Faculty Spotlight: Tim Redmond

In 2013, Tim Redmond launched 48hills.org. During our conversation we discussed his project tracking evictions and how teaching affects his journalism.

Tim Redmond

How did you end up at USF?

I started in the Masters of Urban and Public Affairs program. I have been a journalist all my life. I was at the Bay Guardian for about 30 years, and I started 48hills.org, which is a digital daily newspaper. I’ve been writing about urban studies and urban issues my entire career, and at USF, I taught Urban Public Policy and then Economics of Social Justice in the Master’s in Urban and Public Affairs. The Media Studies Department was looking for someone to teach journalism, so now I teach—journalism, investigative reporting, American journalism ethics, civic media, and in the master’s program.

What research are you doing right now?

One of my master’s students and I are working on a major project that’s tracking evictions of longtime residents in the Mission and looking at who replaced them. We’re doing a socioeconomic, demographic, political and real estate study. We’ve chosen 14 buildings where there was an Ellis Act eviction, a no-fault eviction where the tenants are forced out so that the owner can flip the places.

We’re looking at who was living there, when they got evicted, where they went—a lot of them have had to leave town—and who moved in. This is all done through public records and through investigative techniques that I teach. We’re putting together a profile of the changing Mission, building by building, to show people the impact of the tech boom and the Ellis Act and that this wave of displacement has had on longtime San Franciscans.

Where did the research process start for this project?

The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project looked at one building with a contested eviction. I thought, “Wow, that’s a great idea. Why don’t we do that for the entire Mission?” I’ve learned in investigative reporting that if you take on to bigger project, it never gets done. You need to take on a project that’s doable. We picked 14 buildings and analyzed building by building. That means going down to the assessor’s office and pulling all of the records on who owned the building, how long it’s been owned, who sold it, who bought the building, when it was flipped as condos, who those people are, and then go and knock on doors. A lot of the folks who move in have no idea that they’ve displaced a longtime resident. They’re just looking for a place to live. It’s doing a lot of public records work, research and phone work, and then knocking on doors.

I’m really interested in displacement and the economic impacts of displacement in San Francisco. A couple years ago, I did a big project with another reporter looking at how many of the new condo buildings in San Francisco are vacant. As many as 30% of the units appear to be unoccupied. We did that by using public records, by looking at the tax bills for each of those places, and looking to see if the tax bill went to the same residence. Most homeowners get their tax bill at their home. For 30% of the units, the property tax bill is going to New York or someplace else in California. Then you find that the person getting the tax bill owns six other houses in the state, and you get a sense that they’re not using this as a full-time residence.

How do you do these collaborative projects?

Sometimes freelance writers or researchers actively involved in political issues come to me. Some of it comes from activists and participants in the political process. Some of it comes from just noticing things.

When I started 48 Hills, I thought San Francisco as always needed to progressive daily newspaper back when I got into the business that would have required tens of millions of dollars for printing presses, so they’re expensive stuff. Now it’s a few hundred bucks for a designer and a WordPress template to get started. Rather than trying to make a profit off this, we just try to break even. This is community supported journalism. I like to think that we’re paving the way for that model. I also like to think that someone’s going to give us $5 million, and we’re going to hire a whole bunch more staff.

It’s a fairly small operation, but I don’t think you have to be a huge operation to have an impact on the community. We’re active in the community. It’s not just news, obviously. We do a lot of arts, culture, and entertainment. Democracy cannot survive without journalists, and local democracy cannot survive without local journalists.

How did you first become interested in journalism?

My first year of college, I walked into the student newspaper office and said, “Hey, I’d like to volunteer.” I ended up spending four years working in the student newspaper. By the time I graduated, I was editor and also learned that even a small publication can have a huge impact.

In 1978, the big issue on campus was university investments in businesses that did business in South Africa. This was the days of apartheid. Nelson Mandela was still in jail. Archbishop Tutu was calling on American institutions to divest from companies that did business in South Africa. I was wondering how much business Wesleyan does and how much of the portfolio is in companies doing business in South Africa. It’s a private university. It’s not public information, but we managed to get it. We did a big story on the front page listing all the investments in companies that did business in South Africa, raising all the questions, and talking about the divestment and the international anti-apartheid movement. Six weeks later, 200 students took over the president’s office. The New York Times was there, CBS, NBC, helicopters, the police. We had this little twice a week newspaper with 2,500 copies, and we had this impact.

