Just Launched
New Online Hub for our Civic Engagement Work
The Haas Institute today unveiled a new online hub for our Civic Engagement Narrative Change project. The project aims to address pressing obstacles to inclusive democratic participation by bringing together current research, scientific testing, narrative development, strategic communications, and community organizing. Together with partners across the country, the project focuses on problems of voter disaffection and racial, religious, and anti-immigrant othering by building strategy, narrative, and infrastructure that advances inclusive “we” identities in civic life. New resources on the web hub include:
- A paper by Bob Fulkerson, development director of Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, on the problems civic engagement groups face in terms of financial viability.
- A paper by Marleine Bastien, executive director of Family Action Network Movement, on the fight against climate change by southern Florida's Haitian community.
- Survey results from Nevada and Florida to establish baselines for each state in terms of the potential for bridging across lines of difference, threats of deepening divisions, and dispositions toward government and civic participation.
- A 14-page report that provides the background and context for the creation of the project.
- A new episode of our Who Belongs? podcast on the issue of abandonment in Detroit. In this episode, produced for the Civic Engagement Narrative project, we talk to Peter Hammer and Amina Kirk, both lawyers and advocates for equitable development and racial justice in Detroit.
The site also showcases a series of get-out-the-vote videos released ahead of the November 2018 elections, a video of a webinar led by the Pennsylvania-based organization Beyond the Choir that explored the "populist moment," and other items. Explore our Civic Engagement Narrative Change site.
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Anne Case presents on the opioid crisis in America
As part of its Research to Impact faculty colloquium series, the Haas Institute hosted Anne Case of Princeton University last week for a talk on the opioid epidemic in the US, which has caused the deaths through overdose or suicide of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly white, in recent years. Case, who is Director of the Research Program in Development Studies at Princeton, noted that these "deaths of despair" did not directly correlate with the state of the economy at any particular downturn, but were rather due to a long process that saw people's quality of life decrease through things like poor jobs and schools, and loss of traditional community and family structures. This event also featured remarks from UC Berkeley's Mahasin Mujahid and Ronald Lee. Visit this page for a video and transcript of the talk.
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New talks from our Disability Studies cluster
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Aimi Hamraie, an Assistant Professor of Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University, give a talk titled "Making Access Critical: Disability, Race, and Gender in Environmental Design." For a transcript of this talk visit this page.
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Subini Ancy Annamma, who is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Kansas, gives a talk on "Excavating Possibilities: Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) in Education." A transcript of this talk is available here.
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Rising authoritarianism, global forced migration, transformative feminism, economies of belonging, youth leadership, the urgency of bridging—these are just some of the topics that will be discussed at the 2019 Othering & Belonging Conference April 8–10 in Oakland.
If you haven't yet registered, we hope you will do so today.
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Othering & Belonging conference updates:
We are thrilled to announce that Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II will be the closing keynote speaker on Wednesday, April 10. Rev. Barber is a pastor and social justice advocate building a broad-based grassroots movement—grounded in the moral tenets of faith-based communities and the US Constitution—to confront systemic racism, poverty, environmental devastation, the war economy, and the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism in America today. He is effective at building unusually inclusive fusion coalitions that are multiracial and interfaith, reaching across race, gender, age, and class lines, and dedicated to addressing poverty, inequality, and systemic racism. In 2017, he and colleagues launched a revival of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign that was spearheaded by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and many others. Read more about Rev. Barber.
Our first session will take place on Monday, April 8 at 12:30 pm with our "Coffeehouse Conversations"—a space of dialogue and robust discussion facilitated by host Abdul-Rehman Malik, an award-winning journalist, educator and cultural organizer. The Coffeehouse will include a set of questions developed around our conference themes and goals...plus coffee! Come be part of this open session to engage in thoughtful exchanges that will be prompted by compelling, even controversial, provocations about our world today.
Our first Artist in Residence Christine Wong Yap will be exhibiting her Belonging project, which will be open on the opening day of April 8 at 12:30 pm.
