Videos of ISSI Events

Videos of many ISSI events are available below (and see links to the ISSI Center videos in right sidebar). To be notified when we add a new video, please click here to subscribe to our YouTube channel.

If you require captioning to access a video on our site, please contact us at issi@berkeley.edu or 510 642-0813. Please expect 7-10 days for captioning to be provided.

Global Africa: Profiles in Courage, Creativity, and Cruelty

Global Africa: Profiles in Courage, Creativity, and Cruelty

Global Africa: Profiles in Courage, Creativity, and Cruelty

Adekeye Adebajo, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria with Samar Al-Bulushi, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine, as respondent

Adekeye Adebajo shares highlights from his book Global Africa: Profiles in Courage, Creativity, and Cruelty (Jacana 2023; Routledge 2024). This book of 100 essays written over the last three post-apartheid decades provides profiles of pan-African figures, mostly from Africa and its diaspora in the Americas, Europe, and the Caribbean. It covers the most important figures of “Global Africa” - and some important non-African personalities - encompassing diverse historical and political figures, technocrats, activists, writers, public intellectuals, musical and film artists, and sporting figures. These include: Cecil Rhodes, Kwame Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, Mobutu Sese Seko, Idi Amin, Barack Obama, Colin Powell, Margaret Thatcher, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Kofi Annan, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Adebayo Adedeji, Martin Luther King Jr., Wangari Maathai, Ruth First, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Bell Hooks, Buchi Emecheta, Ali Mazrui, Edward Said, Angela Davis, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Bob Marley, Michael Jackson, Burna Boy, Asa, Sidney Poitier, Muhammad Ali, Pelé, Eusébio, Diego Maradona, Viv Richards, Jonah Lomu, Hakeem Olajuwon, and many others.

Co-sponsored by: Center for African Studies, Othering & Belonging Institute

Black Voices in the Shadows of the Big House

Black Voices in the Shadows of the Big House

Black Voices in the Shadows of the Big House: Folk artist Clementine Hunter’s challenge to southern gentility narratives of slavery and slave cabins

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

With Ula Y. Taylor, Professor of African American Studies & 1960 Chair of Undergraduate Education, UC Berkeley, as respondent

Sponsored by Center for Research on Social Change, part of the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues.

Co-sponsored by: Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies, Townsend Center for the Humanities

A Child of the Indian Race: A Story of Return

A Child of the Indian Race: A Story of Return

A Child of the Indian Race: A Story of Return

Sandy White Hawk, Founder and Director, First Nations Repatriation Institute

In the 1950s, when Sandy White Hawk was a toddler, she was taken from her Lakota family on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Her adoption papers identify her as "a child of the Indian race," and her adoptive mother never let her forget it, telling her she was unwanted and shaming her for being "Indian." White Hawk medicated her traumas with drugs and alcohol. At age twenty-eight, she gained sobriety and reconnected with her birth relatives. As she learned what it means to be Lakota, she also learned that thousands of Native adoptees shared her experience--left to navigate racial and cultural complexities as children, with no way to understand what was happening to them.

Mentored by a respected elder, White Hawk began to work with relatives who also had been separated by adoption and foster care, taken away from their families and communities. Fighting through her feelings of inadequacy, she accepted that she could use her voice to advocate. Ultimately, White Hawk founded the First Nations Repatriation Institute, an organization that addresses the post-adoption issues of Native American individuals, families, and communities. She exposes the myth that adoption is a path to protecting "unwanted children" from "unfit mothers," offering a child a "better chance at life." Rather, adoption, particularly transracial adoption, is layered in complexities. A Child of the Indian Race is Sandy White Hawk's story, and it is the story of her life work: helping other adoptees and tribal communities to reconcile the enormous harms caused by widespread removals.

Sponsor: Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues (part of the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues)

Co-sponsor: Native American Student Development

Imperialism in Africa: Resistance, Restitution and Reparations

Adekeye Adebajo, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria

Cristina Roldão Professora da Escola Superior de Educação - Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal, Portugal, e investigadora do CIES-IUL

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

Moderator: Jelani Nelson Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, UC Berkeley 

FOUNDATIONS FOR CHANGE: Thomas I. Yamashita Prize and KIDS FIRST: David L. Kirp Prize Award Ceremony

FOUNDATIONS FOR CHANGE: Thomas l. Yamashita Prize and KIDS FIRST: David L. Kirp Prize Award Ceremony

Welcome: Stephen Small, Director, Institute for the Study of Societal Issues
2022 KIDS FIRST: David L. Kirp Prize Winner: Jordan Webb, BA, UC Berkeley, 2022, Political Science major
2022 KIDS FIRST: David L. Kirp Prize – Honorable Mention: Yadira Hernandez-Figueroa, BA, UC Berkeley, 2022, Political Science and Ethnic Studies major

Introduction of the Yamshita Prize: Bob Yamashita
2022 Thomas I. Yamashita Prize Winner: Jason Okonofua, Assistant Professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley
2022 Thomas I. Yamashita Prize – Honorable Mention was awarded to Nazineen Kandahari, medical student in the UCSF/UC Berkeley Joint Medical Program, but she could not attend.

