Bridging One
Fundamentals of Bridging
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LevelAll Levels
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Video time50 minutes
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Writing exercises2
Preview illustration by Gustaf Öhrnell Hjalmars
This lesson begins with a discussion of the risks and opportunities of bridging with renowned feminist philosopher Judith Butler and OBI director john a. powell. You’ll then go deeper into concepts like breaking, an essential feature of the process of othering; the role of curiosity with expert bridger Monica Guzman; and the essential role bridging plays in building cultures of belonging with philosopher bell hooks.
Course Guide
Sarah Crowell
In this course, you will learn about:
1
Bridging
What is bridging, why is it important and what can it help you do?
2
Breaking
What is breaking and how does it perpetuate systems of othering?
3
Courage
What are the risks and benefits of bridging, and what is the role of courage?
The Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley brings together researchers, organizers, stakeholders, communicators, and policymakers to identify and eliminate the barriers to an inclusive, just, and sustainable society in order to create transformative change.
Copyright © 2023, Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley
bell hooks was an American scholar and activist whose work examined the connections between race, gender, and class. She often explored the varied perceptions of Black women and Black women writers and the development of feminist identities.
hooks grew up in a segregated community of the American South. At age 19 she began writing what would become her first full-length book, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, which was published in 1981. She studied English literature at Stanford University (B.A., 1973), the University of Wisconsin (M.A., 1976), and the University of California, Santa Cruz (Ph.D., 1983).
hooks assumed her pseudonym, the name of her great-grandmother, to honor female legacies; she preferred to spell it in all lowercase letters to focus attention on her message rather than herself. She taught English and ethnic studies at the University of Southern California from the mid-1970s, African and Afro-American studies at Yale University during the ’80s, women’s studies at Oberlin College and English at the City College of New York during the 1990s and early 2000s. In 2004 she became a professor in residence at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky. The bell hooks Institute was founded at the college in 2014.
In the 1980s hooks established a support group for Black women called the Sisters of the Yam, which she later used as the title of a book, published in 1993, celebrating Black sisterhood. Her other writings included Feminist Theory from Margin to Center (1984), Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (1989), Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992), Killing Rage: Ending Racism (1995), Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies (1996), Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work (1999), Where We Stand: Class Matters (2000), Communion: The Female Search for Love (2002), and the companion books We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity (2003) and The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (2004). Writing Beyond Race: Living Theory and Practice was published in 2012. She also wrote a number of autobiographical works, such as Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood (1996) and Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life (1997).Adapted from Encyclopaedia Britannica.
In the 1980s hooks established a support group for Black women called the Sisters of the Yam, which she later used as the title of a book, published in 1993, celebrating Black sisterhood. Her other writings included Feminist Theory from Margin to Center (1984), Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (1989), Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992), Killing Rage: Ending Racism (1995), Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies (1996), Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work (1999), Where We Stand: Class Matters (2000), Communion: The Female Search for Love (2002), and the companion books We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity (2003) and The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (2004). Writing Beyond Race: Living Theory and Practice was published in 2012. She also wrote a number of autobiographical works, such as Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood (1996) and Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life (1997).Adapted from Encyclopaedia Britannica.
bell
hooks
bell appears in
john a. powell (who spells his name in lowercase in the belief that we should be "part of the universe, not over it, as capitals signify") is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of civil rights, civil liberties, structural racism, housing, poverty, and democracy. He is the Director of the Othering & Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, a research institute that brings together scholars, community advocates, communicators, and policymakers to identify and eliminate the barriers to an inclusive, just, and sustainable society and to create transformative change toward a more equitable world.
john holds the Robert D. Haas Chancellor’s Chair in Equity and Inclusion and is a Professor of Law, African American Studies, and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. Previously, he was the Executive Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University where he also held the Gregory H. Williams Chair in Civil Rights & Civil Liberties at the Moritz College of Law. He has won several awards including the 2021 Housing Hero Award, 2021 John W. Gardner Leadership Award, and the Convergence Bridge-Building Leadership Award for 2022.
He regularly appears in major media offering expert insights on a host of issues. Recent appearances include NPR and WYNC's On The Media in an episode about free speech and the constitution, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver in an episode about housing segregation, and CBS Evening News where john discussed the Institute's frameworks like Targeted Universalism. john gives frequent keynotes talks at a range of institutions such as the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Washington State University, the Office of the Minnesota Attorney General, Nonprofit Quarterly, Project Democracy, the Gates Foundation, Habitat for Humanity, the InterFaith Leadership Council, the Permanente Medical Group, and many more.
john has written extensively on a number of issues including structural racism, racial justice, concentrated poverty, opportunity-based housing, voting rights, affirmative action in the United States, South Africa and Brazil, racial and ethnic identity, spirituality and social justice, and the needs of citizens in a democratic society. He is the author of several books, including his most recent work, Racing to Justice: Transforming our Concepts of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society.
The founder and director of the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota, john has also served as Director of Legal Services in Miami, Florida and was the National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, where he was instrumental in developing educational adequacy theory. john led the development of an “opportunity-based” model that connects affordable housing to education, health, health care, and employment and is well-known for his work developing the frameworks of “targeted universalism” and “othering and belonging” to effect equity-based interventions.
john has lived and worked in Africa, where he was a consultant to the governments of Mozambique and South Africa, and has also worked in India and Brazil. He is one of the co-founders of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council and serves on the board of several national and international organizations. He is also a member of the New Pluralists. john has taught at numerous law schools including Harvard and Columbia University.
Follow john on Twitter @profjohnapowell and read his blogs on HuffPo.
john a. powell (who spells his name in lowercase in the belief that we should be "part of the universe, not over it, as capitals signify") is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of civil rights, civil liberties, structural racism, housing, poverty, and democracy. He is the Director of the Othering & Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, a research institute that brings together scholars, community advocates, communicators, and policymakers to identify and eliminate the barriers to an inclusive, just, and sustainable society and to create transformative change toward a more equitable world.
john holds the Robert D. Haas Chancellor’s Chair in Equity and Inclusion and is a Professor of Law, African American Studies, and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. Previously, he was the Executive Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University where he also held the Gregory H. Williams Chair in Civil Rights & Civil Liberties at the Moritz College of Law. He has won several awards including the 2021 Housing Hero Award, 2021 John W. Gardner Leadership Award, and the Convergence Bridge-Building Leadership Award for 2022.
john holds the Robert D. Haas Chancellor’s Chair in Equity and Inclusion and is a Professor of Law, African American Studies, and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. Previously, he was the Executive Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University where he also held the Gregory H. Williams Chair in Civil Rights & Civil Liberties at the Moritz College of Law. He has won several awards including the 2021 Housing Hero Award, 2021 John W. Gardner Leadership Award, and the Convergence Bridge-Building Leadership Award for 2022.
He regularly appears in major media offering expert insights on a host of issues. Recent appearances include NPR and WYNC's On The Media in an episode about free speech and the constitution, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver in an episode about housing segregation, and CBS Evening News where john discussed the Institute's frameworks like Targeted Universalism. john gives frequent keynotes talks at a range of institutions such as the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Washington State University, the Office of the Minnesota Attorney General, Nonprofit Quarterly, Project Democracy, the Gates Foundation, Habitat for Humanity, the InterFaith Leadership Council, the Permanente Medical Group, and many more.
john has written extensively on a number of issues including structural racism, racial justice, concentrated poverty, opportunity-based housing, voting rights, affirmative action in the United States, South Africa and Brazil, racial and ethnic identity, spirituality and social justice, and the needs of citizens in a democratic society. He is the author of several books, including his most recent work, Racing to Justice: Transforming our Concepts of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society.
The founder and director of the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota, john has also served as Director of Legal Services in Miami, Florida and was the National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, where he was instrumental in developing educational adequacy theory. john led the development of an “opportunity-based” model that connects affordable housing to education, health, health care, and employment and is well-known for his work developing the frameworks of “targeted universalism” and “othering and belonging” to effect equity-based interventions.
john has lived and worked in Africa, where he was a consultant to the governments of Mozambique and South Africa, and has also worked in India and Brazil. He is one of the co-founders of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council and serves on the board of several national and international organizations. He is also a member of the New Pluralists. john has taught at numerous law schools including Harvard and Columbia University.
