Uploaded November 2025 | Updated September 2026, 5 hours ago
Education, immigration, civil rights, agriculture, social welfare, and nutrition: each of these arenas is being undermined by the current presidential administration. Despite these attacks, students are pushing back.
Through UCLA Law’s Food x Race Initiative, we explore how law students are using critical race studies and adjacent theories to retrench and build on advocacy in intersecting fields such as food law and policy. Through our initiative, we encourage students to educate themselves, publish scholarship, and play an active role in food law curriculum development. We will discuss how each of us came to this work and cover our own scholarship, including (a) connections between race, food systems, labor, and migration; (b) the importance of advancing perspectives from CRT and Third-World Approaches to International Law in advancing racial and social justice in food law and policy; and (c) food apartheid. We will then shift our discussion to how other legal professionals can use CRT to push boundaries, inform legal pedagogy and our work as practitioners, and promote a more racially just world. Finally, we will discuss our goals for the initiative and end with a call to action, encouraging student participation in the initiative and additional departmental integration.
•Heliya Izadpanah, Research Affiliate, Resnick Center for Food Law and Policy, UCLA School of Law, UCLA Law JD ‘25
•Lavanya Sathyamurthy, Research Affiliate, Resnick Center for Food Law and Policy, UCLA School of Law, UCLA Law JD ‘25
•Lucy Weiss, Research Associate, Resnick Center for Food Law and Policy, UCLA School of Law, UCLA Law JD ‘25
•Moderator: Andrea Freeman, Second Century Chair Professor of Law, Southwestern Law School
Education, immigration, civil rights, agriculture, social welfare, and nutrition: each of these arenas is being undermined by the current presidential administration. Despite these attacks, students are pushing back.
Through UCLA Law’s Food x Race Initiative, we explore how law students are using critical race studies and adjacent theories to retrench and build on advocacy in intersecting fields such as food law and policy. Through our initiative, we encourage students to educate themselves, publish scholarship, and play an active role in food law curriculum development. We will discuss how each of us came to this work and cover our own scholarship, including (a) connections between race, food systems, labor, and migration; (b) the importance of advancing perspectives from CRT and Third-World Approaches to International Law in advancing racial and social justice in food law and policy; and (c) food apartheid. We will then shift our discussion to how other legal professionals can use CRT to push boundaries, inform legal pedagogy and our work as practitioners, and promote a more racially just world. Finally, we will discuss our goals for the initiative and end with a call to action, encouraging student participation in the initiative and additional departmental integration.
•Heliya Izadpanah, Research Affiliate, Resnick Center for Food Law and Policy, UCLA School of Law, UCLA Law JD ‘25
•Lavanya Sathyamurthy, Research Affiliate, Resnick Center for Food Law and Policy, UCLA School of Law, UCLA Law JD ‘25
•Lucy Weiss, Research Associate, Resnick Center for Food Law and Policy, UCLA School of Law, UCLA Law JD ‘25
•Moderator: Andrea Freeman, Second Century Chair Professor of Law, Southwestern Law School