Paul Krugman: Extrapolating From the Present

Keynote: Extrapolating From the Present

Paul Krugman, New York Times Columnist; Distinguished Professor, Graduate Center of City University of New York; and Recipient of 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics.

Welcome: Jennifer Raab, President of Hunter College

Moderator: Martín Sánchez-Jankowski, Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley

04/06/2022

Harry Edwards: Sport in Society: Intersectionalities, Consequences and Projections

Harry Edwards, Professor Emeritus, Sociology, UC Berkeley

Welcome: Carol T. Christ, Chancellor, UC Berkeley

Moderator: Ty-Ron Douglas, Associate Athletic Director for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging, UC Berkeley

Hosted by:
Stephen Small, Professor of African American Studies and Director of the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues
Jim Knowlton, Director of Athletics, UC Berkeley
03/01/2022

Memorial for Hardy T. Frye

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

Speakers:
* Troy Duster, Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus, UC Berkeley
* Yvette Gullatt, Vice President for Graduate and Undergraduate Affairs, Vice Provost for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, and Chief Diversity Officer, University of California
* Herman Gray, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, UC Santa Cruz
* Nikki Jones, Professor of African American Studies and Chair of the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies, UC Berkeley
* Hallie Costello, Hardy Frye's daughter
* Nancy Skinner, California State Senator, District 9 * Ameer Hasan Loggins, Ph.D.
* Ben Tucker, Retired, University of California Office of the President * Pearl Alice Marsh, PhD, Retired Democratic Congressional staff member
* Russell Williams
* David Wellman, Professor Emeritus, Community Studies, UC Santa Cruz
* Johnny Danner
* Mark W. Toney, Ph.D., Executive Director, TURN—The Utility Reform Network
* Joseph Blum, Photographer (many of the photos shown are taken by Joseph Blum)
* Prince Wilson
11/03/2021

Honoring Michael Omi: Racial Formations


Welcome: Carol Christ, Chancellor, UC Berkeley

Moderator: Stephen Small, Director, Institute for the Study of Societal Issues; Professor, African American Studies, UC Berkeley

Speakers:

Victor Rios, Professor, Sociology, UC Santa Barbara

Lisa Lowe, Samuel Knight Professor of American Studies and Professor of Ethnicity, Race, and Migration, Yale University

Troy Duster, Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus, UC Berkeley

Michael Omi, Professor Emeritus, Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies, UC Berkeley

10/01/2021

Symposium in Honor of Michael Omi on the Occasion of His Retirement: Panel 2

Welcome: Juana María Rodríguez, Professor and Chair, Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley

Moderator: Lok Siu, Associate Professor, Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies, UC Berkeley

Speakers:

Tomás Almaguer, Professor Emeritus, Latina/Latino Studies, San Francisco State University

Gary Okihiro, Visiting Professor, American Studies, Yale University

Nadia Y. Kim, Professor, Sociology and Asian & Asian American Studies, Loyola Marymount University

john a. powell, Director, Othering & Belonging Institute, and Robert D. Haas Chancellor’s Chair in Equity and Inclusion, UC Berkeley

10/01/2021

Symposium in Honor of Michael Omi on the Occasion of His Retirement: Panel 3

Welcome: Keith Feldman, Associate Professor, Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley

Moderator: Khatharya Um, Associate Professor, Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies, UC Berkeley

Speakers: Edward Park, Professor and Chair of Asian and Asian American Studies, Loyola Marymount University

Jessica Vasquez-Tokos, Professor, Sociology, University of Oregon

Linda Trinh Vo, Professor, Asian American Studies, UC Irvine

Daniel Woo, American Culture Studies Postdoctoral Fellow in Ethnic Studies, Washington University in St. Louis

Concluding remarks: Howard Winant, Professor, Sociology, UC Santa Barbara

10/01/2021

Honoring the Legacy of Joseph A. Myers (1940-2020)

September 25, 2021

Welcome: Carol Christ, Chancellor, UC Berkeley

Speakers:

Martín Sánchez-Jankowski, Chair, Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues, and Professor, Sociology, UC Berkeley

Shari Huhndorf, Class of 1938 Professor, Department of Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley

Christina Tlatilpa Inong, ASW, Program Specialist, California Indian Museum and Cultural Center, and former student of Professor Myers