I got out to San Francisco and started working for the Bay Guardian, which at that time was a relatively small weekly newspaper. I realized that you don’t have to be the New York Times have an impact on your community. Community journalism can have a huge impact. The Guardian grew from a circulation of 30,000 to 150,000, and we went from about 28 pages a week to about 170 pages a week. I was there through all of this growth and always kept in mind that this is community journalism with a goal of making this a better place for the people who live here.

I started off covering real estate development, tenant issues, gentrification, city planning, which became one of my key beats. I started realizing that the battleground over development in San Francisco was in thick environmental impact and economic impact reports that no one was reading. The planning commissioners weren’t reading them. The supervisors weren’t reading them, and the mayor clearly wasn’t reading them. Most daily newspaper reporters weren’t reading them because they had deadline in four hours.

I started looking into all of these government documents. When you have the data in front of you, and you can say this is the impact this project is going to have on the city—how many more cars it’s going to put on the streets, the impact on Muni, and the impact it’s going to have on water and sewer. You can just say to the decision makers, did you even know this? You’re approving this and they’re not paying for any of this? I’ve always been fascinated with data, and I’m very interested in discrepancies and knowledge missing from the political puzzle.

I call myself a political reporter, which means I write about politics, but I’m also a reporter who’s political. The politics of San Francisco, in many ways is the politics of land use and development, because that’s about who gets to live here and who doesn’t. Who lives here votes here.

What are you looking at next?

I want to write a book about how the baby boomer generation, my generation, lost faith in government and how that’s affected American politics.

My parents’ generation didn’t mind paying taxes because my parents saw government as the force that beat the Great Depression and won the World War One and World War Two. I just missed the Vietnam War. I was born in ’58, so I missed the draft by two years. The people I grew up with saw government as the force that wanted to send you to die in Vietnam and put you in jail for smoking pot. When Ronald Reagan said “Government is not the solution, government is the problem,” a lot of baby boomers said, “Yeah, you’re right.” In 1980, a majority of the people who subscribe to Rolling Stone magazine voted for Ronald Reagan.

Right now, the two fundamental issues facing humanity and civilization are economic inequality and climate change, and they’re completely linked. Those are problems that can only be solved with collective solutions, which requires government action. It requires new rules and regulations that companies have to follow. Economic inequality doesn’t happen on a voluntary basis. Philanthropy is not going to solve a problem that has to be done by government through taxation and redistribution. How do we convince the next generation that that’s worthwhile? I also want to turn my economics of social justice class into a book, but I don’t know if we’ll ever get around to that.

How does teaching inform your work as a journalist?

I am constantly interacting with the next generation of readers. I constantly think about how my students get their information and about how journalism is evolving. My students are full of great ideas.

One of the best ways to learn to be a better journalist and editor is to teach. I teach students clarity, how to write, how to write in a way that other people can understand, particularly in fields like economics. I try to teach that journalism is about making people understand things. Part of what I do in my economics and social justice class is trying to translate complex stuff into a form my students can understand. It’s always about making information clear for people.

CRASE & Gleeson Library: Controversies in Academic Publishing

Controversies in Academic Publishing

Wednesday, October 30, 3:30–5 p.m.
Zief Law Library–201 Terrace Room

This discussion focused on recent changes in academic publishing and how they impact faculty. Facilitated by Scholarly Communications Librarian Charlotte Roh, this event covered the cancellation of the contract between the University of California and Elsevier, open access efforts, and the USF faculty’s open access policy. Speakers included Anneliese Taylor, Head of Scholarly Communication at the University of California, San Francisco, and Richard Schneider, member of the UC System-wide Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication of the Academic Senate.

Taylor and Schneider outlined the journal subscription ecosystem, publishing negotiations with Elsevier, and transitioning journals to open access. During the question and answer, the presenters and participants discussed the growing momentum around open access and transformative agreements.

More information about publisher negotiations can be found here.

CRASE & Thacher Gallery: Collective Art-Making and Mezcal Tasting Ritual

Drawing Circles Participants

Wednesday, October 23, 3–5 p.m.
Thacher Gallery

Over 30 participants participated in a mezcal tasting ritual and drawing circle inspired by Yañez’s community practice and responded to music and other prompts in a no-shame and collegial atmosphere led by curator Rio Yañez with Roberto Varea. Drawing circles and collective art making were key elements in almost all of the exhibitions that René Yañez produced during his last decade. Artists and non-artists alike gathered to draw while he, acting as a symphonic conductor, curated prompts, models and music.