Follow john on Twitter @profjohnapowell and read his blogs on HuffPo.
john has written extensively on a number of issues including structural racism, racial justice, concentrated poverty, opportunity-based housing, voting rights, affirmative action in the United States, South Africa and Brazil, racial and ethnic identity, spirituality and social justice, and the needs of citizens in a democratic society. He is the author of several books, including his most recent work, Racing to Justice: Transforming our Concepts of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society.
The founder and director of the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota, john has also served as Director of Legal Services in Miami, Florida and was the National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, where he was instrumental in developing educational adequacy theory. john led the development of an “opportunity-based” model that connects affordable housing to education, health, health care, and employment and is well-known for his work developing the frameworks of “targeted universalism” and “othering and belonging” to effect equity-based interventions.
john has lived and worked in Africa, where he was a consultant to the governments of Mozambique and South Africa, and has also worked in India and Brazil. He is one of the co-founders of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council and serves on the board of several national and international organizations. He is also a member of the New Pluralists. john has taught at numerous law schools including Harvard and Columbia University.
Follow john on Twitter @profjohnapowell and read his blogs on HuffPo.
john a.
powell
john guides our Introduction to Othering & Belonging's Key Frameworks course.
Additionally, he appears in the courses named below.
Bridging 1: The Risk & Possibility of Bridging, john a. powell and Judith Butler in conversation
Bridging 2: john a. powell on power and john a. powell on levels of bridging
Structural Racism: White Space, Black Hood
Bridging 2: john a. powell on power and john a. powell on levels of bridging
Structural Racism: White Space, Black Hood
Judith Butler is Distinguished Professor in the Graduate School and formerly the Maxine Elliot Chair in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley. They received their Ph.D. in Philosophy from Yale University in 1984.
They are the author of several books: Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France (1987), Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (1993), The Psychic Life of Power: Theories of Subjection (1997), Excitable Speech (1997), Antigone’s Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death (2000), Precarious Life: Powers of Violence and Mourning (2004); Undoing Gender (2004), Who Sings the Nation-State?: Language, Politics, Belonging (with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in 2008), Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (2009), Is Critique Secular? (co-written with Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, and Saba Mahmood, 2009), Sois Mon Corps (2011), co-authored with Catherine Malabou, Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism (2012), Dispossession: The Performative in the Political (co-authored with Athena Athanasiou 2013), Senses of the Subject and Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (2015), and a co-edited volume, Vulnerability in Resistance, with Duke University Press (2015), The Force of Nonviolence (2020), and What World is This? A Pandemic Phenomenology (2022). Their books have been translated into more than twenty-seven languages.
They served as a founding director, with Martin Jay, of the Critical Theory Program at UC Berkeley. They received a Mellon Foundation grant to found and developed the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs (2016-2020) where they serve now as Co-Chair of the Board and editorial member of Critical Times. Earlier, they served as Department Chair of the Department of Rhetoric in 1998-2003 and 2006-7, and the Acting Chair of the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, 2002-3. They also served as the Chair of the Board of the University of California Humanities Research Center in Irvine. They were elected member of the Executive Council of the Modern Languages Association and chaired its committee on Committee on Academic Freedom and Professional Responsibilities before serving as President of the organization in 2020. They are also affiliated faculty with the Psychosocial MA Program at Birkbeck College University of London and teaches as the Hannah Arendt Chair at the European Graduate School in Sass Fee, Switzerland. They have taught as a Distinguished Visiting Professor in Philosophy at the New School University in 2020-2022. They will be the intellectual in residence at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2024.
Butler has been active in several human rights organizations, including the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York and the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace. They were the recipient of the Andrew Mellon Award for Distinguished Academic Achievement in the Humanities (2009-13) and received the Adorno Prize from the City of Frankfurt (2012) in honor of their contributions to feminist and moral philosophy, the Brudner Prize from Yale University for lifetime achievement in gay and lesbian studies, and was named the Albertus Magnus Professorship from the City of Cologne, Germany in 2016. They are the past recipient of several fellowships including Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Ford, American Council of Learned Societies, and was Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and at Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. They have given the Wellek Lectures at Irvine, the Carpenter Lectures at the University of Chicago, the Watts Lecture at the Nobel Museum in Stockholm, the Gauss Lectures at Princeton, the Messenger Lectures at Cornell, the Tanner Lectures at Yale University, and the annual Freud Lecture at the Freud Museum in Vienna. They have received 14 honorary degrees: Université Bordeaux-III, Université Paris-VII, Grinnell College, McGill University, University of St. Andrews, Université de Fribourg in Switzerland, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Liège Université, the Universidad de Costa Rica, Universidad de Guadalajara, Universidad de Chile, University of Belgrade, Universidad Veracruzana, and the Autonomous University of Mexico and appointed an Honorary fellow at Birkbeck University of London. In 2014, they were awarded the diploma of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters from the French Cultural Ministry and subsequently reappointed as Commandant. They served as well on the Advisory Committee of the Institute fuer Sozialforschung in Frankfurt. In 2015, they were made an “honorary geographer” by the American Association of Geographers and was elected as a corresponding fellow of the British Academy. They were also elected as member of the American Philosophical Society and elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019. In 2022, they received the Catalonia International Prize from the canton of Catalunya and the gold medal from the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid.
They are the author of several books: Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France (1987), Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (1993), The Psychic Life of Power: Theories of Subjection (1997), Excitable Speech (1997), Antigone’s Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death (2000), Precarious Life: Powers of Violence and Mourning (2004); Undoing Gender (2004), Who Sings the Nation-State?: Language, Politics, Belonging (with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in 2008), Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (2009), Is Critique Secular? (co-written with Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, and Saba Mahmood, 2009), Sois Mon Corps (2011), co-authored with Catherine Malabou, Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism (2012), Dispossession: The Performative in the Political (co-authored with Athena Athanasiou 2013), Senses of the Subject and Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (2015), and a co-edited volume, Vulnerability in Resistance, with Duke University Press (2015), The Force of Nonviolence (2020), and What World is This? A Pandemic Phenomenology (2022). Their books have been translated into more than twenty-seven languages.
They served as a founding director, with Martin Jay, of the Critical Theory Program at UC Berkeley. They received a Mellon Foundation grant to found and developed the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs (2016-2020) where they serve now as Co-Chair of the Board and editorial member of Critical Times. Earlier, they served as Department Chair of the Department of Rhetoric in 1998-2003 and 2006-7, and the Acting Chair of the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, 2002-3. They also served as the Chair of the Board of the University of California Humanities Research Center in Irvine. They were elected member of the Executive Council of the Modern Languages Association and chaired its committee on Committee on Academic Freedom and Professional Responsibilities before serving as President of the organization in 2020. They are also affiliated faculty with the Psychosocial MA Program at Birkbeck College University of London and teaches as the Hannah Arendt Chair at the European Graduate School in Sass Fee, Switzerland. They have taught as a Distinguished Visiting Professor in Philosophy at the New School University in 2020-2022. They will be the intellectual in residence at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2024.