Karen Biestman, Associate Dean and Director, Native American Cultural Center, Stanford University

Raquelle Myers, Joe's daughter and Executive Director, National Indian Justice Center

Nicole Myers-Lim, Joe's daughter and Director, California Indian Museum and Cultural Center

Anti-Trans Ideology in Male Supremacism

Anti-Trans Ideology in Male Supremacism

May 13, 2021

Emily Carian, California State University, San Bernardino

JE Sumerau, University of Tampa

Laurel Westbrook, Grand Valley State University

Heron Greenesmith, Political Research Associates

Facilitator: Blu Buchanan, University of California, Davis

Attacks on Critical Race Theory and Decolonizing Education

May 11, 2021

Moderator: Stephen Small, Director, Institute for the Study of Societal Issues

Daniel HoSang, Yale University

Adrienne Davis, Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity at Washington University in St. Louis

Rokhaya Diallo, Gender+ Justice Initiative at Georgetown University

Kwame Nimako, Black Europe Summer School

ISSI Social Change Awards Ceremony 2021

FOUNDATIONS FOR CHANGE: Thomas l. Yamashita Prize & KIDS FIRST: David L. Kirp Prize Award Ceremony

Please join us as we honor Phenocia Bauerle and Boun Khamnouane, recipients of the FOUNDATIONS FOR CHANGE: Thomas I. Yamashita Prize, and Aurora Lopez and Tabitha Bell, recipients of the KIDS FIRST: David L. Kirp Prize. 

“Am I an American or Not? The Perils to Democracy When Racism Shouts Louder Than Facts, the Rule of Law, and the Constitution”

Keynote by Donald K. Tamaki, Senior Counsel at Minami Tamaki LLP.

04/28/2021

The Future of California: People, Place, and Power

Welcome: Michael Drake, M.D, President of the University of California

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

Moderator: Marisa Lagos, correspondent for KQED's California Politics and Government Desk and co-host of "Political Breakdown"

Featured Panelists:

California State Senator Anna Caballero, Senate District 12

Assemblymember David Chiu, Assembly District 17

Assemblymember James C. Ramos, Assembly District 40

California State Senator Nancy Skinner, Senate District 9

04/13/2021

Black Mayors & Leadership in the United States: Diversity and Inclusion

The Honorable Sylvester Turner, Mayor of Houston

Introduction by: Ula Y. Taylor, Professor & H. Michael and Jeanne Williams Department Chair, Department of African American Studies & African Diaspora Studies, UC Berkeley

Panel discussion moderated by Natasha Korecki, Politico National Correspondent

Panelists:

Pedro Noguera, Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean, Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California

Kathleen Yang-Clayton, Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Public Administration, University of Illinois at Chicago

Dr. Gail Christopher, Executive Director of the National Collaborative for Health Equity

This event is part of a series on Black Mayors & Leadership in the United States; for more information on the series, click here.

03/16/2021

Black Mayors & Leadership in the United States: The Wealth Gap

The Honorable Ras Baraka, Mayor of Newark

Introduction by: Stephen Small, Director, Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, and Professor, Department of African American Studies, UC Berkeley

Panel discussion moderated by Tracy Jan, Reporter, The Washington Post

Panelists:

Darren Walker, President, Ford Foundation

Paul Ong, Research Professor and Director, Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs

Elsie Harper-Anderson, Associate Professor, Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, Virginia Commonwealth University

This event is part of a series on Black Mayors & Leadership in the United States; for more information on the series, click here.

03/10/2021

Black Mayors & Leadership in the United States: Criminal Justice Reform

The Honorable Lori Lightfoot, Mayor of Chicago

Introduction by: Teresa Córdova, Director, Great Cities Institute, and Professor, Urban Planning and Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago

Moderator: Cheryl Corley, NPR National Correspondent

Panelists: Nikki Jones, Professor of African American Studies, UC Berkeley

Cid Martinez, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of San Diego

This event is part of a series on Black Mayors & Leadership in the United States; for more information on the series, click here.

