Who We Are

Darnell Hunt is Director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies and Professor of Sociology at UCLA. Dr. Hunt has written extensively on race and media, including numerous scholarly journal articles, book chapters, and popular magazine articles. He has also published three books about these issues: Screening the Los Angeles “Riots”: Race, Seeing, and Resistance (Cambridge University Press, 1997), O.J. Simpson Facts and Fictions: News Rituals in the Construction of Reality (Cambridge University Press, 1999), and Channeling Blackness: Studies on Television and Race in America (Oxford University Press, 2005). He also is editor (with Ana-Christina Ramon) of Black Los Angeles: American Dreams and Racial Realities, forthcoming from NYU Press (Spring 2010). Prior to his positions at UCLA, he chaired the Department of Sociology at the University of Southern California (USC).

For more than a decade, Dr. Hunt has worked on several projects exploring the issues of access and diversity in the Hollywood industry. He is author of the last three installments of the Hollywood Writers Report, an analysis of employment access and earnings among television and film writers, released by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) in 2005, 2007, and 2009. He also was principal investigator of The African American Television Report, released by the Screen Actors Guild in June of 2000. Dr. Hunt also has worked in the media and as a media researcher for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’ 1993 hearings on diversity in Hollywood.

Dr. Hunt is a frequent public commentator on questions of media and race. He has been interviewed for dozens of television and radio programs on the topic, and the findings of his research studies have been reported in hundreds of newspapers throughout the United States and abroad. He also has participated in and moderated several panel discussions about media diversity sponsored by entities such as the Federal Communications Commission, the United Nations, the Congressional Black Caucus, and numerous colleges and universities. He is listed in the “Academia” section among Ebony’s “Power 150” most influential African Americans for 2009.

Dr. Hunt received a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from USC, an MBA from Georgetown University, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from UCLA. A native of Washington, D.C., he has lived in Los Angeles for nearly 30 years.

David K. Yoo is Director of the Asian American Studies Center and Professor of Asian American Studies at UCLA. A historian of the United States, Dr. Yoo is author of Growing Up Nisei (2000) in which he examines issues of race, generation, and culture among Japanese Americans in California in the early decades of the twentieth century. Just released is his book from Stanford University Press entitled Contentious Spirits (2010) that focuses on the role of religion in Korean American history, 1903-1945. In addition, Professor Yoo has co-edited and co-authored three books dealing with Asian American religions, including the influential anthology, New Spiritual Homes (1999). His numerous journal articles and book chapters have appeared in venues like the American Quarterly and Amerasia Journal. Prior to his arrival at UCLA, he taught at Claremont McKenna College and the Claremont Colleges, where he served as chair of the Department of History and the Intercollegiate Department of Asian American Studies.

Professor Yoo has been a Senior Fulbright Scholar (Korea) and a recipient of fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation, UCLA Institute of American Cultures, and the Huntington Library. He has collaborated on various research projects funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Social Science Research Council, and the Lilly Endowment. Professor Yoo has served on many professional and community-based boards, including election to the council of the American Historical Association, Pacific Coast Branch, and chair of the managing board of the Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative. In the realm of public history, Professor Yoo has been a consultant to local museums and historical societies and guided students in conducting oral history interviews.

A native of Los Angeles, Professor Yoo received his B.A. with honors from Claremont McKenna College, an M.Div. from Princeton Seminary, and the M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Yale University in American Studies and History.

Chon A. Noriega is Professor in the UCLA Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media. In July 2002, he became Director of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. He is author of Shot in America: Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema (Minnesota, 2000) and editor of nine books dealing with Latino media, performance and visual art. Since 1996, he has been editor of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, the flagship journal for the field since its founding in 1970.

For the past fifteen years, Noriega has been active in media policy and professional development, for which Hispanic Business named him as one of the Top 100 Most Influential Hispanics. He is co-founder of the 500-member National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP, established in 1999) and served two terms on the Board of Directors of the Independent Television Service (ITVS), the largest source of independent project funding within public television. Noriega has served as moderator for the Arts and Entertainment Summit of the U.S. Congressional Hispanic Caucus. His current research establishes a quantitative methodology for the study of hate speech in the media.