Hotel update: The special conference rate at the Oakland Marriott has now completely sold out. We have updated our website with a list with other hotels in the area.
Our Social Media Guide is now live, check here for social media posts, graphics, and more. If you are coming to #OtheringandBelonging, please take a moment to post about it to your networks.
We look forward to seeing many of you in April at #OBConf2019.
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A new paper by Sonia Katyal, UC Berkeley law professor and chair of our LGBTQ Citizenship research cluster, was highlighted in an article published in Fast Company entitled, "How to lift the veil off hidden algorithms." Katyal's paper argues that intellectual property laws protecting government-purchased software are taking precedence over civil rights concerns.
Director john powell last month gave a keynote address at the Symposium on Anti-Black State Violence in the US and Brazil at UC Berkeley. powell argued that anti-Blackness was a constitutive feature of whiteness, and that anti-Blackness can be understood as an economy of dispossession that operates through segregation and the spatialization of violence. A video of the talk is posted here.
Two Haas Institute-affiliated scholars were featured in a piece from The Daily Cal entitled, "Celebrating (dis)abilities in the workplace; Disabled faculty and staff speak on challenges, future steps for disability accommodations in employment." Disability Studies cluster members Georgina Kleege and Alastair Iles were quoted in this long feature written by a UC Berkeley student who is nonverbal and autistic.
Research by Hilary Hoynes, UC Berkeley economist and co-chair of our Economic Disparities research cluster, was highlighted in an article published on Vox.com entitled, "Congress asked top experts for a plan to cut child poverty in half. Here it is." Hoynes is part of a group of experts convened by Congress to produce “a nonpartisan, evidence-based report that would provide its assessment of the most effective means for reducing child poverty by half in the next 10 years.”
A Haas Institute report on segregation in the Bay Area was covered by the Napa Valley Register in an article entitled, "Study: Minorities make up nearly half of Napa County's population." The study found that diversity in the aggregate across the Bay Area (including Napa Valley) can often mask deep segregation between cities and neighborhoods at the more local scale.
Juana Maria Rodriguez, member of our LGBTQ Citizenship cluster, was also featured in a Daily Cal article entitled, "‘A dangerous moment:’ Professor Juana María Rodríguez talks sex work’s history and the internet’s future." The criminalization of sex work prevents workers from “creating online support communities for themselves, using online platforms to screen clients, to be more in control of their own labor,” Rodríguez is quoted as saying.
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March 14: The long run effects of childhood exposure to the Food Stamp program. UC Berkeley economist Hilary Hoynes will use the rollout of the Food Stamp Program between 1961 and 1975 to examine the impact of an increase in economic resources during childhood on human capital, labor market outcomes, neighborhood, and mortality.
March 17: Public Forum: Stories of Migration. This panel discussion, which continues the Cal Performances partnership with the Haas Institute, explores themes inherent in the Dreamers project, including concepts of home; the necessity and human impulse to migrate, the right to move, and the right to stay.
April 2: Cultural Capital, Systemic Exclusion and Bias in the Lives of Black Middle-Class Women: A Conversation with Tina Sacks and Dawn Marie Dow. At this interactive event, Dow and Sacks will discuss their new books on African American women. Rather than lecture, Dow and Sacks will serve as each other’s interlocutors, as well as engage with the audience, as they center the experiences of middle class African American women.
April 26: Children of the Dream: Why School Integration Works Book Talk. Rucker Johnson will present findings from his new book “Children of the Dream: Why School Integration Works” followed by an insightful dialogue with Chris Edley, Distinguished Professor of Law, UC Berkeley and Prudence Carter, Dean Graduate School of Education.
See our past and upcoming faculty series talks here.
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Job Openings:
Find all our job openings posted on this page. Also, our friends at the Shriver Center in Chicago are looking for a lawyer to join their team as a Training & Business Development Attorney. Check here for details.
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