CJTC — The Center for Justice, Tolerance & Community University of California, Santa Cruz
CJTC — The Center for Justice, Tolerance & Community

Former Leadership

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Manuel Pastor

Manuel Pastor

Founder and Former Director

Manuel Pastor was a Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at UCSC, and from 1999 to 2007 was Director of the CJTC. In August 2007, Manuel relocated to Los Angeles to work at the University of Southern California, where he is Director of the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) at USC’s Center for Sustainable Cities and is a Professor of Geography and American Studies and Ethnicity.

A UCSC alumni, Manuel also holds an economics Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has received fellowships from the Danforth, Guggenheim, and Kellogg foundations and grants from the Irvine Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the MacArthur Foundation, California Council for the Humanities, the U.S. Institute of Peace, the North-South Center, and many others.

Manuel has worked on issues of environmental justice with support from both The California Endowment and the California Wellness Foundation, and on the relationship between community-building and regional strategies with the support of the Hewlett and Ford Foundations. Along with Rob Fairlie, he launched a project on race, youth, and the digital divide with the support of the W.T. Grant Foundation.

Manuel speaks frequently on issues of community empowerment and has contributed opinion pieces to such outlets as the Los Angeles Times, the San Jose Mercury News, and the Christian Science Monitor. He served as a member of the Commission on Regions appointed by California's Speaker of the State Assembly, and in January 2002 was awarded a Civic Entrepreneur of the Year award from the California Center for Regional Leadership.

His research on Latin American issues has been published in journals such as International Organization, World Develop-ment, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Latin American Studies, Latin American Research Review, and Foreign Affairs. His research on U.S. urban issues has been published in Economic Development Quarterly, Review of Regional Studies, Social Science Quarterly, Journal of Economic Issues, Journal of Urban Affairs, Urban Affairs Review, Urban Geography, and elsewhere and has generally focused on the labor market and social conditions facing low-income urban communities.

Manuel's most recent book, co-authored with Chris Benner and Lauren Leete, is entitled Staircases or Treadmills: Labor Market Intermediaries and Economic Opportunity in a Changing Economy (Russell Sage, 2007). He co-authored Searching for the Uncommon Common Ground: New Dimensions on Race in America (W.W. Norton, 2002), with Angela Glover Blackwell and Stewart Kwoh. He also co-authored with Peter Dreier, Eugene Grigsby, and Marta Lopez-Garza, Regions That Work: How Cities and Suburbs Can Grow Together (University of Minnesota Press, 2000), a book that has become a reference for those seeking to better link community and regional development. He and Dreier teamed with Jennifer Wolch as editors of a collection of essays entitled Up Against the Sprawl: Public Policy and the Making of Southern California (University of Minnesota Press, 2004).