Butler has been active in several human rights organizations, including the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York and the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace. They were the recipient of the Andrew Mellon Award for Distinguished Academic Achievement in the Humanities (2009-13) and received the Adorno Prize from the City of Frankfurt (2012) in honor of their contributions to feminist and moral philosophy, the Brudner Prize from Yale University for lifetime achievement in gay and lesbian studies, and was named the Albertus Magnus Professorship from the City of Cologne, Germany in 2016. They are the past recipient of several fellowships including Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Ford, American Council of Learned Societies, and was Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and at Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. They have given the Wellek Lectures at Irvine, the Carpenter Lectures at the University of Chicago, the Watts Lecture at the Nobel Museum in Stockholm, the Gauss Lectures at Princeton, the Messenger Lectures at Cornell, the Tanner Lectures at Yale University, and the annual Freud Lecture at the Freud Museum in Vienna. They have received 14 honorary degrees: Université Bordeaux-III, Université Paris-VII, Grinnell College, McGill University, University of St. Andrews, Université de Fribourg in Switzerland, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Liège Université, the Universidad de Costa Rica, Universidad de Guadalajara, Universidad de Chile, University of Belgrade, Universidad Veracruzana, and the Autonomous University of Mexico and appointed an Honorary fellow at Birkbeck University of London. In 2014, they were awarded the diploma of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters from the French Cultural Ministry and subsequently reappointed as Commandant. They served as well on the Advisory Committee of the Institute fuer Sozialforschung in Frankfurt. In 2015, they were made an “honorary geographer” by the American Association of Geographers and was elected as a corresponding fellow of the British Academy. They were also elected as member of the American Philosophical Society and elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019. In 2022, they received the Catalonia International Prize from the canton of Catalunya and the gold medal from the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid.
Judith
Butler
Judith appears in
Keith Hennesy was born in a mining town in Northern Ontario, Canada, lives in San Francisco, and tours internationally. He is an award-winning performer, choreographer, teacher and organizer. Hennessy directs Circo Zero, a laboratory for live performance that plays with genre and expectation. Rooted in dance, Hennessy’s work embodies a unique hybrid of performance art, music, visual and conceptual art, circus, and ritual.
Hennessy was a member of Sara Shelton Mann’s legendary Contraband (85-94), as well as the collaborative performance companies CORE (95-98) and the France-based Cahin-caha, cirque bâtard (98-02). His work is featured in several books and documentaries, including Composing While Dancing (Melinda Buckwalter, U of Wisconsin: 2010), How To Make Dances in an Epidemic (David Gere, Univ of Wisconsin: 2004), Gay Ideas (Richard Mohr, Beacon: 1992), and Dancers in Exile (RAPT Productions, 2000). Hennessy is a co-founder of 848 Community Space/CounterPULSE a thriving performance and culture space in San Francisco. He earned an MFA (Choreography) and PhD (Performance Studies) from UC Davis.
Hennessy's awards include the Sui Generis Award (2017), Guggenheim Fellowship (2017), United States Artist Kjenner Fellowship (2012), a Bilinski Fellowship (2011), a NY Bessie (2009) for Crotch, Isadora Duncan Dance Awards (1998, 2000, 2009) for performance, dance activism, and visual design, a Goldie (2007) and the Alpert/MacDowell Fellowship in Dance (2005). Keith has enjoyed residencies at The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, MANCC, and Djerassi. Keith’s 2016-17 collaborators include Peaches, Meg Stuart, Scott Wells, Jassem Hindi, J Jha, Annie Danger, Gerald Cassel, and the collaboratives Blank Map and Turbulence. Keith's recent teaching in universities, independent studios, and festivals includes VAC Foundation (Moscow), Ponderosa (Germany), FRESH (SF), HZT (Berlin), Movement Research (NYC), Impulstanz (Vienna), Portland State University, Sandberg Institute (Amsterdam), St. Mary's, and Warsaw Flow International CI Festival. Keith's writings have been published in Contact Quarterly, Movement Research Journal, Performance Research (UK), Society of Dance History Scholars Journal, Dance Theatre Journal (UK), SF MOMA's Open Space, Itch, Front, and In Dance.
Mónica Guzmán is Senior Fellow for Public Practice at Braver Angels, a nonprofit working to depolarize America, founder and CEO of Reclaim Curiosity, an organization working to build a more curious world; and author of I Never Thought Of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times.
Moni is the inaugural McGurn Fellow at the University of Florida, working with researchers at the UF College of Journalism and Communications and beyond to better understand ways to employ techniques described in her book to boost understanding. She was a 2019 fellow at the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, where she studied social and political division, and a 2016 fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, where she studied how journalists can better meet the needs of a participatory public.
Her work has been featured in The New York Times, the Glenn Beck Podcast, Reader's Digest, BookTV, and EconTalk, and she is an advisor for Starts With Us and the Generations Over Dinner project.
Before committing to the project of helping people understand each other across the political divide, Mónica cofounded the award-winning Seattle newsletter The Evergrey and led a national network of groundbreaking local newsletters as VP of Local for WhereBy.Us.
She was named one of the 50 most influential women in Seattle, served twice as a juror for the Pulitzer Prizes, and plays a barbarian named Shadrack in her besties' Dungeons & Dragons campaign.
Visit her website to learn more about her work.
Sarah Crowell is a dancer and choreographer who has taught dance, theater, mindfulness and violence prevention for over 35 years. She recently left her position as the Artistic Director at Destiny Arts Center in Oakland where she served in different capacities including Executive Director for 30 years. She founded and co-directed the Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company, which was the subject of two documentary films, and won the National Arts & Humanities Youth Program Award. Sarah has facilitated arts integration, violence prevention, cultural humility and team building professional development sessions with artists and educators since 2000, both locally and nationally. She is the recipient of many awards including the KPFA Peace award, the KQED Women’s History Local Hero award, and the National Guild for Community Arts Education Milestone award. She is a four-time finalist for a Tony Award for Excellence in Theater Education.
Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak.
Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains’. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California and University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Local Futures (Australia).
In July 2022, Dr. Akomolafe was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of University of California’s (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute, where he acts as the Forum’s “provocateur in residence”, guiding Forum members in rethinking and reimagining our collective work towards justice in ways that reject binary thinking and easy answers. He has also been appointed Senior Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany.
Read his introduction penned for the Democracy & Belonging Forum here. To learn more about his work, visit Bayo's website at here, and view the work of the Emergence Network here.
Ella Barrett has a deep love for building dynamic teams and innovative systems to create measurable social change. Her passion for social justice and teambuilding began in the woods of Timber, Oregon, where her family built a large community home around the core value of radical acceptance.
Ella’s earliest organizing focus was on developing innovative tactics to recruit, train and retain large, dedicated volunteer teams with the Oregon Student Association at the University of Oregon. Ella then managed the Leadership LAB project at the Los Angeles LGBT Center, where a team of more than 1,000 volunteers and staff collaborated to innovate new methods of voter persuasion and prejudice reduction and apply them on the ground to help win LGBT rights campaigns across the country.Most notably, Ella led the LAB’s collaboration with SAVE, Miami-Dade’s leading LGBT group, to develop and measure a deep canvass model that could reduce transphobia. David Broockman and Josh Kalla’s measurement of this project’s impact become the landmark study that brought deep canvassing into the national spotlight, proving that it had the power to lastingly reduce prejudice.
Learn more about her work at The New Conversations Initiative and the Deep Canvass Institute.
Learn more about her work at The New Conversations Initiative and the Deep Canvass Institute.
Akaya Windwood is on faculty for the Just Economy Institute, and is founder of the New Universal, which centers human wisdom in the wisdom of brown womxn.
Akaya facilitates transformation. She advises, trains, and consults on how change happens individually, organizationally, and societally. She was President of Rockwood Leadership Institute for many years, and directs the Growing Roots Fund, which supports young womxn’s finance and philanthropic learning and leadership based in generosity and interconnectedness.
Akaya received the 2020 Vision Award from Middlebury College, was one of Conscious Company’s 30 World Changing Women of 2018, and has been a featured speaker at the Stanford Social Innovation Institute, the Aspen Institute, and the New Zealand Philanthropy Summit conferences. She is an Ella Award recipient from the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and served on the Alameda County Human Rights Commission. Akaya is deeply committed to working for a fair and equitable global society while infusing a sense of purpose, delight, and wonder into everything we do.
She lives in Oakland, CA where she reads science fiction, makes sauerkraut, and relishes growing enormous squashes in her garden.
Find her on Twitter and LinkedIn.
ALOK (they/them) is a gender non-conforming writer and performance artist who was recently featured in HuffPo's “Culture Shifters '21” List.