03/04/2021

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

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

10/07/2020

Plantation Museums in Southern Heritage Tourism

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

09/16/2020

ISSI social change awards with keynote by Rupa Marya

FOUNDATIONS FOR CHANGE: Thomas I. Yamashita Prize and KIDS FIRST: David L. Kirp Prize Award Ceremony 

Welcome: Deborah Lustig, Associate Director, Institute for the Study of Societal Issues

Awarding of 2020 KIDS FIRST: David L. Kirp Prize by David Kirp, Professor of the Graduate School, UC Berkeley Yvette Yao, Prize Winner: Introduction by David Levine

Awarding of 2020 FOUNDATIONS FOR CHANGE: Thomas I. Yamashita Prize by Deborah Lustig

Bernadette Lim, Prize Winner

"Engaging the Imagination in a Time of Pandemic" Keynote by Rupa Marya, Associate Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, and faculty director of the Do No Harm Coalition

05/26/2020

Crossroads and Cyborgs: The Speculative Design of John Jennings

John Jennings, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, UC Riverside

For over a decade John Jennings has been a key figure in the archiving, creating, and cultivating of black popular culture in graphic novels, illustrated fiction, and graphic design. Jennings has contributed to creating a foundation of theory, community, and mentorship that has led to what some call the Black Speculative Arts Movement; his work has helped give a visual aesthetic to what some call Afrofuturism. This presentation will be a short retrospective of Jennings' work and current research and critical making projects. 

Part of the ISSI Graduate Fellows Colloquia Series.

04/14/2020

Socioemotional Development of Dual Language Learners and Children of Immigrant Families:

Qing Zhou, Associate Professor of Psychology, UC Berkeley

09/24/2019

FOUNDATIONS FOR CHANGE: Thomas l. Yamashita Prize & KIDS FIRST: David L. Kirp Prize Award Ceremony

FOUNDATIONS FOR CHANGE: Thomas l. Yamashita Prize & KIDS FIRST: David L. Kirp Prize Award Ceremony

This event honored Joel Sati and Rosa M. Jiménez, recipients of the FOUNDATIONS FOR CHANGE: Thomas I. Yamashita Prize, and Gabriel Santamaria, Alejandra León Herrera, and Nolan Pokpongkiat, recipients of the KIDS FIRST: David L. Kirp Prize. 

Keynote: "Sanctuary & Educational Justice: Why Dismantling the Deportation Regime Must Be a Priority for All Advocates of Youth, Children & Families" by Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales, Associate Professor of Education, University of San Francisco 

05/03/2019

Monica Muñoz Martinez: Lives, Not Metadata: Possibilities and Limits of Mapping Violence

Monica Muñoz Martinez, Andrew Carnegie Fellow and the Stanley J. Bernstein Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnic Studies at Brown University

 Part of the ISSI Colloquia Series.

03/13/2019

Trevor Gardner : Immigrant Sanctuary as the “Old Normal”: A Brief History of Police Federalism

Trevor Gardner, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Washington, with Franklin E. Zimring, William G. Simon Professor of Law, UC Berkeley as respondant

Part of the ISSI Graduate Fellows Program Colloquia.

02/26/2019

Nikki Jones: The Chosen Ones: Black Men and the Politics of Redemption

Nikki Jones, Assistant Professor of African American Studies, UC Berkeley, with Clarence Ford, MPP as respondent

 Part of the ISSI Colloquia Series.

02/13/2019

ISSI Social Change Awards: Thomas I. Yamashita and David L. Kirp Prizes

ISSI Social Change Awards: Thomas I. Yamashita Prize & KIDS FIRST: David L. Kirp Prize Award Ceremony

Honoring Lauren Heidbrink, Elizabeth Clark-Rubio, Rassidatou Konate, Marisa L. Ahmed, Alankrita Dayal, and Yvonne Dorantes

Keynote: "Our Voice/Our Mobilization:The 21-foot Ladder for Life's 20-foot Borders"
by Dr. César A. CruzCo-Founder of Homies Empowerment and Bridge Fellow-TNTP

04/27/2018

Juan De Lara, Contested Logistics of Racial Capitalism...

Juan De Lara, Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, University of Southern California

04/19/2018

Michael Burawoy : Marxism Engages Bourdieu

Michael Burawoy, Professor, Department of Sociology, UC Berkeley

02/21/2018

George Breslauer : How Did US-Russian Relations Get So Bad and How Might They Be Improved?

George Breslauer, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Emeritus, UC Berkeley

02/07/2018

International Scholarships in Higher Education: Pathways to Social Change

Aryn Baxter, Assistant Research Professor and Director of the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program at Arizona State University

Anne Campbell, Assistant Professor, Graduate School of International Policy & Management, Middlebury Institute for International Studies

Joan Dassin (via Skype), Professor of International Education and Development, Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University

Robin Marsh, Senior Researcher, Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, UC Berkeley

Discussant: Victor Okoro, UC Berkeley Senior, Development Studies and Logic, MasterCard Foundation Scholar, Nigeria

11/15/2017

Clara Mantini-Briggs: Chronic Cultural Impossibility: Health as a Fundamental Social Right

