Social Sciences

Beyond the barbecues, fireworks and other festivities, the United States’ 250th birthday was cause for many Americans to reflect on the nation’s founding, identity and future.

While many stories retold around the Fourth emphasize gritty colonists fighting for the ideals of freedom against a vast British Empire — stories populated with tri-corner hats, hand-sewn flags and crates of dumped tea — historians continue to examine the more complex histories behind the founding and the events that followed for the next 250 years. They challenge us to...

History Professor Mark Brilliant authored an op-ed in The Mercury News titled, "America is always a work in progress."

The U.S. celebrated its 250th birthday with the level of patriotism at a new low and the partisan divide over who feels it at a new high. This growing sense of “national shame,” ...

UC Berkeley is joining forces with Nancy Pelosi, the first female speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, to launch a new, nonpartisan institute dedicated to strengthening American democracy and advancing solutions to the country’s most pressing challenges.

The Nancy Pelosi Institute for Representative Democracy, or NPI, will be a hub for research, teaching and civic engagement rooted in a shared commitment to advancing the public good. Through faculty research initiatives, undergraduate courses and a visiting fellows program, the institute will explore what impedes progress...

The U.S. Supreme Court this week reaffirmed the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship, rejecting President Donald Trump’s attempt to end the longstanding practice of granting citizenship to nearly all children born on U.S. soil.

In a 6-3 decision, the Court held that Trump's executive order violated the Fourteenth Amendment, preserving a principle that has defined American citizenship for more...