Their distinctive style and poetic challenge to the gender binary has been internationally renowned. As a mixed-media artist ALOK uses poetry, prose, comedy, performance, design, and portraiture to explore themes of eugenics, trauma, belonging, and the human condition. They are the author of “Femme in Public” (2017) and “Beyond the Gender Binary” (2020). In 2019, they were honored as one of NBC’s “Pride 50” and Out Magazine’s “OUT 100.” They are currently an artist in residence at the Annette von Droste zu Hülshoff-Stiftung Foundation Center for Literature.
Find them on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and at their website.
ALOK
Akaya appears inBridging 2: Risk and Possibility of Bridging
Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw is the Deputy Director of Strategy and Program at the Othering and Belonging Institute. She is driven by the growth and development of people, teams, and systems. Whether in the role of mediator, community organizer, coach, executive director, or chief of staff, she has led by inviting people into liberatory practices of dialogue, bridging, authenticity, and power building. From her experience, when courageous conversation, storytelling, vulnerability, and self-reflection are paired with concrete and coordinated strategies, progress is made.
Since 2006, Ashlin has worked in a variety of capacities with the Faith in Action Network (previously the PICO National Network), equipping those closest to the pain with the tools and strategies to make structural change. She began as a Community Organizer in Colorado, then returned to her hometown of Sacramento where she served as the Executive Director of Sacramento ACT. Most recently, Ashlin was the Chief Formation Officer and then Chief of Staff with PICO California. During her tenure in organizing, she worked on countless campaigns including healthcare access, community benefits agreements, reinvestment of public funds, moving from punitive to restorative practices, immigration reform, and affordable housing, to name a few.
Ashlin received her BA in Political Science and Social Change and Development, and her MA in International Conflict Resolution. She lives in Sacramento with her husband Theodros and her 2 children Kayden and Davin.
Read more about her work here.
Read more about her work here.
Ashlin
Malouf-Gashaw
Ashlin appears inBridging 2: A Conversation with Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw
Bridging 3: Two Studies of Bridging Across Power
Bridging 3: Two Studies of Bridging Across Power
Huwaida Arraf is a Palestinian-American attorney and human rights activist. She received her Bachelor’s degrees from the University of Michigan, and her Juris Doctor from the American University Washington College of Law, where she focused her studies on international human rights and humanitarian law.
Over the past two decades Huwaida has been involved in a number of legal and grassroots initiatives for Palestinian rights. In 2001, she co-founded the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a Palestinian-led non-violent resistance movement, which has twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. From 2007-2008, Huwaida helped build the first accredited clinical legal education program in the Arab world, based at Al-Quds University. She was one of the initiators and organizers of the first delegation of lawyers to enter Gaza following Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009), and co-authored the report on their findings, "Onslaught: Israel's Attack on Gaza and the Rule of Law."
Huwaida is the former Chairperson of the Free Gaza Movement, and from August to December 2008, led 5 successful sea voyages to the Gaza Strip to confront and challenge Israel's illegal blockade on the 2 million Palestinians living there. She was one of the primary organizers of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and was traveling with it when it was lethally attacked by Israeli forces on 31 May 2010. In 2011, she was one of the six Palestinian Freedom Riders, who, inspired by the U.S. Civil Rights Movement’s Freedom Rides of the 1960s, attempted to ride segregated Israeli settler public transport, for which they were harassed then violently arrested.
Huwaida is currently based in Michigan where she practices civil rights law and continues to devote much of her time to activism on Palestine and other human rights and social justice issues. She is the co-chair of the National Lawyers Guild Palestine Subcommittee, and sits on a number of organizational boards, including New Generation for Palestine, Eyewitness Palestine and the Advisory Board of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. In 2020 she served as a Bernie Sanders delegate to the Democratic National Convention.
Dr. Ibram X. Kendi is a National Book Award-winning author of fourteen books for adults and children, including nine New York Times bestsellers—five of which were #1 New York Times bestsellers. Dr. Kendi is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, and the director of the BU Center for Antiracist Research. He is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a CBS News racial justice contributor.
Dr. Kendi is the author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, making him the youngest author to win that award. He also authored the international bestseller, How to Be an Antiracist, which was described in the New York Times as “the most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind.” Dr. Kendi’s other bestsellers include Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019, co-edited with Keisha Blain; How to Be a (Young) Antiracist, co-authored with Nic Stone; Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, co-authored with Jason Reynolds; and Antiracist Baby, illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky.
In 2020, Time magazine named Dr. Kendi one of the 100 Most Influential People in the world. He was awarded a 2021 MacArthur Fellowship, popularly known as the Genius Grant.
Read more about Dr. Kendi's work at his website.
In 2020, Time magazine named Dr. Kendi one of the 100 Most Influential People in the world. He was awarded a 2021 MacArthur Fellowship, popularly known as the Genius Grant.
Read more about Dr. Kendi's work at his website.
Josephine Ironshield Lakota is a co-founder and acting Board Member of Native American Coalition of Quad Cities. Josephine is also the co-founder of Sage Sisters of Solidarity, which is a grassroots organization created in the Quad Cities in Iowa and Illinois. Josephine and her family have been personally impacted by the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). The Sage Sisters work was inspired by this personal connection to DAPL and by water protectors in their resistance against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Working with Bold Iowa and Water-keepers of the Quad Cities, Sage Sisters have promoted renewable energy sources and for cultural, environmental and social justice.
Josephine Ironshield Lakota is from the Oglala Sioux Tribe located in the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota.
Josephine
Ironshield
Josephine appears in
Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She served three terms as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2019-2022 and is winner of Yale's 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry.
The author of ten books of poetry, including the highly acclaimed, Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years, several plays and children's books, and two memoirs, Crazy Brave and Poet Warrior, her many honors include the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the Ruth Lily Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Harjo delivered the 2021 Windham-Campbell Lecture at Yale, part of the virtual Windham-Campbell Prize Festival that year. That lecture was the basis for Catching the Light, published in 2022 by Yale University Press in the Why I Write series.
As a musician and performer, Harjo has produced seven award-winning music albums including her newest, I Pray for My Enemies. She served as Executive Editor of the anthology When the Light of the World was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through — A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry and the editor of Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry, the companion anthology to her signature Poet Laureate project.
She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Board of Directors Chair of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, and is the first Artist-in-Residence for Tulsa's Bob Dylan Center. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Find her on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook or at her website.
Harjo delivered the 2021 Windham-Campbell Lecture at Yale, part of the virtual Windham-Campbell Prize Festival that year. That lecture was the basis for Catching the Light, published in 2022 by Yale University Press in the Why I Write series.
As a musician and performer, Harjo has produced seven award-winning music albums including her newest, I Pray for My Enemies. She served as Executive Editor of the anthology When the Light of the World was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through — A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry and the editor of Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry, the companion anthology to her signature Poet Laureate project.
She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Board of Directors Chair of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, and is the first Artist-in-Residence for Tulsa's Bob Dylan Center. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Find her on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook or at her website.
Karma Mayet is based on Lenape land in Brooklyn, New York and originally from Chicago, of Mississippi heritage.
For the last 25 years, she has offered healing modalities grounded in Sacred Rootwork. As yoga practitioner and creator of the Rootsong™ practice, she shares the process of somatic improvisation to facilitate personal and communal healing and transformation. She is a Founding Member of The Wind & The Warrior, a healing arts collaborative. As poet, composer, performer, and teacher, Karma brings the same reverence for the Mystery to each modality. She has travelled across the U.S. and internationally, working in the theater with directors including Robert Wilson and Bill T. Jones, and with musicians including Toshi Reagon, Lizz Wright, Vernon Reid, Meshell Ndegeocello, and The Roots. She is composer/librettist of Indigo, a Blues opera. Her poems have appeared in Nocturnes (re)view of the literary arts, Cave Canem’s Gathering Ground, and elsewhere. Her work has been supported by The Field, the D.C. Humanities Council, and the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund (for Fiction). Her newest play, Race Card, was deemed 'powerful, political theater' by the New York Times. Karma is currently a member of the cast of Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower, the opera.
