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 training and supporting new generations of social change scholars.

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Grants for UCB Students Researching the Right Wing

Applications due December 8, 2025

Recent Stories

What RFK Jr.’s Support for Psychedelic Therapy Means for Its Future

November 20, 2025

Marlena Robbins, a Graduate Fellow at the Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues, was a guest on KQED Forum. She commented that the intersection of psychedelic medicine with Indigenous knowledge frameworks creates a legacy of biopiracy and bioprospecting: "Going into Indigenous communities and extracting ceremony, medicine, knowledge systems, stories, songs and then bringing it back to the market for mass...

Global Social Medicine: A Case Study Approach

November 20, 2025

The first two articles in a year-long series in The Lancet are now published. The series, Cases in Global Social Medicine, is led and sponsored by the Berkeley Center for Social Medicine (BCSM). The introduction to the series, "Translational social medicine for global health," addresses the question, "Why treat people and send them back to the conditions that make them sick?". Co-authors include BCSM affiliates Seth Holmes, Valéria Macedo, and Carlos...

In coal country, community works to heal political divisions

November 13, 2025

Center for Right-Wing Studies faculty affiliate Arlie Hochschild is featured in this PBS News Hour segment. Hochschild has spent more than seven years getting to know the people in Pike County, Kentucky, highlighting how the residents are grappling with growing political divisions in their community.

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