CRASE PechaKucha

Celebrate USF Presenters

CelebrateUSF PechaKucha
Saturday, October 19, 11 a.m.–12 p.m.
Gleeson Library Monihan Atrium

PechaKucha Challenge and Happy Hour
Wednesday, September 25, 2019 3–5 p.m.
Lone Mountain 100 – Handlery Room

CRASE hosted two PechaKucha’s during Fall 2019—the PechaKucha Challenge and Happy Hour with 90 attendees and the Celebrate USF PechaKucha with over 230 attendees including students, alumni, faculty, staff, and leadership. PechaKucha is a presentation style in which the speaker talks about their work with 20 slides shown for 15 seconds each (5 minutes in total). The format keeps presentations concise and fast-paced and powers multiple-speaker PechaKucha Nights across the globe.

Our featured presenters included:

  • Liat Berdugo, College of Arts and Sciences, Art + Architecture
  • Brandon Brown, College of Arts and Sciences, Physics
  • Shawn Calhoun, Gleeson Library Geschke Center
  • Laura Chyu, School of Nursing and Health Professions, Health Professions
  • Candice Lynn Harrison, College of Arts and Sciences, History
  • Jeremy Kasdin, College of Arts and Sciences, Engineering
  • Shabnam Koirala-Azad, School of Education
  • Michelle Millar, School of Management, Hospitality Management
  • Michelle Travis, School of Law

Plan Your Semester: Fall 2019

2019 Plan Your Semester
During this interactive workshop facilitated by School of Education Professor Christine Yeh, faculty created a specific semester plan to accomplish their research and writing goals. Participants strategized on how to navigate and balance multiple professional and personal goals.

More than 20 faculty members at all stages of their careers attended this workshop. Participants created goals for their semester ranging from finishing articles, manuscripts, revise and resubmits, and book chapters. They turned their projects into steps that could be added to their calendars. Attendees appreciated having the time to think through systematically how much time will be needed to accomplish their goals and creating a research plan for the semester.

For more tips, check out Tips for Creating a Semester Plan for Faculty Success in Writing and Research.

Academic Risk and Freedom in Dangerous Times Interdisciplinary Action Group Plan

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[et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”]Stephen Zunes (Professor, Politics), Susan Katz (Professor, International & Multicultural Education) & Aaron Hahn Tapper (Professor, Theology & Religious Studies)

Since the three of us have been teaching and writing for many years about human rights issues, including those involving the Palestinians, we all have been watching in dismay as scholars expressing public criticism of Israeli state policy violating such international legal norms are being branded as ‘anti-Semitic.’ In the process, scholars have been censored, forbidden from speaking at conferences, and/or even denied tenure at their universities. As faculty in the humanities and social sciences, we are generally encouraged and obligated to expose and condemn human rights violations as they occur both in our own backyard as well as in countries around the world.

Criticisms of human rights abuses by U.S. allies have often been met with pushback; yet human rights opponents have been particularly successful in squelching criticisms of Israel, the world’s only predominantly Jewish country.  Raising concerns about Israeli violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention principles in regard to occupation along with many other international human rights norms often leads to accusations of bias against the Jewish people and undermining their survival as a people (even if we are Jewish ourselves).  This phenomenon seems particularly acute in institutions of higher education in the U.S., where supporters of Israel’s right-wing government have wielded unusually strong political influence. Our Center for Research, Artistic and Scholarly Excellence (CRASE) project was designed to examine these contradictions and address their implications for academic freedom in general at this pivotal moment.

Inspired by the fall forum co-sponsored by the Tracy Seeley Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) and CRASE, our project addresses the current dangerous threats to academic freedom that are becoming widespread in universities under the veil of countering anti-Semitism. Our project has two components: First is writing and submitting a manuscript for publication in an academic journal. We have completed preparing this article, which looks at the broader political context as well as documents and analyzes cases in both the University of California and Catholic, primarily Jesuit, universities, where scholars critical of Israel have experienced harassment and/or repression. Furthermore, we examine the implications not only on academic freedom but also on campaigns for corporate responsibility, the growing threats from real anti-Semitism, and broader discourse on human rights, international law, and U.S. foreign policy. We are now considering which journal in the areas of human rights and peace studies will be most appropriate and impactful for its publication

The second part of our project is a forum at USF in Fall 2019. We are very excited to announce that this event will take place on October 22nd, with renowned critical feminist scholar and political philosopher, Judith Butler, as the keynote speaker.  Butler is not only Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at UC Berkeley, but also she has been outspoken about current threats against academic freedom and how the charge of anti-Semitism against the movement for Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) is being used to suppress activism (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9gvj3SvcDQ).