For the last 25 years, she has offered healing modalities grounded in Sacred Rootwork. As yoga practitioner and creator of the Rootsong™ practice, she shares the process of somatic improvisation to facilitate personal and communal healing and transformation. She is a Founding Member of The Wind & The Warrior, a healing arts collaborative. As poet, composer, performer, and teacher, Karma brings the same reverence for the Mystery to each modality. She has travelled across the U.S. and internationally, working in the theater with directors including Robert Wilson and Bill T. Jones, and with musicians including Toshi Reagon, Lizz Wright, Vernon Reid, Meshell Ndegeocello, and The Roots. She is composer/librettist of Indigo, a Blues opera. Her poems have appeared in Nocturnes (re)view of the literary arts, Cave Canem’s Gathering Ground, and elsewhere. Her work has been supported by The Field, the D.C. Humanities Council, and the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund (for Fiction). Her newest play, Race Card, was deemed 'powerful, political theater' by the New York Times. Karma is currently a member of the cast of Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower, the opera.
Laura Yohualtlahuiz Rios-Ramirez is a Mexican-born Xicana scholar-practitioner of Tepehuan, Guachichil, French, and Spanish descent trained in educational pedagogy, circle keeping, performance art, and community organizing.
Currently residing in occupied Somi Se’k Territory of Yanaguana, (San Antonio, TX) she's recognized for her canon of healing-informed praxis intersecting performance art, ancestral knowledge systems and restorative/transformative justice practices as tools for personal and collective transformation. She holds a BA in International Relations and Latin American Studies and a MS in Organizational Leadership and is currently a Southwest Folklife Fellow and Intercultural Leadership Institute Fellow focusing on Participatory Action Research and Cultural Leadership. She co-leads, Kalpulli Ayolopaktzin, a transnational inter-tribal group of families preserving Nahuatlaca teachings, leads Teoaxictli Activation Movement Practices, is a veteran Bgirl/Hip Hop dancer, a wife, and most importantly a mami passionate about healing intergenerational/colonial trauma through matriarchal leadership, cultural resilience and folklife preservation. Laura is a Co-Founder and Visionary behind De Corazón Circles, a consulting and capacity building firm that envisions a safe and equitable world where restorative interactions transform individuals, relationships, communities and systems through the prevention, repair and deep healing of harm.
Currently residing in occupied Somi Se’k Territory of Yanaguana, (San Antonio, TX) she's recognized for her canon of healing-informed praxis intersecting performance art, ancestral knowledge systems and restorative/transformative justice practices as tools for personal and collective transformation. She holds a BA in International Relations and Latin American Studies and a MS in Organizational Leadership and is currently a Southwest Folklife Fellow and Intercultural Leadership Institute Fellow focusing on Participatory Action Research and Cultural Leadership. She co-leads, Kalpulli Ayolopaktzin, a transnational inter-tribal group of families preserving Nahuatlaca teachings, leads Teoaxictli Activation Movement Practices, is a veteran Bgirl/Hip Hop dancer, a wife, and most importantly a mami passionate about healing intergenerational/colonial trauma through matriarchal leadership, cultural resilience and folklife preservation. Laura is a Co-Founder and Visionary behind De Corazón Circles, a consulting and capacity building firm that envisions a safe and equitable world where restorative interactions transform individuals, relationships, communities and systems through the prevention, repair and deep healing of harm.
Laura
Yohualtlahuiz Rios-Ramirez
Laura appears in
Michelle “Mush” Lee is a poet, narrative strategist and founder of Whole Story Group.
Mush is a Harvard University Project Zero Fellow, a featured poet on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and a Cultural Affairs Commissioner for the City of Oakland. She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. At her core, she is an artist of color and child of voluntary immigrants, who has thrived by telling, and retelling, her own story.
Learn more at the Whole Story Group website.
Learn more at the Whole Story Group website.
Miriam Magaña Lopez was a Research and Policy Analyst with the Othering & Belonging Institute's Network for Transformative Change.
She is a first-generation immigrant from Jalisco, Mexico. Miriam has a BA in Anthropology from Macalester College and an MPH from the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health. Her work has primarily focused on understanding how economic, political and social structures impact the health of immigrants. Recently, she led a podcast and written case series that investigated the utilization of the bridging to belonging frameworks across the country and developed accessible resources that can be utilized for educational purposes.
She now works for the City of Vallejo, California.
Miriam
Magaña Lopez
Miriam appears in
Nana Fofie Amina Bashir is a cultural organizer and expressive arts therapist in Bulbancha/New Orleans, LA on Choctaw, Chitimacha, & Houma lands.
As an artist and facilitator, she works with grassroots organizations and community groups that are working to create arts and culture programs, decolonize spaces and justice movements, and to develop and expand accountability practices. As a therapist, Nana Fofie provides culturally resonant, narrative, arts, and movement therapy to individuals, families, and groups, with a focus on marginalized populations. A spiritualist (okomfo paynin) and healing practitioner trained in the Akom tradition of West Africa, Nana Fofie is one-quarter of The Wind & The Warrior, a collaborative that works with spiritualists and practitioners, organizers, and artists to co-learn and integrate cultural and traditional practices for deeper integration and greater impact of our missions.
Visit The Wind & The Warrior website to learn more about her work.
As an artist and facilitator, she works with grassroots organizations and community groups that are working to create arts and culture programs, decolonize spaces and justice movements, and to develop and expand accountability practices. As a therapist, Nana Fofie provides culturally resonant, narrative, arts, and movement therapy to individuals, families, and groups, with a focus on marginalized populations. A spiritualist (okomfo paynin) and healing practitioner trained in the Akom tradition of West Africa, Nana Fofie is one-quarter of The Wind & The Warrior, a collaborative that works with spiritualists and practitioners, organizers, and artists to co-learn and integrate cultural and traditional practices for deeper integration and greater impact of our missions.
Visit The Wind & The Warrior website to learn more about her work.
Nana Fofie
Amina Bashir
Nana Fofie appears in
Sarah Anne Minkin, PhD, is Director of Programs and Partnerships at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. She works at the intersection of human and civil rights advocacy, philanthropy, and education, with a special focus on Israel/Palestine.
As the Director of Programs and Partnerships at the Foundation for Middle East Peace, she works to deepen FMEP’s relationships with existing and potential grantees and build relationships with philanthropic partners. She is an affiliated faculty member at University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Right-Wing Studies and was a lecturer at San Francisco University and UC Berkeley. She earned her PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley for research focusing on the sociology of emotion, nationalism, and Jewish Americans’ relationships with Israel/Palestine. She is a trained community mediator, a chaplain-in-training, and a Board member at B’Tselem USA.
Sheryll Cashin writes about race relations and inequality in America. Her new book White Space, Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality (September 2021) shows how government created “ghettos” and affluent white space and entrenched a system of American residential caste that is the linchpin of US inequality—and issues a call for abolition. Her book Loving: Interracial Intimacy in America and the Threat to White Supremacy explores the history and future of interracial intimacy, how white supremacy was constructed and how “culturally dexterous” allies may yet kill it. Her book Place Not Race was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Non-Fiction in 2015. Her book The Failures of Integration was an Editors’ Choice in the New York Times Book Review. Cashin is also a three-time nominee for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for non-fiction (2005, 2009, and 2018). She has written commentaries for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Salon, The Root, and other media and is currently a contributing editor for Politico Magazine.
Cashin is Professor of Law at Georgetown University where she teaches Constitutional Law, and Race and American Law among other subjects. She is an active member of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council and worked in the Clinton White House as an advisor on urban and economic policy, particularly concerning community development in inner-city neighborhoods. She was law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Cashin was born and raised in Huntsville, Alabama, where her parents were political activists. She currently resides in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two sons.
Learn more about her work at her website.
