California Council for the Humanities | Not in Our Town

California Council for the Humanities

By Ralph Lewin, President & CEO, California Council for the Humanities This article was originally published in the Summer 2010 issue of the California Council for the Humanities newsletter. To read Ralph Lewin's interview with Patrice O'Neill, Not In Our Town Executive Producer and CEO, please click here.   Stories open windows into the human soul. For however brief a time, stories help us understand what it’s like to be someone else—to live, love, and dream like someone else; in this way, stories help us understand ourselves.
The Working Group was excited to host this weekend in Oakland, California, a small group of scholars from across the state to advise us on our Not In Our Town work supported by the California Council for the Humanities. The group included Yolanda Moses, anthropology professor and special assistant to the Chancellor for Excellence and Diversity at UC Riverside, and one of the shapers of the American Anthropological Association’s “Race Are We So Different” traveling museum exhibit; Alberto Pulido, director and professor of Ethnic Studies and chair of the President’s Advisory Board on Inclusion and Diversity at the University of San Diego; and David Brundage, who teaches the history of social movements in the Community Studies Department at UC Santa Cruz, my alma mater.