in collaboration with the American Indian and Indigenous Cultural Resource Center. May is Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives Awareness Month and May 5 is Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives Awareness Day. MMIWR is a crisis that disproportionately affects Indigenous Women, Girls, Trans, and Two-Spirit Relatives. During this event, we will engage in a teach-in led by Amrah Salomón, honoring those who have passed and gone missing.
Guest Bio: Amrah Salomón J. is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of California Santa Barbara. She is an activist, educator, and writer of mixed ancestry (O’odham, Mexican, and European). Dr. Salomón directs the Regeneración Lab and is a member of the Center for Interdisciplinary Environmental Justice. She is a current Advisory Board member of the UCSB Environmental & Climate Justice Hub (EJ/CJ Hub) and the UCSB Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, & Public Life.
Art Exhibition
Spring Art Exhibit – This Is America: Art as Protest
Zonelysse
MCC Lounge
The MCC’s Spring Art Exhibit’s theme, This Is America: Art as Protest, is a showcase that sparks critical conversations about the current political climate—both on campus and across the nation. This exhibit seeks to highlight critical conversations on pressing issues such as gun violence, immigration, and the ongoing fight for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
Featuring Zonelysse as the Artist-in-Residence, This Is America challenges us to reflect, question, and engage with the realities shaping our communities today. Join us in this powerful exploration of art as activism, resistance, and storytelling.
Exhibition: April 7 to June 6
Guest Bio: Riechal “Riqui” Zonelysse Paras Martinez is a 2024 graduate from UCSB with a Bachelors of Arts in Asian American Studies and Sociology. During her time as a student at UCSB she created a San Miguel Residence Hall Mural “Our Environment” which is on display from January 2022 thru June 2026 and a permanent Little Acorn Park community mural “Isang Bagsak” endorsed by the Santa Barbara Arts Fund and the Isla Vista Recreation and Parks District in June 2024. She hopes to continue her credentials in academia with a Masters in Education in Ethnic Studies.
Resilient Love
Boundless Love: Enduring Legacy of Cedric J. Robinson in Teaching, Research, and Activism
Dr. Françoise Cromer, Dr. H. L. T. Quan, Dr. Marisela Marquez, Dr. Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, Dr. Jasmine Noelle Yarish, Moderator: Elizabeth P. Robinson, Chair/co-moderator: Albert Rice,
MCC Theater and Lounge
In the Fall of 2016, UCSB’s Division of Student Affairs launched the Resilient Love series to ask how we might respond ethically and honorably to hate and violence. The series features visiting artists and academics as it seeks to promote conversation and creative work that will forge a love-driven response to hate, hurt, and fear. Since its inception, we have hosted Kimberle Crenshaw, Favianna Rodriguez, David Kyuman Kim, Sharon Bridgforth, and Tim Wise.
This roundtable panel will celebrate the enduring legacy of Dr. Cedric Robinson from the
perspective of his former students and PhD alums in Political Science, Black Studies, and Chicana/o Studies, UC Santa Barbara. In addition to discussing impacts of Dr. Robinson’s teaching on their scholarship and career path, each panelist will share their story of resilience and love in the trajectories to promote feminist social justice.
Guest Bio:
Dr. Françoise B. Cromer is the Assistant to the Provost for Special Projects, and an Assistant Professor in the History, Culture and Politics Department at Saint Elizabeth University, in Morristown, New Jersey. Her research focuses on Black women’s health, complementary approaches to health and wellness, public policy, political participation, social movements, resistance, internationalism and the Black radical tradition. She was a 2024 Faculty Fellow at University of Connecticut, Storrs, in the Africana Studies Summer Institute to Advance Equity Through Research on Women and Girls of Color. In 2017, she received the Anna Julia Cooper Outstanding Publication Award for her journal article, “Black women take their health into their own hands.” Her collaborative teamwork in developing an award-winning summer bridge program (Fastrak) at Saint Elizabeth University with intensive first-year support services, resulted in the exceptional retention of program participants. Dr. Cromer earned her Masters and Doctorate of Philosophy degrees in Political Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara advised by Dr. Cedric J. Robinson. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Economics with a minor in African Studies from Saint Lawrence University.
