Credit: EdSource

Louis Freedberg

Credit: EdSource

Louis Freedberg

When the Academy of California appointed former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano as its president terminal fall, it was far from obvious how her experience in Washington would benefit the academy.

Information technology would have been impossible to predict that in Napolitano's starting time year on the job she would have to respond to a violent assault that left six UC Santa Barbara students dead.

Drawing on her deep immersion in overseeing homeland security programs for nearly five years, Napolitano may be in a amend position than almost anyone  to atomic number 82 a conversation – and more importantly, propose a broader strategy – to prevent attacks that are taking the lives of as well many of our immature people

The mission of the Section of Homeland Security, according to its website, is "to secure the nation from the many threats we face."  Its more than than 240,000 employees work in jobs "ranging from aviation and edge security to emergency response, from cybersecurity analyst to chemic facility inspector. Our duties are wide-ranging, but our goal is clear – keeping America condom."

But the federal government'south efforts to keep the homeland "condom" are  conspicuously inadequate to tackle the melange of forcesthat contributed to the Santa Barbara killings – including the ineffectiveness of California's already restrictive gun laws, the failure of California's mental health infrastructure to isolate and adequately treat someone as seriously disturbed as Elliot Rodger, and perchance the need for more constructive anti-bullying efforts in schools. Napolitano could leverage her leadership to focus the intellectual firepower of the swell universities that comprise the UC system on a complex and multi-layered problem.

When information technology comes to homeland security, information technology is non a question of having to choose between defending against international or domestic terrorism and responding to threats to domestic security and rubber. Both must be done. But in terms of bodily impairment, the score card tilts dramatically to the shortcomings in protecting Americans from domestic attacks – especially those involving guns.

As Steve Lopez pointed out in a contempo column in the LA Times, titled, "Ignoring the insanity of gun violence," the same number of people – nearly 4,400 – dice from gun violence every 7 weeks than the full number during the offset seven years of the Iraq state of war. In 2010, the number of children and teenagers who died from gun violence was five times the total number of servicemen killed in Republic of iraq and Afghanistan.

More constructive gun controls must be a key part of whatsoever solution. But they are only 1 part of information technology. Later on all, Rodger's roommates died from stab wounds, not gun shots.  A multi-pronged arroyo – involving the police, psychology, folklore  and politics – will be needed.

For case, there are agonizing – admittedly unverified – stories that Rodger was subjected to bullying at Crespi Carmelite High School, an all boys parochial school in Los Angeles. Would more effective anti-bullying strategies take helped avert this disaster? Is another piece of the solution new legislation, like that proposed by Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, that would prevent someone whom friends and family fright will inflict damage from buying guns?

Just because the massacre of xx simple schoolchildren in Newtown didn't result in any significant changes on a national level – and in fact led to the recall of Colorado lawmakers  who had the temerity to stand up up "gun rights" advocates – doesn't mean giving up.

Not one more than. That is the challenge laid down past Richard Martinez, the father of xx-year-old Christopher Martinez, one of the slain UC Santa Barbara students.

"Go to piece of work and exercise something," he told the 20,000 people who packed the football game stadium at the memorial service for the victims of the attacks that took his son's life. "It's nearly become a normal affair for us to take this ..It's not normal … life doesn't take to be like this."

What will be needed are new strategies for shoring up the nation'southward failed defenses that result in the killings of higher students like Martinez, and likewise many other young people similar him. The University of California, with its deep banks of researchers, scholars and analysts, working in disciplines ranging from psychology to political scientific discipline, to criminology and jurisprudence, is ideally suited to do so – working where possible in tandem with our other great systems of public and private education in the state.

UC Davis' Violence Prevention Research Program is just 1 program that could play a role. Schools of Education could be mobilized to work on anti-bullying measures, and to come upward with ways to train teachers to better place signs of mental disease in their students – and more importantly, what to practise about them.

Law schoolhouse professors could draft gun legislation that can withstand a challenge in the U.S. Supreme Court. Departments of psychology could help parents place signs of mental affliction. Schools of social piece of work could identify where social service agencies fall down in getting more constructive prevention services to those who need them. Sociologists and criminologists  could place the most worthwhile strategies for lowering homicide rates.

It will not be unproblematic. But directing at least some of UC's brain power in a coordinated manner to move the nation beyond mere handwringing would be a constructive and appropriate response to the Santa Barbara tragedy. That would be the most plumbing equipment memorial to those who died.

But it will mean coming up with a wider definition of homeland security – along with strategies to put it into effect. Just equally the nation is determined to prevent another 9/11 attack,  similar efforts must exist fabricated to avert another Columbine, Newtown and now, Santa Barbara.

Louis Freedberg, who has a Ph.D. in anthropology from UC Berkeley, is executive manager of EdSource.

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