Social Sciences (Faculty & Staff)

In her many years of fieldwork in rural central India, UC Berkeley Anthropology Professor Aarti Sethi pondered what could make a real difference in the lives of people there. She realized the answer was knowledge: a public library system, an asset scarcely available in the region, which would open doors to literacy...

What’s a good job for formerly incarcerated people?

You often hear this mantra from people in corrections: Get a job, any job. Work will reduce your risk of going back behind bars. As a result, people coming out of prison feel pushed to take jobs that have difficult schedules, low pay, no benefits or poor working conditions.

That’s bad advice. In my research with other scholars, we’ve found that formerly incarcerated people just churn through jobs like that. Indeed,...

Anatomical skeletal remains have been used in science and medical classrooms around the world for centuries. But students don’t know the names or any information about the individuals, let alone the dark history of their origins.

A new commentary from UC...

UC Berkeley’s African American Studies (AAS) Department launched a groundbreaking project this week with a $100,000 Affirming Multivocal Humanities grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Banned Scholars Project is a direct response to increasing restrictions on academic freedom, particularly in the fields of critical race theory, DEI and gender studies. It was spearheaded by AAS professors Michael M. Cohen, Tianna S. Paschel and Ula Taylor; department chair Nikki Jones; and managed by staffer Barbara Montano.

The Mellon Foundation,...