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Most ISSI events are free and open to the public. (Any fees are noted below).

Events sponsored or co-sponsored by ISSI and its constituent centers are listed below. For more information, please contact us at issi(at)berkeley(dot)edu or (510) 642-0813.

For wheelchair access to the Duster Conference Room (2420 Bowditch Street), please call (510) 642-0813 one day before the scheduled event.

Many of our events are video-recorded. You can see a list of available videos on our website. If you subscribe to our YouTube channel, you will be notified when new videos are available.

Summer/Fall 2020

Additional Fall 2020 events will be added.

Wednesday - Friday, July 22 - 24

Encuentro Internacional COVID-19: Salud colectiva y pandemia

Un esfuerzo conjunto de organizaciones sociales y universidades para generar un espacio de pensamiento colectivo que formule un programa de acción en red. Un proyecto transdisciplinario e intercultural que surge de la respuesta conjunta y creativa a las siguientes preguntas:

  • ¿Cómo explica el carácter y magnitud de la pandemia y su inequitativa distribución territorial, clasista, étnica y por género?
  • ¿Cómo describe las políticas, estrategias y acciones concretas del Estado -nacional y seccional-, del sector privado y de los organismos de cooperación técnica internacional frente a la pandemia y sus impactos epidemiológicos, sociales y laborales en sus países?
  • ¿Cuál es la visión estratégica, organizativa y de acción que su organización/universidad propone frente a la crisis y la lucha por una salida justa y equitativa?

Para descargar el programa de esta actividad, presione aquí.

The conference will be live-streamed here.

Inscripción Gratuita/Free Registration 

For more information contact Doris Guilcamaigua, doris.guilcamaigua@uasb.edu.ec

Sponsored by: Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar, Ecuador

Co-sponsored by Berkeley Center for Social Medicine

Tuesday, August 4 - Thursday, August 6 | 8:30am - 2:00pm PT

Joint Conference on Right-Wing Studies & Research on Male Supremacism

More information about the conference is available here

Register here (Student registration: $25 | General registration: $45)

This virtual conference brings together researchers focused on the right-wing and male supremacism for three days of panels, networking events, training sessions, and keynote speakers. 

Monday, August 3 | 9:00am - 2:00pm PST (Optional): An add-on digital security preconference training tailored to researchers whose subject matter increases vulnerability and risk, given by an expert from Equality Labs, will precede the main conference. There is an additional $15 fee for this training.

Sponsored by Institute for Research on Male Supremacism

Co-sponsored by Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies

September

Friday, September 11 | 2:00-4:00pm PT

Race, The Power of an Illusion is an award-winning three-part docuseries that provides a comprehensive and nuanced view of the history and uses of race throughout time. More relevant now than ever, the first event in this series, The Difference Between Us (Part I), will consist of a one-hour film screening followed by a one-hour panel discussion and will attempt to answer one foundational question: is race biological or social?

Part II (September 25) will cover the roots of race and racism in America, as well as how race is used to naturalize inequality. Part III (October 9th) will examine intersections of race with social institutions, power, wealth, and status. More details are available at https://www.racepowerofanillusion.org/events/ and the events will be livestreamed at the same url.

Sponsored by Othering & Belonging Institute

Co-Sponsored by Center for Research on Social Change and School of Public Health

Wednesday, September 16 | 4:00-5:00pm PT

Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)

Confederate Monuments Are Just the Tip of the Iceberg: Plantation Museums in Southern Heritage Tourism

Stephen Small, Interim Director, Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, and Professor, African American Studies, UC Berkeley

Some of the most prominent public debates on slavery in the United States at the present time revolve around Confederate monuments, related iconography and the legacies of the Civil War. But these are just one component of a far more extensive infrastructure of sites dedicated to a distorted and mythological memory of slavery, the Confederacy and Southern history.  This involves a vast heritage tourism industry across the US South, comprising plantation mansions, work structures and a wide range of other buildings, including slave quarters and slave cabins.  What are these sites, where are they located, how do they function and what messages do they convey? In this presentation I describe and evaluate these sites and their proponents in Louisiana and articulate how they form a continuum with racist, right-wing and extremist groups that promote white supremacy. I also identify less prominent structures and groups that fundamentally challenge these “heritage” sites and groups. (A recent article co-authored by Professor Small on this topic is available here.)

