Social Sciences

In their multimedia project, por vida // for life, UC Berkeley Geography and Conservation Studies senior Jacqueline Canchola-Martinez documents the lived experiences of Latinx communities facing environmental injustice in the Central Valley. The College of Natural Resources Travel Grant, a LIFT Arts Development Grant, and the Brian Gialketsis SERQueer Scholarship helped make the project possible.

Canchola-Martinez noted that the funding is special in recognizing art as a research tool, since it is still...

If you haven’t heard of Fred Ross before, you’ve likely heard of the legendary activists he helped train, like Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. Drawing on organizing tactics still used today, such as house meetings and voter registration campaigns, Ross helped secure pivotal racial justice victories, like the election of Los Angeles’s first Latino council member in 1949 and the desegregation of schools in California’s Citrus Belt in 1947. Born in 1910, he was a behind-the-scenes force for civil rights and labor organizing throughout much of the 20th century.

His life and work are...

In mid-March five years ago, President Donald Trump tweeted about the threat of a “Chinese virus.” That month marked the official beginning of a pandemic that went on longer and took a larger toll in the U.S. — on lives, the economy, mental health and our social fabric — than a naive public could anticipate. And it sparked a...

Cynthia Larsen ’88 J.D. ’91 is a big Cal fan. The former teacher and current academic support director met her husband at a punk show at Cal, and the couple named their daughter after architect and famous alum Julia Morgan.

When Larsen returned to the Bay Area from living in Virginia for 25 years, one of the first things she did was reconnect with UC Berkeley. This connection led Larsen to join and eventually co-chair...