Cashin is Professor of Law at Georgetown University where she teaches Constitutional Law, and Race and American Law among other subjects. She is an active member of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council and worked in the Clinton White House as an advisor on urban and economic policy, particularly concerning community development in inner-city neighborhoods. She was law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Cashin was born and raised in Huntsville, Alabama, where her parents were political activists. She currently resides in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two sons.
Learn more about her work at her website.
Winona LaDuke—an Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe) member of the White Earth Nation—is an environmentalist, economist, author, and prominent Native American activist working to restore and preserve indigenous cultures and lands. Winona LaDuke is a rural development economist and author working on issues of Indigenous Economics, Food, and Energy Policy. She co-founded Honor the Earth, a platform to raise awareness and support for indigenous environmental issues.
She graduated from Harvard University in 1982 with a B.A. in economics (rural economic development) and from Antioch University with an M.A. in community economic development. While at Harvard, she came to understand that the problems besetting native nations were the result of centuries of governmental exploitation. At age 18 she became the youngest person to speak to the United Nations about Native American issues.
In 1989 LaDuke founded the White Earth Land Recovery Project in Minnesota, focusing on the recovery, preservation, and restoration of land on the White Earth Reservation. This includes branding traditional foods through the Native Harvest label.
In 1993 LaDuke gave the Annual E. F. Schumacher Lecture entitled “Voices from White Earth.” That same year she co-founded and is executive director of Honor the Earth, whose goal is to support Native environmental issues and to ensure the survival of sustainable Native communities. As executive director she travels nationally and internationally to work with Indigenous communities on climate justice, renewable energy, sustainable development, food sovereignty, environmental justice, and human rights.
Among the books she has authored are All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life (1999, 2016); The Winona LaDuke Reader: A Collection of Essential Writings (2002); Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming (2005); The Militarization of Indian Country (2013).
LaDuke’s many honors include nomination in 1994 by Time magazine as one of America’s 50 most promising leaders under 40; the Thomas Merton Award in 1996, the Ann Bancroft Award for Women’s Leadership in 1997, and the Reebok Human Rights Award in 1998. In 1998 Ms. Magazine named her Woman of the Year for her work with Honor the Earth. She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2007, and in 2017 she received the Alice and Clifford Spendlove Prize in Social Justice, Diplomacy, and Tolerance.
Winona LaDuke was an active leader as a Water Protector with the Dakota Access Pipeline protests in 2017 at Standing Rock, where the Sioux Nation and hundreds of their supporters fought to preserve the Nation’s drinking water and sacred lands from the damage the pipeline would cause. Over the years her activism has not deviated from seeking justice and restoration for Indigenous peoples.
Biography from the Schumacher Center for a New Economics.
LaDuke’s many honors include nomination in 1994 by Time magazine as one of America’s 50 most promising leaders under 40; the Thomas Merton Award in 1996, the Ann Bancroft Award for Women’s Leadership in 1997, and the Reebok Human Rights Award in 1998. In 1998 Ms. Magazine named her Woman of the Year for her work with Honor the Earth. She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2007, and in 2017 she received the Alice and Clifford Spendlove Prize in Social Justice, Diplomacy, and Tolerance.
Winona LaDuke was an active leader as a Water Protector with the Dakota Access Pipeline protests in 2017 at Standing Rock, where the Sioux Nation and hundreds of their supporters fought to preserve the Nation’s drinking water and sacred lands from the damage the pipeline would cause. Over the years her activism has not deviated from seeking justice and restoration for Indigenous peoples.
Biography from the Schumacher Center for a New Economics.
Winona
LaDuke
Winona appears in
Yuria Celidwen is a senior fellow at the Othering and Belonging Institute, and a native of Indigenous Nahua and Maya descent, born into a family of mystics, healers, poets, and explorers from the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico.
She teaches Indigenous epistemologies and spirituality and her work pioneered the Indigenous contemplative experience within contemplative studies. In addition, she leads workshops on prosocial practices (such as mindfulness, compassion, kindness, gratitude, etc.) from an Indigenous perspective. She emphasizes cultivating a sense of reverence and ecological belonging, raising awareness of social and environmental justice and community-engaged practices, revitalizing Indigenous languages, traditional medicine, clean energy, and conservation.
She is affiliated with Berkeley's Department of Psychology where she is conducting research into how Indigenous Peoples psychologies are expressed through self-transcendent practices of contemplation, and developing her talents for laboratory science, including experimental design, physiological measurement, and the concepts and tools of social and cultural psychology.
Since November 2021, she has co-chaired the Indigenous Religious Traditions Unit of the American Academy of Religion (AAR), and is part of the steering committee of the Contemplative Studies Unit. She co-chaired the Indigenous Religions Unit and was the Women's Caucus Liaison to the Board of the Western Region of the AAR (2018-2021), where she previously co-chaired the Psychology, Religion, and Culture unit (2016-2019).
As an Indigenous woman and as a scholar, she has taken the quest to bring the voices of Indigenous peoples of the world as equal holders of sophisticated systems of contemplative insight. She is committed to the reclamation, revitalization, and transmission of Indigenous wisdom, and the advancement of Indigenous rights and the rights of the Earth for social and environmental justice.
Adam Ryan Chang is a scholar and advocate whose background centers nationality, gender, sexuality, and youth development.
Learn more about him in his essay “Second Generation: Asian, Gay, Positive and a Parent” and more about his work on his website.
Learn more about him in his essay “Second Generation: Asian, Gay, Positive and a Parent” and more about his work on his website.
Jovan Scott Lewis is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of Scammer’s Yard: The Crime of Black Repair in Jamaica (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) and Violent Utopia: Dispossession and Black Restoration in Tulsa (Duke University Press).
I study Black people's lived experience of racial capitalism and underdevelopment and advances radical and productive reparative frameworks. Through analyses of injury, violence, repair, and community, my work has been centrally concerned with the question of reparations as a means of understanding the historical constitution but also the future of Blackness as a lived and political project. I am currently working on my third book project that examines Black relations beyond injury.
From 2021 to 2023, I was appointed by California Governor Gavin Newsom to the State's Reparations Task Force, the first state-level reparations commission in the country. I was responsible for framing the community of eligibility and overseeing the development of compensation recommendations.
I started the Berkeley Black Geographies Project in 2016 after joining the Geography Department at the University of California, Berkeley. The project has advanced a contemporary understanding of Geography and other disciplinary analyses of spatial relations through the centering of Blackness across the areas of programming, pedagogy, and publishing. Through proactive recruitment of graduate students and faculty, the project has grown to represent the central intellectual and institutional heart of the department, which I now lead as chair. Geography at UC Berkeley has become an institutional leader in the disciplines of Black Geographies and Black ecologies.
Margalynne J. Armstrong is Associate Professor of Law at Santa Clara University. Professor Armstrong joined the Santa Clara University School of Law faculty in 1987 and serves on the boards of several community organizations. She is well-published in the areas of housing, racial discrimination, comparative and constitutional law.
Prior to joining the law faculty at Santa Clara, Armstrong practiced public employment law, served as a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society of Alameda County, and directed the Academic Support Program at Boalt Hall. While she attended University of California, Berkeley, she served as associate editor of the Ecology Law Quarterly.
Margalynne
Armstrong
Margalynne appears inStructural Racism: How Invisible Preference Undermines America
Stephanie M. Wildman is is Professor Emerita at the Santa Clara University School of Law. Professor Wildman writes extensively in the areas of social justice, race, gender and the law. Her book, Privilege Revealed: How Invisible Preference Undermines America (with contributions by Margalynne Armstrong, Adrienne D. Davis, & Trina Grillo) won the 1997 Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Meyers Center for Human Rights. Wildman was the founding director of the Center for Social Justice at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall) and was the Director of the Center for Social Justice and Public Service at Santa Clara University School of Law.