Sponsored by Institute for the Study of Societal Issues

Wednesday, September 23 | 4:00pm - 6:00pm PT

Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, & Revolution in the Americas

Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)

Roberto Lovato will present his new book on revolution and intergenerational trauma with a grounded perspective on the politics of war and migration in Central America and the hemisphere.
 

Thursday, September 24 | 12:00pm - 1:30pm PT

The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies

Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)

Tiffany King, Associate Professor, African-American Studies and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Georgia State University

In her recent book The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies, Tiffany Lethabo King uses the shoal—an offshore geologic formation that is neither land nor sea—as metaphor, mode of critique, and methodology to theorize the encounter between Black studies and Native studies. King conceptualizes the shoal as a space where Black and Native literary traditions, politics, theory, critique, and art meet in productive, shifting, and contentious ways. These interactions, which often foreground Black and Native discourses of conquest and critiques of humanism, offer alternative insights into understanding how slavery, anti-Blackness, and Indigenous genocide structure white supremacy. Among texts and topics, King examines eighteenth-century British mappings of humanness, Nativeness, and Blackness; Black feminist depictions of Black and Native erotics; Black fungibility as a critique of discourses of labor exploitation; and Black art that rewrites conceptions of the human. In outlining the convergences and disjunctions between Black and Native thought and aesthetics, King identifies the potential to create new epistemologies, lines of critical inquiry, and creative practices.

Sponsored by Center for Research on Social Change

Co-sponsored by Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues, African American and African Diaspora Studies, Native American Studies

Friday, September 25 | 9:00am-12:00pm PT

The University of California Land Grab: A Legacy of Profit from Indigenous Land 

Wide-scale U.S. higher education began in 1862 when the Morrill Act provided each state with “public” lands to sell for the establishment of university endowments. The public land-grant university movement is lauded as the first major federal funding for higher education and for making liberal and practical education accessible to Americans of average means. However hidden beneath the oft-told land-grant narrative is the land itself: the nearly 11 million acres of land sold through the Morrill Act was expropriated from tribal nations. This two-part forum examines the 150,000 acres of Indigenous land that funded the University of California, how this expropriation is intricately tied to California’s unique history of Native dispossession and genocide, and how UC continues to benefit from this wealth accumulation today. We will then explore current university initiatives with tribes and engage in a community dialogue on actions the University of California can take to address their responsibility to California Indigenous communities. 

For speakers and the event schedules please visit the event website: uclandgrab.berkeley.edu (Part 2 is on October 23)

Part 1: Unearthing Indigenous Land Dispossession in the Founding of the University of California

Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)

Co-sponsored by Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues

Friday, September 25 | 1:00-3:00pm PT

Race, The Power of an Illusion is an award-winning three-part docuseries that provides a comprehensive and nuanced view of the history and uses of race throughout time. More relevant now than ever, The Story We Tell (Part 2), will consist of a one-hour film screening followed by a one-hour panel discussion and will cover the roots of race and racism in America, as well as how race is used to naturalize inequality. Part III (October 9th) will examine intersections of race with social institutions, power, wealth, and status. More details are available at https://www.racepowerofanillusion.org/events/ and the events will be livestreamed at the same url.

Sponsored by Othering & Belonging Institute

Co-Sponsored by Center for Research on Social Change and School of Public Health

Friday, September 25 | 5:00pm - 6:30pm PT

Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)

Arturo Escobar

Pluriversal Politics Rethinking Possibilities

Sponsored by Latinx Research Center

Wednesday, September 30 | 12:00pm - 1:30pm PT

Abortion Rights in 2020 and Beyond: Threats and Resistance

Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)

Khiara M. Bridges, Professor of Law, UC Berkeley 
Carole Joffe, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, UC San Francisco
Jill E. Adams, Executive Director of If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice
 
