School of Law

Jack Chin is the Edward L. Barrett Jr. Chair, Martin Luther King Jr. Professor, and Director of Clinical Legal Education at the School of Law. He currently teaches the Aoki Criminal Justice Practicum, where law students seek to remedy wrongful conviction and excessive sentence cases for the Pima County (Arizona) Attorney’s Office and the Yolo County District Attorney. He regularly works on law reform projects with students including successfully petitioning the California Supreme Court to admit Hong Yen Chang to the bar over a century after they excluded him because of his race, and persuading the Ohio Legislature to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. 

Department of Native American Studies

​​​​​For the last three decades, Dr. Liza Grandia has collaborated as an activist-scholar with Indigenous, environmental, social, and agrarian justice movements in the Maya lowlands of northern Guatemala and Belize.  Along the way, she stopped a World Bank loan for an oil pipeline through the Maya Biosphere Reserve; founded one of Guatemala’s first environmental nonprofits called ProPeten; and accompanied Maya communities in two constitutional land cases in Belize that resulted in the historic reconstitution of indigenous territorial control in Belize.  Since 2005, she has coordinated a network of social-justice advocates in the Q’eqchi’ Scholars Network and collaborated with a Q'eqchi' peasant organization called ACDIP in their “leftovers” movement of territorial defense and restoration.  She joined Native American Studies at UC Davis as an Associate Professor and inherited leadership of the Indigenous Research Center of the Americas.  In 2017-19 she was awarded a national Mellon Foundation “New Directions” fellowship to pursue studies in toxicology and environmental epidemiology for her new work on pesticides and other environmental hazards.  At home, she has won several awards and recognition for her environmental advocacy for green schools, healthy campuses, climate action, and bilingual education as "Professor Canary" about the hazards of everyday consumer products. 

Department of Political Science

Jeannette is a long time faculty member in the Political Science Department.  Her research agenda focuses on immigration and, in particular, states’ immigration policies.  This includes attention to issues of entry and also the economic, social and political incorporation of immigrants.  Given the nominal level of protection of migrant rights at the international level, this research now focuses on immigrant activism and political alliances as a source of policy change.  The program “Immigrants, Refugees and Human Rights” through Quarter at Aggie Square introduces students to these issues and provides experiential learning opportunities with immigrant serving organizations.