Prior to joining the Santa Clara University School of Law faculty, Professor Wildman taught for 25 years at the University of San Francisco School of Law, where she is a professor emerita. She has been a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Davis School of Law, Hastings College of the Law, Santa Clara University School of Law, and Stanford Law School. Before entering academia, she clerked for Judge Charles M. Merrill of the United States Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit and worked as a staff attorney for California Rural Legal Assistance.
Stephanie M.
Wildman
Stephanie appears inStructural Racism: How Invisible Preference Undermines America
Michael Ralph teaches in Chair and Professor of the Department of Afro-American Studies at Howard University. He also teaches in the New York University School of Medicine. Michael’s research integrates medical anthropology, finance, and politics through an explicit focus on algorithms, actuarial science, forensics, debt, slavery, and incarceration. Michael is dedicated to the quest for quintessential dopeness.
Learn more about Michael's work on his website.
Bertrall Ross is the Justice Thurgood Marshall Distinguished Professor of Law at University of Virginia. He teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law, constitutional theory, election law, administrative law and statutory interpretation.
Ross’ research is driven by a concern about democratic responsiveness and accountability, as well as the inclusion of marginalized communities in administrative and political processes. His past scholarship has been published in several books and journals, including the Columbia Law Review, New York University Law Review and the University of Chicago Law Review. Two of his articles were selected by the Yale/Harvard/Stanford Junior Faculty Forum.
Prior to joining the Virginia faculty, Ross taught at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, where he received the Rutter Award for Teaching Excellence. He has also been awarded the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin, the Princeton University Law and Public Affairs Fellowship, the Columbia Law School Kellis Parker Academic Fellowship and the Marshall Scholarship. Ross is currently serving on the Administrative Conference of the United States and the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court.
Ross earned his undergraduate degree in international affairs and history from the University of Colorado, Boulder; his graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs; and his law degree from Yale Law School. After law school, he clerked for Judge Dorothy Nelson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Judge Myron Thompson of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama.
Ross earned his undergraduate degree in international affairs and history from the University of Colorado, Boulder; his graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs; and his law degree from Yale Law School. After law school, he clerked for Judge Dorothy Nelson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Judge Myron Thompson of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama.
Demetria McCain serves as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO) at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). At FHEO, McCain assists HUD’s efforts to eliminate housing discrimination, promote economic opportunity, and achieve diverse, inclusive communities.
McCain joins HUD following fifteen years of service, with five as president, at the Inclusive Communities Project (ICP), a Dallas, TX-based affordable fair housing nonprofit. Prior to becoming president, she oversaw operations, communications and ICP’s Mobility Assistance Program, a housing mobility program that helps housing choice voucher holders exercise their fair housing rights. Conceived by Demetria, ICP’s “Voices for Opportunity” initiative has provided advocacy training to low-income renters and neighborhood groups of color.
Before joining ICP, McCain worked on USDA Section 515 rural multifamily housing matters at the National Housing Law. She was also a staff attorney for the Neighborhood Legal Services Program of Washington, D.C., assigned to the southeast office, where her portfolio primarily included landlord-tenant matters for low-income renters in private and public housing. She has taught, as an adjunct instructor, a Fair Housing and Homelessness course to undergraduate Coppin State University students.
McCain brings dual vantage points to FHEO after having spent years assisting both housing choice voucher holders who sought low-poverty well-resourced housing options and neighborhood groups in underserved communities of color who sought more equitable distribution of resources and services. She is a graduate of Howard University School of Law, New York University and Brooklyn College and a member of the Dallas Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Margery Turner is an Institute fellow at the Urban Institute, focusing on new research and policy programs. She previously served 10 years as Urban's senior vice president for program planning and management and 11 years as director of the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center. A nationally recognized expert on urban policy and neighborhood issues, Turner has analyzed issues of residential location, racial and ethnic discrimination and its contribution to neighborhood segregation and inequality, and the role of housing policies in promoting residential mobility and location choice. Among her recent publications is the book Public Housing and the Legacy of Segregation.
Before joining Urban, Turner served as deputy assistant secretary for research at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) from 1993 through 1996, focusing HUD's research agenda on the problems of racial discrimination, concentrated poverty, and economic opportunity in America's metropolitan areas. During her tenure, HUD's research office launched three major social science demonstration projects to test different strategies for helping families from distressed inner-city neighborhoods gain access to opportunities through employment and education.
Turner has a BA in political science from Cornell University and an MA in urban and regional planning from the George Washington University.
Lisa Rice is President and CEO of the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA), leading their efforts to advance fair housing principles, preserve and broaden fair housing protections, and expand equal housing opportunities for millions of Americans. NFHA is the trade association for over 170 fair housing and justice-centered organizations and individuals throughout the U.S. and its territories, and is the nation’s only national civil rights agency solely dedicated to eliminating all forms of housing discrimination.
Ms. Rice is a published author contributing to several books and journals addressing a range of fair housing issues including — The Fight for Fair Housing: Causes, Consequences, and Future Implications of the 1968 Federal Fair Housing Act; Designed for the Future: 80 Practical Ideas for a Sustainable World; Discriminatory Effects of Credit Scoring on Communities of Color; and From Foreclosure to Fair Lending: Advocacy, Organizing, Occupancy, and the Pursuit of Equitable Credit.
She played a major role in crafting sections of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and in establishing the Office of Fair Lending within the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She also helped lead the investigation and resolution of precedent-setting fair housing cases which have resulted in providing remedies for millions of people as well as the elimination of systemic discriminatory practices involving lending, insurance, rental and zoning matters. Ms. Rice also serves on various Boards and Advisory Councils.
Richard Rothstein is a Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Policy Institute and a Senior Fellow (emeritus) at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He is the author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, which recovers a forgotten history of how federal, state, and local policy explicitly segregated metropolitan areas nationwide, creating racially homogenous neighborhoods in patterns that violate the Constitution and require remediation. He is also the author of many other articles and books on race and education, which can be found on his web page at the Economic Policy Institute.
Previous influential books include Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic and Educational Reform to Close the Black–White Achievement Gap and Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right.
He welcomes questions and comments at riroth@epi.org.
Samir Gambhir is the Director of the Equity Metrics Program at the Othering and Belonging Institute where he engages in and oversees projects in the area of fair housing, zoning reform, racial residential segregation, opportunity mapping, and racial equity and inclusion. His work involves conducting empirical research, presenting analytics, developing diagnostic tools and providing policy recommendations on issues of housing, education, environment and many more with a social justice lens.
Samir's research interests focus on empirical analysis, spatial modeling and data visualization to highlight inequity, marginalization and othering, and to promote diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. He has co-authored and supported a number of reports on projects such as Racial Residential Segregation, Inclusiveness Index, LIHTC housing and Zoning Reform.
Prior to joining the Othering & Belonging Institute, Samir worked as GIS Manager for Centre for Global Health Research (CGHR), Toronto. Prior to CGHR, he worked as Senior GIS Researcher at The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University.
He graduated from The Ohio State University in 2003 with a Masters degree in City and Regional Planning. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Architecture from India.
Stephen Menendian is the Assistant Director and Director of Research at the Othering & Belonging Institute, where he supervises many of the Institute’s research projects and ongoing initiatives. Most notably, Stephen spearheaded the “Roots of Structural Racism Project,” a multi-faceted study revealing the persistence of racial residential segregation and its harmful consequences, the "Racial Disparities Dashboard," an analysis of racial disparities in American society, and the “Structural Racism Remedies Project,” an exhaustive repository and analysis of policy recommendations aimed at addressing racial inequality. Stephen is also the lead author of the Inclusiveness Index, an annual ranking of global and US state inclusivity.
Stephen’s primary areas of expertise are structural racism, civil rights, fair housing, spatial inequality, affirmative action and educational equity, but his research focuses on the mechanisms of inter-group inequality and the optimal design of effective equity policy interventions permitted under prevailing interpretations of law, including the equal protection clause of the federal constitution and California’s anti-affirmative action ballot initiative, Proposition 209.