Dr. Marisela Marquez is Executive Director of Associated Students, adjunct faculty of Chicano/a Studies, UC Santa Barbara. Hailed from Laredo, Texas, and Nova Laredo Tamaulipas, Mexico, Dr. Marquez received her B.A. in English and M.A. in Political Science at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas and her Ph.D. in Political Science at UC Santa Barbara. Upon completing her dissertation, titled, “Political Tolerance in Higher Education: Identifying the Threshold of Support for Diversity Policies,” Marisela found a home to the rich legacy and history of student activism at UC Santa Barbara and Santa Barbara City College. Over the years, and into her career now as the Executive Director of Associated Students, Marisela has transcended ivory tower’s boundaries by finding a balance in academia, philanthropy, and activism. (excerpted from
Dr. H. L. T. QUAN is a political theorist and an award-winning filmmaker. Currently she is an Associate Professor of Justice and Social Inquiry in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. She is also an affiliate faculty member in African/African American Studies, Asian Pacific American Studies, Women and Gender Studies, and the Sidney Poitier New American Film School at ASU. Her research & teaching focus on radical thought and praxis, including feminist consciousness, utopian thought, speculative living, data justice, movements for justice, and the Black Radical Tradition. Her works include Become Ungovernable (2024), Cedric J. Robinson (ed, 2019), Growth Against Democracy (2012), and with C. A. Griffith as co-Producer/co-Director, Queer, Broke & Amazing! (2024), América’s Home (2014), and Mountains That Take Wing (2009).
Dr. Tiffany Willoughby-Herard is Associate Professor in Global & International Studies at UC Irvine and Professor Extraordinarius in the Chief Albert Luthuli Research Chair at the University of South Africa. Their forthcoming Oxford University Press book, ‘I meant for you to be free’ bridges contemporary youth movements for educational justice, return of the land, and ending femicide with the feminist, Pan Africanist, cross-generational and cross-genre politics of feminist sociologist Fatima Meer, jurist Motsoko Pheko, and militant activist Winnie Mandela. Willoughby-Herard has authored, edited and collaborated on numerous publications, is a former National Conference of Black Political Scientists President, a 2022-23 National Humanities Center (USA) Fellow, a Detroit-raised poet, a gender nonconforming lesbian, a friend, and a m/other. Their work is concerned with feminism, economic justice, the sacred, participatory action research, political education, publishing and poetics, and pedagogy in Continental Africa and the African Diaspora.
Dr. JASMINE NOELLE YARISH is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of the District of Columbia. A first-generation student raised in the Appalachian hills of central Pennsylvania, her expertise is in the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and democratic theory. Since completing a Ph.D. with certificates in Black Studies and Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara,her scholarship extends the idea of abolition democracy theorized by W.E.B. Du Bois to include political and intellectual contributions made by Black women in and around the city of Philadelphia during the era of Reconstruction in the mid to late nineteenth century. Additionally, Jasmine served as a program coordinator at the UCSB Multicultural Center from January - June 2017, when the very first Resilient Love Series was launched. Among other honors, she was recently a diversity scholar with the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Dr. Yarish’s publications in peer-reviewed journals and chapters in edited volumes have placed her scholarship prominently in the growing literature on the “Third Reconstruction.”
Dr. Albert J Rice is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Broadly, his research examines Black politics, American political development, and social policy, with a focus on education, inequality and citizenship. His current book project, The Politics of Educational Reform: Race, Capitalism and American Democracy, examines the role that racial segregation and business interests play in eroding political equality and promoting education reform laws. He was previously a University of California President’s postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles. His work has been published in a variety of venues, including, Perspectives on Politics, Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society, the Journal of Cultural Geography, and The Popular Culture Studies Journal. He received his PhD in African American and African Studies from Michigan State University in 2020.
Co-Moderator - Elizabeth P. Robinson
Elizabeth Peters Robinson is a Lebanese American journalist and community media activist. Born in Oak Ridge, TN, she moved with family to California and earned a bachelor’s degree in criminology from UC Berkeley. While at Berkeley, Peters-Robinson became interested in radical approaches to criminology, which led her to work as a social worker with the Alameda County Probation Office, where she and Cedric met. They married in 1967 and spent time studying and working throughout the US and abroad, during which time Elizabeth earned a master’s degree in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Michigan, before settling in Santa Barbara, California in the late 1970s. She retired in 2012 from her position as KCSB Advisor and Associated Students Associate Director for Media after 31 years of service at UCSB.
Voices of Change: Student Activism & Leadership Panel
El Congreso, IDEAS
MCC Lounge
Join us in the MCC Lounge in an engaging conversation with student leaders on campus. Hear from organizers and members of El Congreso, IDEAS, and other student leaders, as they share their experiences in advocacy, activism, and community building. These student-led groups are at the forefront of mobilizing for change, creating inclusive spaces, and navigating the challenges of organizing on campus.Engage in critical dialogue, gain valuable insights, and discover ways to take action in your own communities. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from and connect with student leaders making an impact!
