Politics & Society

Mass deportation of California's undocumented residents would open a $275 billion hole in the state's economy, cripple industries ranging from agriculture to hospitality, disrupt countless small businesses, and lead to $23 billion a year in lost tax revenue.

Mariel Garcia accepted a welcoming handshake from the chief of staff for state Sen. Tim Grayson. A large photograph of rolling hills at sunset near Walnut Creek, a city in Grayson’s district, dominated a wall in the compact reception room.

“Good to meet you,” said the chief of staff, Aaron Moreno. “We’ll make sure to get whatever you need.”

Only 10 years after it began, the Ph.D. program in UC Merced’s Department of Sociology made an impressive debut in U.S. News & World Report’s latest rankings of graduate-level offerings.

The Sociology graduate program tied for No. 64 nationally, sharing the position with UC Riverside, Temple University, the University of Florida and Washington State University.

UC Merced’s School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts made a splash in the latest rankings of university graduate programs compiled by U.S. News and World Report.

The university’s Political Science program ranked 52nd in the nation, tied with UC Riverside, Purdue University-West Lafayette, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Arizona State University.

Faculty members at UC Merced are taking the lead on four Multicampus Research Program Initiatives (MRPI), working with colleagues around the University of California system to address challenges around labor and agriculture, active matter, Indigenous health and fusion energy.

Tsitsi Dangarembga spread the spirit of ubuntu over UC Merced on Wednesday night, imparting its message of “how we can be good people who live well together.”

A UC Merced professor and his co-researchers set out to measure how Jewish Israelis react to different sources of criticism about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Does disapproval from internal voices move public opinion? Voices from abroad? What about reproval from the diaspora — people who live outside Israel but have religious, ethnic or national ties?

They collected data from a carefully designed survey of more than 2,000 and submitted the findings for peer review in December 2022. Months later, the paper was returned for edits.

Exploring sources of historical narratives can take you to places where walls seem to move and truth feels fluid and interchangeable. Ma Vang’s research has focused on how people narrate their histories, tracking the lived experiences of people pigeonholed or marginalized by dominant narratives that privilege the record and written text.

It is impossible to avoid — the real-life event that frames the play “26 Pebbles” is disturbing. Heartbreaking.

Which makes all the more remarkable the play’s uplifting message of human resilience and the ability to come together after an unspeakable tragedy — the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

An online workshop this week aims to deconstruct one of humanity’s most destructive traits: genocide.

UC Merced’s Department of Cognitive and Information Sciences is bringing together an interdisciplinary panel of scholars for “Understanding Genocide: Neural, Psychological and Political Science Perspectives.” The workshop will be shown live on YouTube from 9 a.m. to noon Friday, May 17.