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 professor joins live blog on the June 14 primary elections, tracks how female candidates fared
FiveThirtyEight
June 14, 2022

Meredith Conroy, CSUSB associate professor of political science, participated in a live blog about the primary elections that took place on June 14. One of her posts, “Where are the female candidates competitive?” read, in part, “This year, according to the Center for American Women in Politics, women are 31 percent of all nominees in House primaries (compared to 35 percent in 2020), and 12 percent of nominees in Senate primaries (compared to 31 percent in 2020), thus far.

“Although women are keeping pace with previous years, the party differences are stark — women are 43 percent of the Democrats’ nominees in the House and 15 percent of their nominees in the Senate, compared to just 19 and 8 percent of the Republicans’ nominees in the House and Senate, respectively.”

Read the full conversation as Conroy and the FiveThirtyEight crew monitored the election returns during the night at “What went down during the June 14 primary elections.”

Grocery stores are a more common target for hate crimes than a decade ago, CSUSB professor says
NBC News
June 15, 2022

Brian Levin, director of CSUSB’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, was interviewed for an article about hate crimes at grocery stores that have quadrupled since 2010, as the pandemic and politics and mask mandates collided in one of the few public gathering spaces still open during 2020.

“That's one of the few places where people congregated, because they had to,” Levin said. “It was a necessity, even houses of worship were able to adapt via Zoom.”

But as bad as 2020 was, Levin said that hate crimes have only continued to increase in the two years since. The Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism issued a report in May that showed hate crimes rose by more than a third in 37 major U.S. cities from 2020 to 2021.

Levin said that hate crimes tend to increase during years with elections. And with the midterm elections six months away, he said more hate crimes and assaults could be on the way.

“What we're concerned about is the second half of the year,” Levin said. “We can see this consistently because the stereotypes that label people [as] legitimate targets for aggression tend to increase as the elections come closer.”

Read the complete article at “Grocery stores are a hotbed of racism and hate crimes, data shows.”

Charging Buffalo, N.Y., mass shooting suspect with federal hate crimes is correct call, CSUSB professor says
Insider
June 15, 2022

Brian Levin, director of CSUSB’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, agreed with other experts with federal prosecutors’ decision to levy hate crime charges against the suspect in the May 14 mass shooting in Buffalo, N.Y., in which 10 people died. Those charges are in addition to those the suspect faces from the state of New York, including murder and domestic terrorism. Levin said that the suspect – who is white – was charged with federal hate crimes because he specifically targeted victims – all of whom were Black – because of their race. 

"Racial hate crimes – from a constitutional standpoint, because of the post-Civil War amendments – there's a much better case for federal jurisdiction in a wider number of circumstances than with some other categories," Levin said.

He said he believes the Buffalo massacre was the type of attack that officials were planning for when lawmakers passed the 2009 Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which makes it a federal crime to injure, or try to injure, someone with a dangerous weapon based on "actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin."

"There's a real fit there, and I think the hate crime definitions are a bit tighter for prosecutors to try and prove than terrorism, but we don't even have a terrorism law, domestically," Levin said.

And he highlighted focusing on clamping down on the "proliferation of the weapons of war" used by domestic terrorists as a way to reduce extremist violence. 

Read the complete article at “Why the Buffalo shooting suspect is facing federal hate crime — not terrorism — charges.”

CSUSB professor interviewed for segment on combating extremism on the internet
KNSD TV San Diego
June 13, 2022

The newscast aired a segment on combating extremism on the internet, and included an interview with Brian Levin, director of CSUSB’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.

“One of the things that we noted is that when people are under stress and angry, they develop prejudices, which consists of how information comes in, how you feel about it, and then how you act upon it,” Levin said. These ideologies, he said, are formed through disinformation, conspiracy theories and fear, “much of it online, which leads people to believe that their fears are justified because other people believe it, too.”

The portion with Levin being interviewed begins about 2 minutes and 20 seconds into the segment.

Watch the full segment at “How to combat extremism on the internet.”

CSUSB professor comments on Dallas poll on treatment based on race, ethnicity
The Dallas Morning News
June 16, 2022

Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, was interviewed for an article that reported paticipamore than a third of Dallas residents feel that they are treated differently because of their race or ethnicity, according to a new poll published Friday.

“These kinds of victimization surveys, even the ones that aren’t perfect, are incredibly useful because you’re going to find a lot of people who say they’ve been victimized,” said Levin. A survey might not yield precise results about hate crime, but “it’s a good contemporaneous measure of intergroup aggression.”

Of the 500 respondents who took part in the citywide poll, 177, or about 35%, said their race or ethnicity affects how they are treated in the city. Of that group, Black, Hispanic or Latino respondents mostly said they were treated worse because of their race or ethnicity, and white respondents mostly said they were treated better.

From January to May this year, the Dallas Police Department reported 12 hate crimes, compared to 14 during the same time period last year, according to Texas Department of Public Safety data. Despite the decrease, Levin said hate crime reports can swell during the second half of presidential and midterm election years.

“In 2018 we actually saw significant declines in the first part of the year that were completely turned around during the summer,” Levin said. “The increases tend to correlate with whatever hot-button issues are trending both online and in politics.”

Read the complete article at “More than 1 in 3 Dallas residents treated differently because of race, ethnicity

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