Panelists

  • Judith Butler, Hannah Arendt Chair, The European Graduate School + Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature and Critical Theory, University of California, Berkeley
  • Zahra Billoo, JD, Executive Director, Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) San Francisco Bay Area
  • Aaron Hahn Tapper, Mae and Benjamin Swig Professor of Jewish Studies, Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice, USF
  • Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics, USF

Moderator

  • Susan Katz, Professor of International and Multicultural Education, Human Rights Education, USF

Mark your calendars for this special event on October 22, 2019 from 5–6:30 pm, in Berman Room, Fromm Hall. A reception will follow at Maraschi Room, Fromm Hall.[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column]
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CRASE Statistics and Methods Camp

Qualitative Research Methods Session

Over 35 faculty members attended one or more workshops during the CRASE Statistics and Methods Camp.

Building and Sustaining a Research Program Using Mixed Methods

Designed for researchers at all stages of their careers and fields of research, this workshop focused on how to implement a mixed methods approach to creating research that is programmatic and generative. During the workshop, participants: (1) Honed in on their research priorities; (2) Created a storyboard of their research arc; (3) Learned different mixed methods designs and how they can be used in mapping career trajectory; and (4) Learned about multiple types of methods and make decisions on how and when to use them appropriately. This holistic approach to research methods helped augment faculty research programs and career trajectories.

Dr. Christine Yeh, Professor of Counseling Psychology at the School of Education, has taught mixed methods and completed numerous projects employing a sequential mixed methods design.

Qualitative Research Methods Refresher

This workshop focused on qualitative data analysis was designed for faculty who have collected (or are about to collect) qualitative data and are trying to figure out what to do next. The first half of the workshop covered popularly used data analysis methods such as grounded theory, thematic analysis, and discourse analysis. Participants did initial analysis using a “data session” model often used by discourse/conversation analysts (but really can be used by anyone doing qualitative coding). The second half of the workshop covered technologies for qualitative analysis with special emphasis on Dedoose: a cloud-based (and desktop) qualitative data analysis software that is reasonably priced and allows for team coding.

Dr. Evelyn Ho, Professor of Communication Studies, has taught qualitative research and led numerous interdisciplinary projects using qualitative methods.

Creating Surveys Using Qualtrics

This workshop covered how to get started in using Qualtrics, a software program that allows you to create surveys quickly and easily using both open and close ended types of questions. Qualtrics is more powerful than Google Forms and its menus allow you to create different questions and responses, score and recode data. With the click of a button you can see your results or download data for analysis in Excel, SPSS, etc. In this workshop, faculty spent time creating surveys according to their research needs.

Dr. Saera Khan, Professor of Psychology, has taught how to use Qualtrics for research to her undergraduates in her advanced research methods course and in her social cognition lab.

ANOVA and MANOVA Refresher

ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) and MANOVA (Multivariate Analysis of Variance) are statistical analyses frequently used in many disciplines of research. They allow researchers to compare meaningful group differences to reveal similarities and disparities exist among groups to inform policy, educational, and public health practices, to name a few. This workshop refreshed basic concepts of ANOVA and MANOVA and took participants step by step to gain familiarity with these statistical skills through SPSS.

Dr. Hsiu-Lan Cheng, Associate Professor in Counseling Psychology at the School of Education, has taught research methods and statistical analyses across multiple levels of graduate student courses.

Healing Through Grassroots Social Justice Movements Created for Educators, by Educators

Farima Pour-Khorshid, assistant professor of Teacher Education, writes about Bay Area social justice movements in education and their impact as a researcher and educator.

T4SJ participants on stairs

Over the past seven years, I’ve felt honored to organize with the Teachers 4 Social Justice (T4SJ) in San Francisco. I initially heard about the T4SJ annual conference back in October of 2012 during a time that I was desperately searching for intellectual and emotional support in my practice. To give some context, I had just returned abruptly to California after living and teaching in Nicaragua for two years because my brother, Mazyar Pour-Khorshid Jr., died unexpectedly just after his twenty-fifth birthday. I was struggling with my mental health, and the pain of that tragedy felt all-encompassing. Yet, despite my grief, I started a PhD program and also returned to teach part-time in my Bay Area community two months later. I figured that the busier I was, the less time I had for depression. That year I remember crying regularly in my classroom during recesses, lunch breaks, and after school. The reality was that my teacher education program did not equip me with knowledge or resources to know how to cope through personal and second-hand trauma as a teacher and I felt overwhelmed.

Beyond my personal struggles, I was constantly reminded of my unhealed trauma from my K-12 schooling experiences within the same district that I was teaching in. I felt triggered each time I witnessed students of color being either spoken about or treated in dehumanizing ways. Mandatory district sponsored teacher professional development and school collaboration meetings added layers of frustration to my experience because I began to realize how my professional learning maintained white supremacy. I began to feel like I was part of the problem, because after all, I was an actor within a system that was fundamentally toxic and inequitable in its very design.

