Brian Kovalesky

Brian Kovalesky, PhD in History, UCLA; adjunct instructor, UCLA and CSUDH; historian who specializes in the U.S. Southwest in the late 19th and 20th centuries. His dissertation, entitled Contested Campuses: Politics, race, and the battles over public education in the Greater Los Angeles Area, 1949-1972, is about how the longer history of school district organization in California shaped grassroots battles over desegregation in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) in the 1960s and 1970s, and ultimately led to a significant political shift statewide. Dr. Kovalesky has also written about the firing and blacklisting of communist teachers in the LAUSD in the 1950s, action prompted by the concerns of parents and local community members as domestic anti-communist fervor reached its peak. A native Angeleno, he is fascinated by the ways in which communities in a dynamic and ever-changing city like Los Angeles are created, change over time, and how residents, business owners, and workers define, view, and assign specific characteristics to those communities. He is also a die-hard Lakers fan and aspires to someday have season tickets.