Gary Orfield, UCLA professor and co-director of the UCLA Civil Rights Project, grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but “since there I’ve been everywhere,” he said. Chicago and Washington D.C. are favorite cities, though he likes his current home as well. “Los Angeles is a very fascinating town,” Orfield said, noting that UCLA is the sixth major university at which he has taught, and not mincing words about the less thrilling cities. “Some of the places I lived weren’t quite as interesting. Like Boston.” Read more about Orfield below.
Q. What do you wake up to?
A. NPR. It comes on at 8 a.m. I get up and my wife continues sleeping and I go make coffee.
Q. What music have you listened to today?
A. I usually have streaming music on from a radio station in Switzerland called Radio Swiss Classic. It plays continuous classics with no commercials and no interruptions.
Q. What is your favorite word?
A. Justice.
Q. What do you find beautiful?
A. Many things. The ocean. My wife.
Q. When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A. I wanted to be a singing cowboy.
Q. What is your favorite cocktail?
A. I don’t drink cocktails.
Q. What is your greatest extravagance?
A. The thing that’s most irresistible for me is the really wonderful book in a used bookstore. But I guess…when I see a piece of art I really like, and it’s something I want to see very day, that would be my extravagance.
Q. If you could take only one more journey, where would you go?
A. Mexico City. We have a second home there.
Q. What profession would you like to practice in your next life?
A. I thought I could maybe be a dealer, selling political art in a little store that had a cappuccino machine.
Q. What is your fondest childhood memory?
A. I had a very very warm family, and the whole of my childhood was blessed with that.
Q. What is your most prized material possession?
A. Pictures of my kids.
Q. What promise do you make to yourself that you break the most often?
A. To go to the gym.
Q. What should you throw away but haven’t been able to part with?
A. A few hundred books.
To read more about Gary Orfield’s panel, on California’s education gap, click here.
*Photo by Aaron Salcido.