Clara Mantini-Briggs, Departments of Anthropology and Demography, UC Berkeley

Even when health professionals embrace conceptions of health as a fundamental social right, health practitioners can embrace a framework that, in critical race scholar Denise Silva's terms, “produces and regulates human condition and establishes (morally and intellectually) a distinct kind of human being.” How can a professional commitment to prioritize the health of low-income racialized minority populations go hand-in-hand with efforts to justify the denial of effective and comprehensive health services? Wakahara de la Orqueta lies in the Delta Amacuro rainforest of eastern Venezuela, where indigenous Warao communities were affected by a cholera epidemic that started in August of 1992. Working there as a physician during the epidemic, I saw residents use their own hands, knowledge, and belief in new and better futures to face a preventable and treatable bacterial infection that can nonetheless kill in as little as eight hours, only to have health professionals literally crush their creative efforts. What was their logic? Paul Farmer has referred to appropriations of anthropological explanation by health professionals as "immodest claims of causality." Here I look more closely at such invocations of cultural reasoning by exploring how they emerge from what I refer to as an eternal recurrence of the syndrome of "chronic cultural impossibility."

11/08/2017

Franklin E. Zimring : " When Police Kill "

Franklin E. Zimring, William G. Simon Professor of Law, UC Berkeley

10/26/2017

Ann Swidler : The Romance and Reality of AIDS Altruism in Africa (10/4/17)

Ann Swidler, Professor Emerita, Sociology, UC Berkeley

10/04/2017

KIDS FIRST and FOUNDATIONS FOR CHANGE 2017 Award Ceremony

"KIDS FIRST: David L. Kirp Prize and FOUNDATIONS FOR CHANGE: Thomas I. Yamashita Prize 2017 Award Ceremony"

Honoring Nicola McClungArturo CortézCamila Cribb FabersunneDylan Bush, and Ankita Joshi

Keynote:
Writing, Resisting and Research: The Role of Scholarship During the Trump Presidency
by Pedro Noguera, Distinguished Professor of Education, UC Los Angeles

05/09/2017

Lisa K. Bates: "How It Slips Away/We Still Here: A Blues Geography of Black Portland"

Lisa K. Bates, Associate Professor, Director, Center for Urban Studies, Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning, Portland State University

with Carolina Reid, Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning, UC Berkeley, as respondent

Black Portland is often portrayed through metrics of disparity and deficiency, without reference to particular regional structures of opportunity and disenfranchisement, and without hearing the voices of Black Portlanders themselves. Professor Bates uses Clyde Woods’ framework of blues epistemology as Black ways of knowing geography in order to elucidate the place history and justice claims of Black Portland. Black Portlanders’ experience is at once highly particular and universal in its blues narrative of enclosure, displacement, and the desecration of sacred spaces, expressed through stories of what artist Sharita Towne calls “joyful hardships.” Professor Bates considers how an emancipatory planning process, the Portland People’s Plan, can shift from recognition--the blues story of what might have been but for racial oppression-- to reclamation. By asking Black Portlanders to imagine what it would look like if their city loved Black people, the planning creates a space for both a counter-narrative of community history and a collectively developed pathway towards a more just future.  

Part of the ISSI Graduate Fellows Seminar series.

Co-sponsored by Center for Research on Social Change, Center for Race and Gender, Institute of Urban and Regional Development, Department of City and Regional Planning, and Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, UC Berkeley

04/06/2017

Juan Herrera: "Geographies of Activism: Cartographic Memory and Community Practices of Care"

Juan Herrera, PhD, Assistant Professor, Ethnic Studies, School of Language, Culture, and Society, Oregon State University 

Chris Zepeda-Millán, Assistant Professor and Chair, Center for Research on Social Change, UC Berkeley as a respondent

Part of the ISSI Graduate Fellows Seminar series.

Co-sponsored by Center for Ethnographic Research, Department of Ethnic Studies, Institute of Urban and Regional Development and Center for Latino Research Policy, UC Berkeley

03/15/2017

Samuel Cohn : "The Emotional Lives of Epidemics"

Samuel Cohn, Professor, Medieval History, University of Glasgow, UK

From an interdisciplinary array of scholars, a consensus has emerged: invariably, epidemics in past times provoked class hatred, blamed the ‘other’, and victimized the victims of epidemic diseases. Such hate and violence, moreover, more readily erupted when diseases were mysterious without known cures or preventive measures. The evidence for these proclamations, however, rests on a handful of examples--the Black Death, the Great Pox at the end of the sixteenth century, cholera riots of the 1830s, and AIDS, centred almost exclusively on the U.S. experience. From investigating thousands of descriptions of epidemics reaching back to one during Pharaoh Mempses’s First Dynasty (c. 2920 BCE) to the distrust and violence that erupted with Ebola in 2014-15, I argue that the trajectory and essence of epidemics' socio-psychological consequences across time differ radically from present notions. First, historians post-AIDS have missed a fundamental ingredient of the history of Epidemics. Instead of sparking hate and blame across time, epidemics have shown a remarkable power to unify societies across class, race, ethnicity, and religion and to spur self-sacrifice and compassion. Second, instead of spurring hate and violence when diseases were mysterious, that is, almost without exception before the ‘Laboratory Revolution’ of the late nineteenth century, modernity was the great incubator of a disease-hate nexus. Third, even with those diseases that have provoked hate as with smallpox, poliomyelitis, plague, and cholera, blaming ‘the other’ or victimizing diseased victims was rare. Instead, the history of epidemics and their socio-psychological consequences is more varied and richer than historians and pundits have heretofore allowed.

