She completed her BA at the University of California, Los Angeles, and her Ph.D. at Yale University. Her teaching and research are primarily concerned with race and ethnicity, political identity, social stratification, and social movements. Basler is a Mexican-American who splits her time between residences in Amherst, Massachusetts and Los Angeles, California. In researching Mexican-American political identity, Basler has found that many second-generation Latinos/as have moved toward a more “secular” position in society, with complex social and political results.