UC Santa Cruz Prof Named To Prestigious Post At University Of Oregon

SANTA CRUZ, CA–Dana Frank, professor of American studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, will spend spring quarter at the University of Oregon in Eugene as the holder of the prestigious Wayne Morse Chair for Law and Politics.

The position was established in 1981 as a memorial to the late U.S. senator Wayne Morse, former dean of the university’s School of Law. Morse, one of only two senators to vote against the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that clinched U.S. involvement in Vietnam, was a fiercely independent politician known for his liberal, prolabor views. He became known as "the people’s watchdog."

Frank, a prominent labor scholar and the author of Buy American, specializes in labor history, gender, and the global economy. During her Oregon visit, Frank will teach a class called Race, Social Justice, and U.S. Labor History, 1930-2000, give a public lecture, and participate in several symposia.

By holding the Wayne Morse Chair, Frank joins the ranks of scholar Frances Fox Piven, feminist author Barbara Ehrenreich, former U.S. senator George McGovern, and syndicated columnist Anthony Lewis. Also appointed to the Wayne Morse Chair is William B. Gould IV, a Stanford Law School professor and former chair of the National Labor Relations Board, who will visit the Oregon campus February 28-March 2.

Frank, who describes her work as a "reframing of trade policy in terms ordinary people can relate to," is looking forward to the opportunity to share her work with the public. "It’s important for people to understand how nationalism and the ‘Buy American’ attitude blinds people to the extent to which the corporations have gone global and the racial politics of that, which often takes the form of Asian bashing," she said. "We have to see working people in other countries as our allies, not our enemy. The corporations don’t have a loyalty to the people of any particular country."