The legal right to abortion is under threat, despite the recent Supreme Court decision in June Medical Services v Russo, a decision that protected the rights of women in Louisiana to get abortions without an undue burden. The right wing has successfully eroded reproductive rights through a number of tactics, including framing abortion as “Black genocide,” yet people continue to have abortions, within, despite, and beyond legal limits. Khiara M. Bridges, co-author of the reproductive justice law professors' amicus brief in June Medical Services v. Russo, will examine race, class, reproductive rights, and the intersection of the three. Carole Joffe, co-author of Obstacle Course: The Everyday Struggle to Get an Abortion in America, will draw on interviews with patients, abortion providers, and clinical staff to reveal the compound indignities, inconveniences, and impossibilities posed by the patchwork of restrictions on provision and coverage. She will also discuss the determination and dedication of those both seeking and working to provide legal abortions. Jill E. Adams, Executive Director of If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice, will focus on how people are choosing and resorting to self-directed and community-directed care to circumnavigate the structural inequities in healthcare access yet still having to contend with the systemic racism of the criminal legal system.
 

Co-sponsored by Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice; Center for the Study of Law and Society; Berkeley Law's chapter of If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice

October

Monday, October 5 | 12:45pm - 2:00pm PT

New Perspectives on Reforming the Criminal Justice System

Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)

Osagie Obasogie, Professor of Bioethics, UCB-UCSF Joint Medical Program; Haas Distinguished Chair, UC Berkeley School of Public Health
Nikki Jones, Associate Professor of African American Studies, UC Berkeley
Stephanie Campos-Bui, Clinical Supervising Attorney, Policy Advocacy Clinic at Berkeley Law
 
Sponsored by Center for the Study of Law and Society

Co-sponsored by Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice, Center for Race and Gender, & Center for Research on Social Change

Wednesday, October 7 | 3:00pm - 4:30pm PT

From the Edge of the Ghetto: The Quest of Small City African-Americans to Survive Post-Industrialism

Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)

Alford Young, Jr., Edgar G. Epps Collegiate Professor of Sociology and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, Departments of Sociology and Afroamerican and African Studies, and Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan
 
This talk draws from a study based on interviews with 103 working class and low-income African Americans from Ypsilanti, Michigan, a city of approximately 30,000 residents (about 6,000 of them African American). It explores how they make sense of work and work opportunity in a city that decades ago was the site of considerable industrial opportunity. That city sits on the borders of a thriving post-industrial small city as well as in the vicinity of Detroit, perhaps one of America’s strongest urban examples of declining post-industrialism. Accordingly, these residents discuss work opportunity while being uniquely situated between geographic sites of opportunity and demise. A strong gender distinction emerged in how they discuss their vision of future employment opportunities and their perceived places within them. Consequently, the talk presents a case for how configurations of race, class, and gender surface for lower-income African Americans in their struggle to come to terms with post-industrialism.
 
Sponsored by Institute for the Study of Societal Issues

Co-sponsored by Institute for Research on Labor and Employment

Tuesday October 13 | 5:00pm-6:30pm

Redefining Health Policy in 2020 and Beyond: Racism, Social Movements, and Well-Being

Zoom Webinar | Register here (free) 

Jamila K. Taylor, PhD, Director of Health Care Reform and Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation 

Janene Yazzie, Co-founder and CEO of Sixth World Solutions

Mari Lopez, Organizer, National Nurses United / California Nurses Association

The Covid19 pandemic has revealed racism as the public health crisis facing the United States. Health disparities are also shaped by employment, immigration, housing, land use, and many other systemic issues and institutions. The United States government's response has largely been reactive; this event is an opportunity to focus on redefining health policy in ways that go beyond debates about testing or restaurant re-opening. Drawing on their experience of working for change at the grassroots, three visionary leaders will engage in a conversation about health policy that would encompass the social and structural changes we need to promote good health.

Sponsored by Berkeley Center for Social Medicine and National Nurses United / California Nurses Association 

Friday, October 16 | 4:00pm - 6:00pm PT

Decolonizing Art & Praxis in the Time of COVID-19

Revista N'oj Fall 2020 Issue 2.0 Round Table

Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)

Sponsored by Latinx Research Center

Friday, October 23 | 9:00am–12:30pm PT​

The University of California Land Grab: A Legacy of Profit from Indigenous Land 

Wide-scale U.S. higher education began in 1862 when the Morrill Act provided each state with “public” lands to sell for the establishment of university endowments. The public land-grant university movement is lauded as the first major federal funding for higher education and for making liberal and practical education accessible to Americans of average means. However hidden beneath the oft-told land-grant narrative is the land itself: the nearly 11 million acres of land sold through the Morrill Act was expropriated from tribal nations. This two-part forum examines the 150,000 acres of Indigenous land that funded the University of California, how this expropriation is intricately tied to California’s unique history of Native dispossession and genocide, and how UC continues to benefit from this wealth accumulation today. We will then explore current university initiatives with tribes and engage in a community dialogue on actions the University of California can take to address their responsibility to California Indigenous communities. (Part 1 took place in September.)

