UCSB’s Blum Center on Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy welcomes Dr. Gaye Theresa Johnson as its new Director. Her appointment marks a return to UCSB, where she taught in the Department of Black Studies from 2005 to 2015 before joining UCLA. A longtime Ventura resident, Dr. Johnson never left the Central Coast.
For over two decades, Dr. Johnson has advocated alongside farmworkers, tenants, voters, and immigrant communities across the tri-county region. She previously served as Board President of the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE) and continues to shape regional movement work. As lead facilitator of the Central Coast Social Justice Academy, she trains organizers at social justice groups in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties through a ten-month program supported by the McCune Foundation, the Weingart Foundation, the Fund for Santa Barbara, and the Bower Foundation.
A historian of freedom struggles and cultural politics, Dr. Johnson also leads healing justice work for movement spaces nationwide. Her newest book, Rings of Dissent: Boxing and Performances of Rebellion (University of Illinois Press, December 2025), examines the boxing ring as a site for understanding race, citizenship, gender, power, and dissent in America.
Her decades of regional advocacy and community-engaged scholarship position her to strengthen the Central Coast Regional Equity Initiative’s work alongside residents and partners across Santa Barbara, Ventura, and San Luis Obispo counties. Please join us in welcoming her back to UCSB.
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