Scholarship matters: Influential faculty op-eds tackle weighty topics in 2019

On a wide variety of issues, ranging from the impact of California’s aging infrastructure on the environment to cellphone addiction, scholars at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences published opinion articles in 2019 that provided fresh insight on important issues, helping to shape a national dialogue about them. 

Following are just a few notable articles.

“California is uniquely fire-prone thanks to its long romance with high-voltage power lines”— Los Angeles Times

Published in January 2019, this prescient article by Peter Westwick, adjunct professor (research) of history, explains how and why California became dependent on high-voltage power lines. Westwick also warns that “increasingly, fires will remind us that all electricity comes with a cost,” beyond what we pay in our utility bills. Westwick is also director of the Aerospace History Project at the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

“Proposition 187’s anti-immigrant cruelty was a California tradition”— Los Angeles Times
On the 25th anniversary of the passage of California’s divisive Prop. 187, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity Natalia Molina reflects on California’s anti-immigrant history, dating back to the Great Depression, a “time of mass repatriations, deportations and general scapegoating” for Mexican immigrants.

“Why I Teach”— The New York Times
“If our leaders should be teachers, our teachers should also be leaders, understanding that what we do in our universities is not simply to research or teach, but to model what a democracy should be,” writes University Professor Viet Thanh Nguyen, Aerol Arnold Chair of English and professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity and Comparative Literature.

“How to kick your cellphone addiction — and other bad habits, too”— Los Angeles Times

“Changing old habits or forming new ones is hard,” writes Wendy Wood, Provost Professor of Psychology and Business, in this article. Woods explains the psychology and physiology of habit formation and offers helpful tips on breaking bad habits, like the increasingly common addiction to cellphones.