Part of the ISSI Colloquia Series.

Co-sponsored by Berkeley Center for Social Medicine

11/09/2016

Keramet Reiter : "23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary​ Confinement"

Keramet Reiter, Assistant Professor, Criminology, Law & Society and Law, UC Irvine 

With an introduction by Jonathan Simon, Adrian A. Kragen Professor of Law, UC Berkeley 

Commentators: 
Francisco Casique, Lecturer, Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley 

Rebecca McLennan, Associate Professor, History, UC Berkeley  

Franklin E. Zimring, William G. Simon Professor, Law, UC Berkeley 

Originally meant to be brief and exceptional, solitary confinement in U.S. prisons has become long term and common. Prisoners in solitary spend twenty three hours a day in featureless cells, with no visitors or human contact for years on end. They are held entirely at administrators’ discretion, with no judges or juries involved. In 23/7,legal scholar Keramet Reiter tells the history of an original “supermax,” California’s Pelican Bay State Prison, where extreme conditions sparked statewide hunger strikes in 2011 and 2013—the latter involving nearly 30,000 prisoners. Reiter describes how the Pelican Bay prison was created—with literally no legislative oversight—as a panicked response to the perceived rise of black radicalism in California prisons in the 1970s. Through stories of gang bosses, small-time parolees, and others, she portrays the arbitrary manner in which prisoners are chosen for solitary confinement, held for years, and routinely released directly onto the streets. Here we see the social costs and mental havoc of years in isolation. The product of fifteen years of research in and about prisons, this book is instant required reading on a topic that increasingly commands national attention.

 2240 Piedmont Avenue, Berkeley, CA

Sponsored by Center for the Study of Law and Society

Co-sponsored by Center for Research on Social Change and Human Rights Center

11/03/2016

Erica Kohl-Arenas : "The Self-Help Myth: How Philanthropy Fails to Alleviate Poverty

Erica Kohl-Arenas, Assistant Professor of Nonprofit Management, The New School

Can philanthropy alleviate inequality? Do antipoverty programs work on the ground? In this eye-opening analysis, Erica Kohl-Arenas bores deeply into how these issues play out in California’s Central Valley, which is one of the wealthiest agricultural production regions in the world and also home to the poorest people in the United States.  Through the lens of a provocative set of case studies, The Self-Help Myth reveals how philanthropy maintains systems of inequality by attracting attention to the behavior of poor people while shifting the focus away from structural inequities and relationships of power that produce poverty.  In Fresno County, for example, which has a $5.6 billion-plus agricultural industry, migrant farm workers depend heavily on food banks, religious organizations, and family networks to feed and clothe their families.  Foundation professionals espouse well-intentioned, hopeful strategies to improve the lives of the poor.  These strategies contain specific ideas—in philanthropy terminology, “theories of change”— that rely on traditional American ideals of individualism and hard work, such as self-help, civic participation, and mutual prosperity.  But when used in partnership with well-defined limits around what foundations will and will not fund, these ideals become fuzzy concepts promoting professional and institutional behaviors that leave relationships of poverty and inequality untouched.

Wildavsky Conference Room, ISSI, 2538 Channing Way, UC Berkeley

03/31/2016

Sam Friedman: "The Class Pay Gap in Higher Professional and Managerial Occupations

Sam Friedman, Assistant Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science

The hidden barriers, or 'gender pay gap', preventing women from earning equivalent incomes to men is well documented. Yet in this talk we demonstrate that, in Britain, there is also a comparable 'class origin pay gap' in higher professional and managerial occupations. We find that even when those from working-class backgrounds are successful in entering high-status occupations, they earn sixteen percent less, on average, than those from privileged backgrounds. This class-origin pay gap translates to up to £7,350 ($11,000) lower annual earnings. This difference is partly explained by the upwardly mobile being employed in smaller firms and working outside London, but it remains substantial even net of a variety of important predictors of earnings. These findings illustrate how, even beyond occupational entry, the socially mobile often face a significant and previously undetected earnings "class ceiling" within high-status occupations. 

Part of the ISSI Colloquia Series.