For speakers and the event schedule, please visit the event website: uclandgrab.berkeley.edu

Part 2: From Land-grab to Land Acknowledgement and Beyond

Zoom Meeting | Register here (free)

Co-sponsored by Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues

Friday, October 23 | 12:00pm - 1:30pm PT

Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)

Maria Elena Durazo

Luis Alejo

Mike Madrid

Kevin de León 

Dr. Ignacio Ornelas Rodriguez

Round Table Discussion on Latinx and the 2020 Election

Sponsored by Latinx Research Center

Friday, October 23 | 2:00pm - 3:00 pm PT

Inaugural Launch & Ribbon Cutting Ceremony for the Asian American Research Center

Virtually via Zoom | RSVP by October 21

Featuring a talk by Taeku Lee, Professor of Political Science and Law, UC Berkeley 
“A Defining, Movement-Making Election": Some Findings on the AAPI Youth Vote in 2020

Asian Americans are the fastest growing demographic among eligible voters, and more than one in three eligible voters is a Millennial or member of GenZ.  This talk presents some fresh new data from a nationally representative survey of AAPIs aged 18 to 34. The study finds that younger Asian Americans hold progressive views on a broad range of issues and identify with mass movements for social change, but a significant share are skeptical about electoral participation and the benefits of organizing as Asian Americans.

Sponsored by Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies, Asian Pacific American Student Development, Asian American and Pacific Islander Standing Committee, Asian Pacifican American Systemwide Alliance

Monday, October 26 | Postponed - to be rescheduled

“Rulemaking as Structural Violence: Immigrant Workers Amidst Innovation Governance”

Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)

Veena Dubal, Associate Professor of Law, UC Hastings Law, and former ISSI Graduate Fellow
 
Sponsored by Center for the Study of Law and Society

Co-sponsored by Center for Law and the Workplace, Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative, & Institute for the Study of Societal Issues

Tuesday, October 27th | 12:30pm - 2:00pm PT

Divided By the Wall: Progressive and Conservative Immigration Politics at the U.S.-Mexico Border 

Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)

Emine Fidan Elcioglu, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Toronto 

Divided By the Wall: Progressive and Conservative Immigration Politics at the U.S.-Mexico Border (University of California Press 2020) ethnographically mines the meanings of this contentious topic for people on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Set in Arizona, one of the most important points of entry for migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, the book combines the insights of political sociology and race studies to shed light on why and how ordinary Americans collectively mobilize to change immigration and border policy, even when they don't necessarily believe that their actions will make a difference. 

Sponsored by Center for Ethnographic Research

Co-sponsored by Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative

Thursday, October 29 | 4 - 5pm PT

Weaving Language: New Reflections on Corn Husk Bags

Virtual Webinar | Register here (free; suggested donation of $10)

Beth Piatote

Phillip E. Cash Cash

Angel Sobotta

Sarah Hennessey

Julian Ankeny

Kellen Lewis

Kevin Peters

Ines Hernandez-Avila

Jenny Williams

This event, hosted by the Hearst Museum, will feature readings of new work in Ni:mi:pu: (Nez Perce) and English, inspired by the tradition of corn husk bag weaving amongst Plateau peoples.

