Research

Internship Office: California Department of Finance

During the COVID-19 pandemic, food delivery giants Uber Eats, Grubhub, DoorDash, and Postmates collectively raked in $5.5 billion in revenue from April to September of 2020. Meanwhile, restaurants are forced to pay exorbitant fees to use these apps. Through interviews with Black, Asian, and Latinx restaurant owners, this op-ed highlights the experiences and challenges that minority restaurant owners faced when forced to rely upon third-party delivery platforms.

In this brilliant case study, Fenno, America's leading practitioner of participant observation, reflects on how the press and political scientists reacted when George Bush chose Dan Quayle to be his vice president–and on his personal dilemma as a scholar with a wealth of information about a little known, much criticized nominee. Fenno draws on his unique experience to explain the enduring ethical, tactical, and methodological problems involved in studying politicians.

"Here at last in a single volume is the interwoven story of the San Francisco Bay region . . . authoritative, readable, compact, the first wide-angle portrait of a vast and vigorous urban substate."

—Richard Reinhardt, The California Historical Society

When we published Volume One of Racial and Ethnic Politics in California in 1991, census experts estimated the state’s population would pass 30 million by the year 2000. By current estimates, the population now, two years before the millennium, is 31.6 million. As with so many things about California, the most striking aspect of the demographic shifts underway here is their sheer magnitude. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, California’s population will grow by nearly 18 million people by 2025–that is the equivalent of taking everyone currently living in the state of New York and moving...