Fireside Chat: University of Southern California’s Dr. Manuel Pastor on Environment and Health in the Trump Administration
4:00 pm US Eastern Time
What do you think the 2016 US Presidential election results mean for environmental health over the coming four years? What might be the impact on research funding and priorities? Chemical regulation? Children’s health? Community health?
On this call Michael Lerner, PhD, President of Commonweal, and Manuel Pastor, PhD, Director of the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity at the University of Southern California, discussed the implications of the recent US election results for the field of environmental health, including both challenges and opportunities. Following the discussion between Michael and Dr. Pastor, we opened the call for a conversation with participants.
Featured Speaker
Dr. Manuel Pastor is Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He currently directs the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) at USC and USC's Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII). Dr. Pastor’s research has generally focused on issues of the economic, environmental and social conditions facing low-income urban communities – and the social movements seeking to change those realities. Dr. Pastor co-authored the book Equity, Growth, and Community: What the Nation Can Learn from America's Metro Areas and co-edited the book, Unsettled Americans: Metropolitan Context and Civic Leadership for Immigrant Integration.
Dr. Pastor was the founding director of the Center for Justice, Tolerance, and Community at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has received fellowships from the Danforth, Guggenheim, and Kellogg foundations, and grants from the Irvine Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the California Environmental Protection Agency, the W.T. Grant Foundation, The California Endowment, the California Air Resources Board, and many others.
Dr. Pastor speaks frequently on issues of demographic change, economic inequality, and community empowerment and has contributed opinion pieces to such outlets as the Los Angeles Times, the San Jose Mercury News, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Sacramento Bee, the Huffington Post, and many others.
Dr. Pastor received the Civic Entrepreneur of the Year award from the California Center for Regional Leadership, currently serves as a Public Member of the Strategic Growth Council in California, and previously served as a member of the Commission on Regions appointed by California’s Speaker of the State Assembly and as a member of the Regional Targets Advisory Committee for the California Air Resources Board.
In 2012, he received the Liberty Hill Foundation’s Wally Marks Changemaker of the Year award for social justice research partnerships. Pastor’s current research is looking at the last several decades of economic, social, and environmental transformations in California – and what they can tell us about the road ahead for the U.S.
Dr. Pastor holds an economics Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and is the inaugural holder of the Turpanjian Chair in Civil Society and Social Change at USC.
This call was moderated by Michael Lerner, PhD, President of Commonweal and Vice-Chair of CHE. The call lasted 60 min and was recorded for archival purposes.
This call is part of a new series "Fireside Chat". In this series we explore challenges and opportunities for environmental health under the new Trump Administration. Our focus will be a conversation between CHE leaders, environmental health science and policy experts and call participants.
