Mission

The initiative comprises three areas: 1) diversity and democracy; 2) educational policy; and 3) diversity and health disparities. With the involvement of researchers from a broad range of disciplines on the UC Berkeley campus, these three research clusters are creating programs.

Programs

• Diversity and Democracy Cluster: Irene Bloemraad (Sociology); Christopher Edley, Christopher Kutz, and Sarah Song (Berkeley Law School); Taeku Lee (Political Science); R. Jay Wallace (Philosophy). Other supporting faculty include Kathryn Abrams, David Lieberman, Goodwin Liu, Ian Haney Lopez, Rachel Moran, Eric Rakowski, Jonathan Simon, Leti Volpp (Boalt Hall School of Law); Janet Broughton, Hannah Ginsborg, Niko Kolodny, Wendy Brown, Bruce Cain, Pradeep Chhibber, Jack Citrin, Laura Stoker, Jason Wittenberg (Political Science); Claude Fischer, Mike Hout, Jerome Karabel, John Lie, Sam Lucas, Martin Sanchez-Jankowski, Sandra Smith, Kim Voss, Loic Wacquant, and Margaret Weir (Sociology).
  
  The central focus is the question of how liberal democratic principles and practices adapt to an increasingly diverse population. The questions of citizenship and membership that flow from this agenda are both descriptive and normative, and touch on the formation and fragmentation of personal and communal identities by which "we" and "they" are created, the disputes about the categorization of groups and the allocation of rights and benefits to such groups (based on race, ethnicity, religion, national origin or legal status), and the participation of all individuals and groups in civic and political life. These questions demand the interdisciplinary efforts of philosophers, social scientists, and legal scholars, of faculty who will collectively cover the following five areas: (1) the normative question of whether liberal democracy or alternative political theories can accommodate diversity and difference; (2) the legal frameworks within which questions of citizenship, rights, and representation are negotiated; (3) the social and political processes by which identities are formed and reconfigured; (4) the involvement of diverse communities in pluralist and contentious politics; (5) the incorporation of diverse communities in local and transnational civil society.
  
  
• Diversity and Health Disparities Cluster : Denise Herd (School of Public Health) and Meredith Minkler (School of Public Health), Rachel Morello-Frosch (College of Natural Resources, Public Health), Rucker Johnson (Public Policy), Lonnie Snowden (Social Welfare), Kurt Organista (Social Welfare), and Rosemary Joyce (Anthropology). This cluster involves the biological and life sciences, social sciences, and the professional schools, specifically the Goldman School of Public Policy, the School of Social Welfare, and the Anthropology Department, in addition to the School of Public Health.
  
  The focus is on areas salient to socioeconomic, racial and ethnic disparities in health, including health, social inequalities, and medical human rights; neighborhoods and the social ecology of health disparities; community-based interventions to eliminate health disparities; and public policy and health disparities. In pursuit of these research objectives, the initiative will establish or expand upon active collaborations with the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and the School of Environmental Design.
  
  
• Educational Policy Collaboration Research Approach: Charles Henry (African American Studies); Christopher Edley (Boalt Hall School of Law); Michael Omi (Ethnic Studies); Norton Grubb (Graduate School of Education); Na'ilah Nasir, GSE/AAS; Janelle Scott, GSE/AAS and David Pearson (Graduate School of Education).
  
  The faculty members hired for these positions are strongly rooted in K-12 educational policy, and will concentrate research on two closely related areas: (1) K-12 policy and school reform related to educational inequality and (2) K-12 student context, community collaboration and policy impacts. These research agendas will address the intersections of educational policy, racial inequities, and immigration policy, particularly as they affect the state of California. When research projects are completed, there will be special efforts to deliver the resulting intellectual capital in useful forms to the appropriate communities and audiences, and to inject the all too frequently absent voices of communities of color into local, state, and federal education policy discussions.