In addition to his work in media, Noriega has curated numerous arts projects, including the traveling exhibition Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement. He is editor of A Ver: Revisioning Art History, a book series on individual Latino artists, which now has four titles in print and eleven more in progress. He has also helped recover and preserve independent films and video art, including the first three Chicano-directed feature films. The restoration of these films is the cornerstone of an ongoing "Chicano Cinema Recovery Project" that he organized between the UCLA Film and Television Archive and the Chicano Studies Research Center.

Angela R. Riley is Acting Associate Director of the American Indian Studies Center at UCLA. Since entering the academy in 2003, Professor Riley has written extensively on issues of indigenous peoples’ rights. Her work has been published by the nation’s top legal journals, and include: In Defense of Property (with Carpenter and Katyal), Yale Law Journal (2009); Good (Native) Governance, Columbia Law Review (2007); and (Tribal) Sovereignty and Illiberalism, California Law Review (2007), among many others.

Professor Riley is a frequent speaker and commentator on Native issues. She has delivered dozens of public addresses, speaking to audiences at law schools, museums, and universities around the country. Mostly recently, she was invited to give the endowed Allison Davis Lecture at Williams College. Professor Riley also holds prominent positions in tribal government. In 2003, she was selected to serve on the Supreme Court of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation of Oklahoma, becoming the first female and youngest Justice in the Court’s history. She also currently serves as an Evidentiary Hearing Officer for the Morongo Band of Mission Indians in California.

Professor Riley received her undergraduate degree, summa cum laude, in Letters from the University of Oklahoma. She went on to earn her law degree from Harvard in 1998. After graduation, she clerked for Chief Judge T. Kern of the Federal District Court, Northern District of Oklahoma, before moving to Los Angeles. In LA Professor Riley practiced commercial business litigation with the firm of Quinn, Emanuel, Urquhart, Oliver, and Hedges, specializing in intellectual property litigation.

In 2003, Professor Riley joined Southwestern Law School, where she is currently a Professor of Law. The students of Southwestern voted her Professor of the Year in 2007, and she was named the Rosenberg Professor of Law in 2007-08. She has been a Visiting Professor of Law at UCLA since 2008, teaching courses in Property, Cultural Property, American Indian Law, and Indigenous Peoples’ Cultural Resources.

Claudia Mitchell-Kernan is an anthropologist and a professor in the Departments of Anthropology and Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. Mitchell-Kernan currently serves as Vice Chancellor for Graduate Studies and Dean of the Graduate Division at UCLA. One of the many responsibilities of Vice Chancellor and Dean is serving as a campus wide advocate for the advancement of graduate education. This role ensures standards of excellence, fairness and equity are maintained across all graduate programs. Her assignment combines academic administration and leadership, strategic planning and budgetary authority, program planning and review, and external relations. Throughout her career, Dr. Mitchell-Kernan has maintained an active record of service nationally to federal agencies that sponsor research. President Clinton appointed her to a six-year term on the National Science Board (1994-2000), which provides advice to the President and Congress on issues affecting science and technology, and governs the National Science Foundation. Recent service includes: the Board of Directors of the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS), Chair of the CGS Advisory Committee on Minorities in Graduate Education, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Graduate Record Examination, Board of Higher Education and Workforce of the National Research Council, and the Advisory Board of the National Security Education Program. She is widely known for her early work in linguistic anthropology. Her classic sociolinguistic studies of African Americans continue to be widely cited. Dr. Mitchell-Kernan received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and her B.A. and M.A. from Indiana University. She was a member of the Harvard University faculty before coming to UCLA in 1973

M. Belinda Tucker is a social psychologist and Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA, as well as an Associate Dean in the Graduate Division. Tucker is also a Faculty Associate of the Bunche Center for African American Studies, for which she served as Interim Director from 1989-1991. For 25 years, Tucker has examined the nature of close, personal relationships in a sociocultural context, using a variety of research methods. She has conducted a number of major studies, including a survey and re-interview of more than 3,400 residents in 21 cities across the U.S. She has studied inter-ethnic relations, the transition to adulthood among urban black youth from distinct cultural groupings, social adaptation of developmentally delayed adults over the life-course, and the impact of incarceration on family members and close ties. For the last five years, Tucker directed the National Institute of Mental Health-funded Family Research Consortium IV, a national collaborative network and training program for scholars interested in family mental health.