Welcome to the Walter H. Capps Center

These are really tough times, and all signs indicate that they will get tougher. Where do we begin shoring up our democratic foundations in order to protect the people, ideas, and things that matter most to us?

In the midst of this chaos, I received a jury summons. Already on edge, I groaned when I saw the tell-tale postcard. Then the online portal sealed the deal. I had already deferred too many times and was mandated to report. I am not against the idea of jury duty; it’s just that “life” was too busy, or so I reasoned deferral to deferral. Grudgingly, I reported and now have been empaneled for what might be a long case. I did what my dog would do—I moped.

Then the light began to shine just a bit. At jury selection, I could see how busy everyone else seemed to be, and yet I didn’t hear a single complaint about our predicament over the course of several long days. Having plenty of time to mull on this as I sat through selection, I came to recognize something basic and important. For all that democracy appears to be imperiled from above, it is holding fast at the ground level. Not evenly so, or always with productive outcomes, but small-scale democracy remains baked into our lives, including and perhaps especially through often tedious things such as jury duty. There is never a good “now” for such chores. But jury duty is re-teaching me the value of civic duty and civic concern, even when it doesn’t fit my schedule. I am admiring our fellow citizens even more, recognizing anew that we are bound together in a shared future.

In this spirit—of moving forward and seeking to find solidarity and common purpose together—the Capps Center continues to make progress on our various initiatives. This past Winter Quarter we had a productive workshop and public event on Repatriation Futures, an initiative that will help shape our efforts for the foreseeable future. We also met several times with our Tribal and UC partners in the Payahuunadü/Owens Valley & Eastern Sierra regions on wildfire management collaboration. And our focus on AAPI religions continues with an upcoming lecture about Asian American reparations.

This Spring Quarter we invite you to join us for several timely events:

In addition, we have added many new documents to our archival project, the Walter H. Capps Archives Online, and we have added several videos to our YouTube page, including from last quarter’s events. You can find other videos of past events on UCTV and UCTV’s YouTube Playlist.

Finally, we are looking forward to celebrating with our graduating Mendell fellows, McCune interns, and Civic Engagement scholars and congratulate them on a wonderfully productive year.

We hope to see you soon, and we always welcome hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Greg Johnson

Director