02/16/2016

Torsten Heinemann: "Biotechnologies and Immigration"

Torsten Heinemann, Professor of Sociology, Institute of Sociology, Universität Hamburg

Since the 1990s, many countries around the world have begun to use DNA analysis to establish biological relatedness in family reunification cases. To be reunited, family members have to prove their family status by official documents. Even if applicants possess the required documents, immigration authorities often reject the information as they question the authenticity of the documents. In this context, many countries resort to DNA tests to resolve cases in which they consider the information presented on family relations to be incomplete or unsatisfactory. In this talk, I present the results of an international research project on the use of DNA testing for family reunification in Europe and will compare them with the situation in the USA. I outline general trends of DNA analysis for family reunification and analyze the societal and political implications of parental testing in this context. I argue that DNA analyses for family reunification establish and strengthen a biological family model which is in contrast to the more pluralistic and social concepts of family in many societies in Europe and North America. I will then relate my findings to the ongoing debate on biological citizenship and show that biological criteria play an important role in decision-making on citizenship rights in nation-states. I argue that the use of parental testing for immigration endorses a biological concept of the family that is mobilized to diminish citizenship rights.The argument is based on an extensive document analysis as well as interviews with representatives of international governmental organizations, international and national NGOs and immigration authorities, lawyers specializing in immigration law, geneticists and those applying for family reunification.

Co-sponsored by the Berkeley Center for Social Medicine

10/20/2015

Michael Dumas: "Antiblackness and Black Futurity in Research on Urban Communities and Schooling"

Michael Dumas, Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Education and African American Studies, UC Berkeley

Hegemonic notions of race, multiculturalism and diversity proffer an understanding of social progress that is generally linear, gradual, steady and earnest. The story we tell ourselves is that we are becoming ever more democratic and tolerant, that we are more sophisticated in our ability to synthesize and analyze information about race and racism, and that we are more committed to racial equity, justice and opportunity than ever before. However, in this historical moment, we also witness increasing economic inequality along racial lines, nearly weekly stories of anti-Black violence and death, massive urban deterritorialization and dispersal, erasing Black homeplaces and priming these spaces for white accumulation. Through it all, the discourse in the public sphere suggests an increasing sense of justification of economic and social inequality, a sense of corporate and white entitlement to (dis)possession of land, and a seething disgust and disregard for the lives of Black people. In this talk, Professor Dumas wants to briefly explore what it means to research and document contradictory historical moment(s) of official anti-racist progress and white innocence, on the one hand, and on the other hand, enduring white defensiveness and racial fragility in the face of material and psychic Black suffering. Most importantly, how do we refuse hegemonic constructions of historical racial memory in our own work, and how do we acknowledge and honor attempts by insurgent Black subjects to refuse antiblackness and put forward alternative notions of Black historicity and futurity?

09/24/2015

William Domhoff: "The Triumph of the Corporate Rich and Why They Succeeded"

William Domhoff, Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Research Professor of Sociology, University of California Santa Cruz

Part of the ISSI Colloquia Speaker Series.

04/14/2015

Gerardo Sandoval: "Shadow Transnationalism"

Gerardo Sandoval, Assistant Professor of Planning, Public Policy & Management, University of Oregon

Part of the ISSI Colloquia Speaker Series.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Research on Social Change

02/24/2015

Children at the Border, Children at the Margins: Health, Responsibility, and Immigration

Stefano M. Bertozzi, Dean and Professor of Health Policy & Management, Public Health, UC Berkeley

Lariza Dugan-Cuadra, Executive Director, CARECEN Central American Resource Center

Seth Holmes, Assistant Professor, Public Health and Medical Anthropology, UC Berkeley

Rubén Martínez, Journalist and Author of Desert America, Crossing Over, and The New Americans

Casey Peek, Producer of “New World Border”

Adrienne Pine, Assistant Professor, Anthropology, American University

Patricia Baquedano-López, Chair, Center for Latino Policy Research, and Associate Professor, Education, UC Berkeley, as moderator

Sponsored by Berkeley Center for Social Medicine and Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society. Co-sponsored by Center for Latino Policy Research, Institute for the Study of Societal Issues and School of Public Health

11/13/2014

Blas Pérez Henríquez, “Climate-Smart Policy”

Blas Pérez Henríquez, Director, Center for Environmental Public Policy, UC Berkeley

Moderator: Martín Sánchez-Jankowski, Director, Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, and Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley

Part of the series "Rising Tide; Sinking Ships: Climate Change and Inequality"

10/24/2014

Jon Krosnick, “Inequality and Public Opinion on Global Warming”

Jon Krosnick, Frederic O. Glover Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences, Stanford

Moderator: Martín Sánchez-Jankowski, Director, Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, and Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley

Part of "Rising Tide; Sinking Ships: Climate Change and Inequality"

10/24/2014

Cristiana Giordano: "Political Therapeutics in Italy "

Cristiana Giordano, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, UC Davis

09/30/2014

Cristina Mora: "Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American"

Cristina Mora, Assistant Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley

09/16/2014

"Breaking Barriers, Building Community: 35 Years of Training Social Change Scholars"

Conference Welcome and Keynote

May 2, 2014

Jane Mauldon, Interim Director, Institute for the Study of Societal Issues

Claude Steele, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, UC Berkeley

Troy Duster, Chancellor's Professor, UC Berkeley

Engaging Communities As Partners For Change: Race, Space, Place

Breaking Barriers, Building Community: Panel 1: “Engaging Communities as Partners for Change: Race, Space, Place”

May 2, 2014

Moderator: Michael Omi, Associate Professor, Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley         

Speakers:

Teresa Córdova, Professor, Urban Planning and Policy, and Director, Great Cities Institute, University of Illinois at Chicago

Hector Fernando Burga, Lecturer, Urban Studies and Planning, San Francisco State University; Visiting Scholar, ISSI

Eleanor Ramsey, President, Mason Tillman Associates

"Race and the Material World: Bodies and Buildings"

Breaking Barriers, Building Community: Panel 2: Race and the Material World: Bodies and Buildings

May 2, 2014

Moderator: David Montejano, Professor, Ethnic Studies and History, UC Berkeley

Speakers:

Willow Lung-Amam, Assistant Professor, Architecture Planning and Preservation, University of Maryland

Maxine Craig, Associate Professor, Women and Gender Studies, UC Davis

Stephen Small, Associate Professor, African American Studies, UC Berkeley

"Street, School, Work: Sites of Organizing and (Il)legality"

Breaking Barriers, Building Community: Panel 3: Street, School, Work: Sites of Organizing and Il(legality)

Moderator and Closing Remarks: Rachel Moran, Dean and Michael J. Connell Distinguished Professor of Law, School of Law, UCLA

Speakers:

Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales, Assistant Professor, Education, University of San Francisco

Victor Rios, Associate Professor, Sociology, UC Santa Barbara

Jennifer Chun, Associate Professor, Sociology, University of Toronto

05/02/2014

Doran Larson: "Fourth City: The American Prison Writer as Witness"

Doran Larson, Professor of English, Hamilton College

with responses from Jonathan SimonAdrian A. Kragen, Professor of Law and Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Society, UC Berkeley

and Patricia Penn HildenProfessor Emerita, Department of Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley

04/02/2014

Steven Raphael "Why Are So Many Americans in Prison?"

Steven Raphael, Professor of Public Policy, Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley

02/19/2014

"A New Movement Era? Reflections by Frances Fox Piven"

Frances Fox Piven, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, CUNY Graduate Center

Moderated by Catherine Albiston, Professor of Law, Berkeley School of Law

02/16/2014

Edward "Ted" Miguel "Understanding Ethnic Cooperation: Evidence From Experiments in East Africa"

Edward Miguel, Oxfam Professor in Environmental and Resource Economics and Faculty Director of the Center for Effective Global Action, UC Berkeley

11/20/2013

Kelly Knight "Neurocratic Futures in the Disability Economy"

Kelly Knight, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, History, and Social Medicine, UCSF School of Medicine

10/23/2013

Cihan Tugal "Marketization of Good Works: Rival Dispositions of Caring in Egypt and Turkey"

Cihan Tugal, Associate Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley

10/02/2013

Forecasting Cuban Economic Reforms

Part of the series "Cuba and California: Prospects for Change and Opportunity"

10/23/2012

The Federal Landscape and Cuba: Barbara Lee

Barbara Lee (D-CA), U.S. Congresswoman

Part of the series "Cuba and California: Prospects for Change and Opportunity"

10/23/2012

Cuba and the Golden State: Exploring New Opportunities

Roundtable Discussion

Part of the series "Cuba and California: Prospects for Change and Opportunity"

10/23/2012

Political and Social Developments in Cuba

Moderated by Cristina Mora, Assistant Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley

Rafael Hernandez, Publisher and Editor of Temas

Katherine Gordy, Assistant Professor of Political Science, San Francisco State University 

Arturo Lopez-Levy, Research Associate, Josef Korbel, School of International Studies, University of Denver

Part of the series "Cuba and California: Prospects for Change and Opportunity"

10/23/2012

US-Cuban Relationship: Carlos Alzugaray Treto

Carlos Alzugaray Treto, Professor, Center for Hemispheric and United States Studies at University of Havana

Part of the series "Cuba and California: Prospects for Change and Opportunity"

10/23/2012