Sharing their experiences tackling thorny topics,Berkeley faculty discussed instructional strategies and assignments they’ve developed to help students understand and confront contemporary concerns, exploring the mean of social justice pedagogy, course design for social justice, and what all of...Read more about Assignment Design for Social Justice Education
Berkeley faculty, graduate student instructors, staff, and students sought to expand the dialogue around disability on college campuses, which often focuses on how we can support and accommodate individual needs and meet compliance requirements under the Americans with Disabilities Act....Read more about Beyond Accommodation: Changing the Disability Frame
Berkeley faculty and staff discussed how the concept of binaries shapes the work to advance justice and equity on campus, reflecting on how they contend with the binary thinking and discussed recommendations for how faculty and staff can meet political moments by analyzing, challenging, and...Read more about Beyond Both Sides: Advancing Spaces for Exploration and Not False Binaries
This panel conversation brought together academic organizers to explore the importance of campus activism in troubled times. Panelists examined how universities have historically responded to social movements on college campuses, how contemporary technologies and policies further constrain...Read more about Campus Activism and Organizing: Past, Present and Future
Violence and trauma are all around us—fatal shootings by police, sexual violence, family separations, addiction, abuse, displacement of refugees. Often, these situations give rise to individual healing journeys and collective efforts to create change. But the pain and loss embedded in them also...Read more about Difficult Knowledge, Trauma Informed Pedagogy and Safe-ish Spaces
Tuesday, September 25th, 2018 marked the largest National Voter Registration Day on record. Over 800,000 people updated their registration or registered to vote for the first time. At the same time that so many Americans are involved in ballot box politics, the country is polarized, partisan and...Read more about How to Have Political Conversations in the Classroom?
In higher education, we want learning to be relevant to students’ lives, but how often do we explicitly incorporate students’ lives--who they are, what they know, where they come from--into our teaching and research? How do we take an asset-based approach, drawing upon the diversity of Berkeley'...Read more about Inviting Students to Bring Themselves to Class: Connecting Learning and Lived Experiences
This hybrid session offered a space for dialogue and building solidarity around trans justice in the current moment. The session featured a panel of content experts who shared theoretical, political, personal and legal analysis related to trans experiences on our campus and in our...Read more about Meeting the Moment for Trans Justice and Solidarity
During this event, the discussion focused on unpacking the relationships, motivations, and genealogies between diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging/justice, anti-racism, anti-Blackness, anti-white supremacy, and abolition frameworks and how they help us better understand and situate the...Read more about More Than Words: In Conversation with the Language of Racial and Social Justice-Making
2018 was a difficult year for many Berkeley students and faculty. At the national level, there had been an increase in hateful rhetoric and exclusionary policies directed at many identities and communities. And, on campus, we were deeply challenged by tensions around recent speaker events, as...Read more about Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: Dealing with Toxic Stresses on Campus and in our Classrooms
According to a July 2017 nation-wide report, 60 percent or more of the total cost of attending a college or university comes from expenses other than tuition, and the cost of living for college students has increased by more than 80 percent over the past 40 years. In a high-cost area such as...Read more about Squeezed on All Sides: Economic Pressures Facing Berkeley Students
This panel brought together students, faculty, and organizers to examine the presence of AI in campus work. Panelists discussed and explored what is at stake as AI shapes teaching, learning, and labor, surfacing dilemmas across intersecting structures of power, access, and survival.
...Read more about Teaching and Working in a Time of Technological Determinism
This event was an open dialogue, supported by campus climate data from several recent surveys. Together, the speaker and attendees considered whether the survey results support their own experiences; how the data might shift expectations of relationships with students; and what resulting efforts...Read more about Understanding UC Berkeley Students and their Experiences
The ongoing national conversation about immigration status lies across a bipartisan political landscape, but statements made by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Acting Director Thomas Homan indicate that enforcement will be significantly increased and specifically target California....Read more about What to Do If ICE Comes to Campus: Rights, Recommendations, and Resources
This session featured a panel of campus experts who are actively engaged with the theoretical, personal and legal dimensions of federal actions on immigration as they impact our campus, contextualizing them within broader work for belonging, academic freedom and social justice. Speakers explored...Read more about What We Want, What We Need, What We Have: Knowing Our Rights in Uncertain Times