The Institute for the Study of Societal Issues (ISSI) is UC Berkeley's hub for interdisciplinary social justice research. Since 1976, the Institute has been fostering qualitative and quantitative interdisciplinary research on the issues central to social stratification and inequality while trainining and supporting new generations of social change scholars.

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ISSI Graduate Fellows Jesús Gutiérrez and Makaela Jones in conversation with Professor Courtney Morris at the May 2025 Breaking Barriers, Building Community symposium.

Recent Stories

2024-2025 Chancellor’s Awards for Public Service: Community Engaged Teaching Award

May 8, 2025

Travis Bristol, faculty affiliate of the Center for Research on Social Change, received the 2025 Chancellor’s Award for Community-Engaged Teaching. Professor Bristol’s public service work includes a research-practice-partnership in collaboration with Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) where undergraduates in his courses work alongside K-12 teachers and after-school staff to provide informal learning...

Global Studies chair discusses research, leadership and importance of her field

May 6, 2025

Elora Shehabuddin, Asian American Research Center faculty affiliate and UC Berkeley Global Studies chair, promotes a strong and supportive academic community for her faculty colleagues and students. In this Berkeley News article, Shehabuddin discusses her research on Muslim Bengali women’s activism in different arenas and her work to help students gain in-depth knowledge about the world around them, from foreign policy decisions to climate...

The Long American Tradition of Categorizing Immigrants as Either Good or Bad

April 22, 2025

An essay by Hidetaka Hirota, Asian American Research Center faculty affiliate, was just published in TIME Magazine. Hirota discusses how advocates of strict border policing typically divide noncitizens in the United States into two groups: "natural" and "unnatural" immigrants, then disparage the latter as “illegal aliens” and call for their deportation. After describing the history of this artificial binary and its negative impact on various ethnoracial groups, he concludes that...

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