Co-sponsored by: Native American Studies, Anthropology, Linguisitics, Rhetoric, Creative Writing, English, Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues

Friday, October 30 | 4:00pm - 6:00pm PT

Boaventura de Sousa Santos

Decolonizing Knowledge & the Epistemologies of the South

Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)

Sponsored by Latinx Research Center

November

Friday, November 6 | 12:00pm - 1:30pm PT

Kurt Organista

Hector Rodriguez

Alein Haro

CA Latinxs, COVID-19 & Pandemics: Making Vulnerability of "Essential Workers" Visible

Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)

Sponsored by Latinx Research Center

Monday, November 9 | 12:45pm - 2:00pm PT

“The State from Below: Democracy and Citizenship in Policed Communities”

Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)

Vesla Weaver, Bloomberg Distinguished Associate Professor of Political Science and Sociology, Johns Hopkins University
 
Sponsored by Center for the Study of Law and Society

Co-sponsored by Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice, Institute of Governmental Studies, & Center for Research on Social Change

Friday, November 13 | 12:00pm - 1:30pm PT

Empirics of Justice: Tracking the Carceral Continuum in Urban America

Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)

Carla Shedd, Associate Professor, Urban Education & Sociology, The Graduate Center, City University of New York
 
Carla Shedd will present a lecture based on her new book project, When Protection and Punishment Collide: America’s Juvenile Court System and the Carceral Continuum. The project draws on empirical data to interrogate the deftly intertwined contexts of New York City schools, neighborhoods, and juvenile justice courts, in this dynamic moment of NYC public policy shifts (e.g., school segregation, “Raise the Age,” and “Close Rikers.”).

Sponsored by Center for Research on Social Change

Co-sponsored by Graduate School of Education, Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice, Center for Race and Gender, Center for the Study of Law and Society, UC Berkeley

Tuesday, November 17 | 12:00pm - 1:30pm PT

Whats in a Name?: An Audio Series on Latinx in the U.S.

A Podcast Series Launch With the Latinx Research Center Podcast Team

Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)

Sponsored by Latinx Research Center

Thursday, November 19  | 12-1:30pm PT

Empire of Resentment: Populism’s Toxic Embrace of Nationalism

  • Lawrence Rosenthal, Chair, Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies, and author of Empire of Resentment.

  • Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Professor of Education & Sociology, American University

  • Corey D. Fields, Associate Professor of Sociology, Georgetown University

  • Vibeke Schou Tjalve, Senior Researcher, Danish Institute for International Studies

Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)

In this virtual discussion on the new book Empire of Resentment: Populism’s Toxic Embrace of Nationalism (New Press, 2020), a panel of leading scholars of the right will engage with the book and the nature of contemporary populism and nationalism is the U.S. and Europe.

Sponsored by Center for Right-Wing Studies

December

Friday, December 4 | 12:00 - 3:00pm PT

Beyond the Case: Comparative Ethnography During COVID-19 and Beyond

Zoom Webinar | Register here (free) 

Corey M. Abramson, University of Arizona

Lynn Chancer, City University of New York

Aaron Cicourel, UC San Diego

Claire Laurier Decoteau, University of Illinois at Chicago

Thomas DeGloma, Hunter College

Daniel Dohan, UC San Francisco

Neil Gong, UC San Diego; University of Michigan

Annette Lareau, University of Pennsylvania

Martín Sánchez-Jankowski, UC Berkeley

Iddo Tavory, New York University

Stefan Timmermans, UC Los Angeles

Diane Vaughan, Columbia University

Alford Young, Jr., University of Michigan

How do ethnographers engage in comparison? Do their comparative logics align with or diverge from the methodological foundations of other forms of social scientific research? And how do the current historical ruptures in the era of COVID-19 shape the present and future of ethnographic comparison?  Drawing on central themes from Beyond the Case: The Logics and Practices of Comparative Ethnography (Oxford University Press 2020), this event will provide a venue for researchers from various ethnographic approaches to share their thoughts on these topics. The speakers, including many of the book’s contributors, represent a host of ethnographic traditions ranging from phenomenology, to interpretivism, to the extended case method, to various “post-positivist” forms of scientific realism. It is our hope that this discussion will reveal not only points of divergence, but also synergies with other empirical methods, and between competing approaches to ethnography. This parallels the book’s call to leverage the field’s epistemic variation in order to expand opportunities for meaningful comparisons and conversations on a broad range of substantive topics - including the convergent crises of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sponsored by Center for Ethnographic Research

Co-sponsored by Department of Sociology, UC Berkeley; School of Sociology, University of Arizona

Institute for the Study of Societal Issues
 
Copyright UC Regents and UC Berkeley
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