UC Berkeley professor Dylan Penningroth's book "Before the Movement" reveals the many ways Black Americans navigated the law by asserting their civil rights of property.

Berkeley African American Studies lecturer speaks about her book, Untraceable.

From the U.S.’s first Black theater in New York to today's Broadway stages, there’s been “a kind of de facto censorship” of diverse stories throughout the country's history.

UC Berkeley's Division of Social Sciences has announced an endowed program and chair in Palestinian and Arab Studies to usher in a new era of research and scholarship,

"This case will be a Rorschach test for elected officials," one expert said. "Will they redouble their efforts to provide shelter and housing, or fall back on laws that punish people for being homeless?"

The Possibility Lab at UC Berkeley is tapping the expertise of hundreds of residents to learn what helps them feel safe in their everyday lives.

Berkeley researchers and scholars aim to teach a new generation of students about individuals and groups left out of history books or misunderstood.

UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center says the victims, most aged 30 and under, suffered partial or full loss of sight in the government crackdown on protests demanding women’s rights.

Berkeley Law students Grace Geurin-Henley and Gwen Iannone, leaders of Berkeley Law's Gun Violence Prevention Project, are helping a nonprofit pursue international impact litigation claims.

Two UC Berkeley authors explore the social power of unsettling images from war and conflict — and the psychic risks they pose to viewers.

UC Berkeley policy analyst from the Othering and Belonging Institute shares recommendations to protect people displaced from the climate crisis.

A UC Berkeley professor, born and raised from the Bay Area, is actively pursuing solutions to the underlying factors contributing to homelessness.

UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies Assistant Professor Christian Paiz delves into the experiences of lesser-known members of the 1960s UFW movement.

UC Berkeley professor delves deeper into the reason behind the seemingly large populations of Filipinx families in Hawaii.

Racism expressed through cultural norms can perpetuate negative health outcomes for nonwhite groups, according to a study by UC Berkeley School of Public Health.

The Othering & Belonging Institute hosts panel to mark release of their research brief, “Climate Refugees: Facts and Findings, and Strategies for 'Loss and Damage'".

The center will be a research and advocacy hub to boost Berkeley Law’s public mission in the criminal justice arena.

New research shows that long-standing policies and deeply rooted inequity likely explain why Black defendants in certain parts of the country are more likely than others to be held in jail before trial. 

A recent Berkeley Law symposium confronted excessive use of police force, identifying obstacles to victims’ access to the courts and officer accountability, and exploring potential solutions. 

The risk of flood-related contamination will fall disproportionately on the state’s most marginalized communities.

A panel discussion with four leading economists about what it’ll take to rebuild Ukraine’s infrastructure, education systems and institutions.

Ukrainian law enforcement officials and NGOs are preparing for war crimes trials — and almost from the start of the war, their efforts to collect evidence have been guided by digital-age legal standards developed under the leadership of the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.

Abrams tracks the efforts of organizers to fight anti-immigrant legislation and tackle related causes, including the ouster of Joe Arpaio.

A collaboration between Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, Mother Jones, the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center, and Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program have published a two-part investigation showing a disturbing landscape of birth control disinformation that actively targets women searching for functional contraception options in the United States.

In Berkeley Talks episode 152, UC Berkeley history professor Rebecca Herman discusses her new book, Cooperating with the Colossus: A Social and Political History of U.S. Military Bases in World War II Latin America. She’s joined by Margaret Chowning, professor and Sonne Chair in Latin American History at Berkeley, and Kyle Jackson, a Berkeley Ph.D. candidate in history and a transnational historian of the Americas.

Eric Stover has spent much of his life with communities searching for an answer to the agonizing question, Where is my child? From Argentina, Guatemala, and El Salvador to the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Iraqi Kurdistan, Stover has sat with families in their deepest grief — often taking the first step in answering that harrowing question with a simple cheek swab, or a sample of blood or hair.

Professor Ron E. Hassner's Anatomy of Torture is a telling of how the Roman Catholic Church used physical and psychological torture systematically to crush communities of Jews, Muslims, Protestants and others seen as heretics. In probing the practices of the Spanish Inquisition, Hassner makes a devastating argument against America’s use of torture four centuries later. In distilling that story, though, he comes to an understanding that is deeply disquieting and likely to provoke both proponents of torture and human rights advocates.

An apparent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down abortion rights could open broader threats to some types of contraception and to LGBTQ+ rights, including same-sex marriage, Berkeley legal scholars say.

In this Berkeley Voices episode, Berkeley Law professor Khiara M. Bridges discusses the history of reproductive rights in the U.S., what’s at stake when Roe v. Wade is overturned and why we should expand our fight for reproductive justice.

As opponents of critical race theory continue to gather at school boards across the country protesting its use in classrooms, it has become evident that the study of racism in America continues to be seen, by some, as trivial. But UC Berkeley ethnic studies lecturer Victoria Robinson said that understanding the history of America’s structurally racist roots can be just as nuanced as research done in a science lab. And more importantly, it should be celebrated as education that can help bridge communities in a country currently divided along politically racialized lines.

UC Berkeley ethnic studies professor Laura E. Pérez believes using Latinx — the gender-neutral term for Latina or Latino — can help bring unknown Latinx stories and experiences to the forefront. While the word challenges gender binaries in the Spanish language, Pérez said, in use, Latinx also encourages discussions around cultural and racialized diversity and inclusivity.

As a child growing up in San Francisco’s Fillmore District, Michael Omi had a knack for chemistry. The way molecular structures are used to design new medicines fascinated him so much he wanted to be a pharmacist. But coming to UC Berkeley as an undergraduate student in 1969, Omi was thrust into a tumultuous time in American history, where street conflicts between student organizers and police were a daily occurrence, and blockades of National Guardsmen were commonplace on a campus rife with protests against the Vietnam War.

While the American public may have a broader understanding of the experiences of people who are transgender, non-binary and gender-nonconforming, violence against these communities — in the form of killings and prejudiced American policy — has continued to rise.

Across the nation, unions and their leaders have strongly defended officers against accusations of excessive violence, often directed against people of color. Cities are dangerous places, they say, and that justifies a warrior-like approach to policing. But in a series of interviews, Berkeley scholars said police unions have successfully used a range of tools, from the fine print in labor contracts to millions of dollars in political donations, to shield officers from accountability and promote hardline policing practices. While discipline is often secret and officers rarely lose their jobs, they say, cities have paid tens of millions of dollars in settlements with recent victims.

Heavy caseloads, job stress and biases can strain relations between parole and probation officers and their clients, upping offenders’ likelihood of landing back behind bars. On a more hopeful note, a new UC Berkeley study suggests that nonjudgmental empathy training helps court-appointed supervision officers feel more emotionally connected to their clients and, arguably, better able to deter them from criminal backsliding.

Kent Lightfoot trained in archaeology when backhoes and front-end loaders tore through Native American sites. At the time, it didn’t occur to him that the land could actually feel pain — not until Kashaya Pomo tribal elders at Northern California’s Fort Ross Historic State Park set him straight.

The Department of African American Studies is excited to announce that it has been selected as one of sixteen recipients of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Just Futures grant. This grant is a collaborative effort to address racial inequality through new humanities-based research & solutions.