A historic one-million dollar gift from Alicia Miñana de Lovelace (J.D. ’87; co-chair of the UCLA Second Century Council) celebrated, along with a symposium and reception, the remarkable career and recent retirement of CRS co-founder Laura E. Gómez, UCLA’s Rachel F. Moran Endowed Chair in Law and acclaimed author of Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race and Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism.

The largest-ever single donation to the Critical Race Studies program simultaneously established the Laura E. Gomez Teaching Fellowship on Latinx People and the Law. CRS is thrilled to welcome Yvette Borja as its inaugural fellow.

Borja earned her J.D. at Stanford and comes to UCLA most recently having worked as a movement lawyer for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, in support of the National TPS (Temporary Protected Status) Alliance’s campaigns for permanent residency. Among other accomplishments, Borja was an editor for Stanford’s Civil Rights and Civil Liberties journal. She graduated from Yale University and is the creator and host of Radio Cachimbona, a podcast archiving state repression and migrant resistance in Arizona’s borderlands which has been featured on Apple podcasts.

Borja and future Laura E. Gómez Teaching Fellows will teach a course on Latinx People and the Law, conduct scholarly research on laws affecting Latinx people in the United States, and mentor and teach students who have a demonstrated interest in how laws affect Latinx communities. Borja's research is focused on movement lawyering, abolition, and immigration law.

“Alicia’s generous gift to CRS will enable us to cultivate a crop of emerging scholars working at the nexus of Latino studies, race and the law,” Professor Gómez said in the spring. “UCLA is progressing toward receiving the federal designation as a Hispanic Serving Institution, and law students will benefit immensely from a regular course offering on Latinx people and the law that covers topics including voting rights, immigration law and policy, and racial disparities in the criminal justice system.”

Fellows will serve a two-year term. Read more about Yvette here and in future CRS posts to come.