Manuel Pastor

Manuel Pastor is a professor of sociology and American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California (USC). He directs USC’s Program for Environmental and Regional Equity and the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration. He is the Turpanjian Chair in Civil Society and Social Change at USC. He also serves as a public member of the Strategic Growth Council in California.

Pastor’s research has focused on issues of the economic, environmental and social conditions facing low-income urban communities—and the social movements seeking to change those realities. He has published several books, most recently State of Resistance: What California's Dizzying Descent and Remarkable Resurgence Means for America's Future (New Press 2018).

Previously, Pastor served as a member of the Commission on Regions, appointed by the speaker of California’s State Assembly, and as a member of the Regional Targets Advisory Committee for the California Air Resources Board. In 2012, he received the Liberty Hill Foundation’s Wally Marks Changemaker of the Year award for social justice research partnerships.

Pastor has a doctorate in economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.