I attended the T4SJ annual conference in October of 2012 after having a conversation with a community-based educator at my school. I left the conference feeling so inspired by all of the teachers and organizers that I met, the radical workshop topics, social justice resources and by the collectivism that permeated every conversation and space I was part of throughout the day. I decided to sign up for a monthly drop-in meeting the following month. I attended and felt rejuvenated by the level of commitment that these educators demonstrated after a long school day as they learned about and critically analyzed a range of problematic issues within education. In so doing, they revealed an impressive depth of knowledge that I had been hungry for since I entered the profession.

My involvement within the organization allowed me to conceptualize my research as meaningfully embedded in my practice and in solidarity with other educators in the field. T4SJ shifted my purpose in my practice as a public school educator, my trajectory as a doctoral student, and my activism as a grassroots organizer. For example, the more I reflected on some of my own racialized and gendered traumatic experiences, the more I began to think about what healing could look like within our organization and across education spaces. I wondered about how T4SJ could offer support, and I proposed creating a racial affinity group within the organization, especially because I yearned for that kind of space in order to sustain myself in the field. Two other T4SJ comrades of color, Karen Zapata and Chela Delgado, joined me in this endeavor and led us to cultivate a sacred space named H.E.L.L.A., a racial affinity group to support critical educators of Color. Being that we are situated within the Bay Area, centering the word hella was an important identity signifier and served as our acronym for our group’s political and pedagogical commitments to healing, empowerment, love, liberation and action (H.E.L.L.A.). Our approach has been rooted in healing centered engagement, which was influenced by the work I was doing with my mentor, Dr. Shawn Ginwright and the Flourish Agenda team. Our approach to collective healing is grounded in the power of our counternarrives as we’ve engaged deeply in Testimonio as Radical Story-Telling and Creative Resistance for sustainability in our work.

My involvement and leadership within T4SJ over time led to my involvement in other grassroots activist collectives like the Bay Area chapter of the People’s Education Movement which our very own Dr. Patrick Camangian cofounded. I also became a board member within the national Education for Liberation Network, which organizes Free Minds Free People, a grassroots national conference that brings together teachers, young people, researchers, parents and community-based activists/educators from across the country to build a movement to develop and promote education as a tool for liberation.  Collectively, we see activism as a shared struggle for human being which is essentially the “struggle for the inalienable right of all people to human be—to be liberated from any project of violence that treats persons as property, persons as things, persons as disposable, or persons as in any other way less than fully human” (p. 247). This struggle is also connected to building movements to end the prison industrial complex in our schools, the movement for ethnic studies, healing justice and more.

All of the justice-oriented liberatory education collectives that I have been part of have supported and matured my politic of radical teacher learning and support. My scholarship is deeply rooted in and emergent from these relationships with educators and activists as we collectively navigate structural violence in and out of educational spaces. I think it is critical for educators and educational researchers, spanning any level of their career, to be involved in liberatory education organizations. We are teaching, organizing and researching through an apolitical, color evasive, neoliberal education climate which has negative implications on our socialization, pedagogy and sustainability in the field.

We cannot afford to ascribe to the dominant culture, and our integrity lies in the ways we push back against white supremacist ideologies embedded in everyday school policies, practices and interactions. This work cannot be done in isolation, coalitional resistance is and will continue to be our lifeline. However, there is a deep level of humility that must undergird our solidarity, which mustn’t be confused with charity or saviorism, because in the powerful words of Indigenous Australian activist and educator, Lilla Watson, “If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

As we continue to engage in the labor of love of teaching, organizing and researching for social justice, let us not neglect the spiritual and emotional aspects of our lived experiences. Our mental health matters, especially in the face of structural violence and oppression. Collective healing is such an important form of activism that our world is in desperate need of and creating healing spaces is critical for our wellbeing and sustainability in our struggle for liberation because, in the words of Audre Lorde, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare”.

No-Shame Revise and Resubmit Workshop

Presenters show spreadsheet

This workshop, led by Erin Grinshteyn (Assistant Professor, School of Nursing and Health Professions) and Christine Yeh (CRASE Co-Director and Professor, School of Education), helped participants develop strategies for tackling manuscript revisions by sharing project management tools for tracking manuscripts and how to manage conflicting advice. Workshop facilitators walked participants through revision letter templates and provide tips for tackling the next revision in a no-shame, supportive environment.

Participants felt that the templates and tips were very helpful and that the presenters were very knowledgeable.