Stephen is the author of many scholarly publications, book chapters, journal and law review articles and is a contributor to the Berkeley Blog. He has been interviewed and his work has been covered by CNN, Time, Newsweek, the Atlantic, the Guardian, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Five Thirty Eight, The Root, Axios, Bloomberg News, the New York Post, and the East Bay Times, among other print media, and many local radio and television stations across the country (see media mentions below).
Stephen’s most important scholarly publications are: "The Problem of Othering: Toward Inclusiveness and Belonging," a heavily cited journal article defining "othering" and the mechanisms of othering, co-authored with john a. powell for the Othering & Belonging Journal; "What Constitutes a 'Racial Classification'?: Equal Protection Doctrine Scrutinized," a law review article investigating the parameters of federal jurisprudence restricting the use of race in public policymaking, for the Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review; and “The Road Not Taken: Housing and Criminal Justice 50 Years after the Kerner Commission Report,” a retrospective report analyzing the failure to heed the warnings and adopt the policy recommendations advanced by the Kerner Commission in the realms of housing and policing, co-authored with Richard Rothstein.
Other notable scholarship includes: “Race and Politics: The Problem of Entanglement in Gerrymandering Cases,” a law review article explaining why the exceptionally divergent constitutional standards governing judicial review of partisan gerrymandering versus racial gerrymandering claims are untenable in practice for the Southern California Law Review; “On Belonging: An Introduction to Othering & Belonging in Europe”, an essay presenting our most recent and fulsome definition of “belonging” and the elements of belonging as contrasted with “diversity, equity or inclusion,” co-authored with john a. powell; and his series “Racial Segregation in the San Francisco Bay Area,” a 5-part examination of the extent, effects and remedies to racial residential segregation in the Bay Area, as well as the heavily covered follow-up reports examining the extent and consequences of exclusionary, single-family-only zoning in the San Francisco Bay Area and the greater Los Angeles region. Stephen also authored a seminal paper entitled "Systems Thinking and Race," which explored how complex systems theory helps make sense of the production of racial inequality.
Stephen’s research tends to have a policy focus or policy implications. His most notable publications in that regard are: “Targeted Universalism: Policy and Practice,” a landmark primer contrasting targeted versus universalistic policy frameworks and defining the elements of the targeted universalism policy development process, co-authored with john a. powell and Wendy Ake; “We Too Belong: A Resource Guide of Inclusive Practices in Immigration & Incarceration Law and Policy,” a systematic review of best or promising practices and policies that promote inclusion for immigrants and currently and formerly incarcerated people, including the possibilities for extending voting rights to both groups; and “Responding to Rising Inequality: Policy Interventions to Ensure Opportunity for All,” a policy brief examining trends in economic inequality and advancing six promising policy interventions to disrupt that trend, co-authored with Justin Steil.
Relatedly, Stephen co-chaired “Race & Inequality in America: The Kerner Commission at 50 conference,” a conference held in the spring of 2018 that brought together the nation’s leading experts on race and housing, the criminal justice system, employment, transportation and health care in order to envision a contemporary racial justice agenda. The proceedings are archived on our Kerner@50 conference page.
Stephen is also an expert on housing law and policy, especially fair housing, disparate impact liability, the use of opportunity mapping methodologies to guide affordable housing siting and development, as reflected in the following additional publications: "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing: A Reckoning with Government-Sponsored Segregation in the 21st Century" for the National Civic Review, "Opportunity Communities: Overcoming the Debate over Mobility Versus place-based Strategies" in The Fight for Fair Housing, “Putting Integration on the Agenda,” co-authored with Richard Rothstein for the American Bar Association’s Journal of Affordable Housing, and “Opportunity, Race, and Low Income Housing Tax Credit Projects: An Analysis of LIHTC Developments in the San Francisco Bay Area.” Stephen is also a member of the Task Force that updates the opportunity mapping methodology guiding the siting of Low Income Housing Tax Credits in California.
Stephen developed and co-authored the Institute's Amicus brief in the United States Supreme Court case of Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. the Inclusive Communities Project, cited by the Supreme Court in its landmark decision recognizing disparate impact claims under the federal Fair Housing Act. He also co-authored the Institute’s Amicus brief in Fisher v. Texas asking the Court to uphold the University of Texas’ race-conscious admissions policy in 2016.
Stephen presents regularly on the subjects of fair housing, affordable housing, racial segregation, zoning and land use policies, structural racism, poverty, the racial wealth gap and racial demographics, Proposition 209 and race-conscious policymaking, voting rights, ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging’ (DEIB), and targeted universalism. In 2022, for example, Stephen was a featured speaker at the UC Center Sacramento, where he unpacked the “housing crises,” and on a panel for the San Francisco Ed Fund on how to promote educational equity.
Stephen also regularly advises and provides technical assistance to policymakers, foundations, non-profits and other institutions on creative ways to promote diversity, equity and inclusion within the bounds of law and on equity metrics, such as measures of segregation, opportunity and belonging. For example, Stephen testified before the California Reparations Task Force on housing segregation and the racial wealth gap, before a joint hearing of two California General Assembly committees on the subject of racial disparities in homeownership and policies to reduce them, and before the Richmond, CA city council on the legality of noncitizen voting in municipal elections. Stephen was also an expert reviewer for the “Stronger Democracy Award,” and has served as an expert witness in multiple disparate impact housing lawsuits. Stephen is a licensed attorney.
Dr. Charles Chip Mc Neal is an award-winning, international educator, researcher, civic leader & activist – engaging in transdisciplinary practice across art-forms and genres, with a focus on arts, educational equity, social justice, community engagement, and cultural competency. He guides government agencies, non-profits, and schools on change-management, creative collaboration, program creation, equitable arts policies, diversity, and organizational cultural competency.
Mc Neal has over 30 years of senior leadership experience and flexibly negotiates the intersection between creativity, new technologies, and professional learning. He has trained in multiple culturally responsive practices including; restorative justice techniques, social-emotional learning, and Teaching Tolerance curriculum (from the Southern Poverty Law Center). He is an accredited Integrated Learning Specialist and a certified Oral Historian. A frequent and sought-after conference presenter, Mc Neal has lectured on arts, education, social justice, multiculturalism, and equity for The Edinburgh International Festival, UC Berkeley, Stanford University, and Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Mr. McNeal is the first-ever Director of Diversity, Equity and Community for the San Francisco Opera. A pioneering leader in the field of arts, McNeal is ostensibly the first director of diversity for an opera company in the United States. Mr. McNeal has operationalized a new department in a major arts organization for the second time. In his role, he leads internal and external initiatives aimed at developing diverse audiences, creating a safe, and diverse working environment and facilitating the further advancements of the organizational mission. He is tasked with creating a culture of belonging and acceptance, we’re diverse peoples on value and inspiration in the arc of Opera. He is guided by the goals and objectives outlined in the 2019 Strategic Plan – to place develop diversity, and equity inclusion at the core of arts and business practice. Mr. McNeal works organization-wide to advise, consult, and mentor on diversity and equity initiatives.
He also continues training teaching artists, conducts arts research, develops novel initiatives, and advises on artistic content, culturally responsive pedagogy, creative collaboration and more. He designs and curates accredited professional development training for credentialed educators who partner with the San Francisco Opera.
A celebrated dance educator, Mr. Mc Neal is the former Director of Education for San Francisco Ballet where he established the distinguished, San Francisco Ballet Center for Dance Education, engaging over 30,000 people annually through 1,500 culturally diverse events.
Mc Neal served as a Transformative Learning Coach, Leadership Advisor and Arts Integration Specialist for Alameda County Office of Education where he developed culturally responsive, inquiry-based, social justice curriculum. He is a founding member of the San Francisco Unified School District’s Arts Education Master Plan Advisory Committee. McNeal is on the Leadership Council of Create California, a statewide-advocacy consortium, where he Chairs the Equity Committee – working to creating a sustainable, equitable, arts learning eco-system for the state of California.
Mr. Mc Neal holds two bachelor’s degrees – in psychology, and sociology from Excelsior University, and a master’s degree in education from Lesley University. Dr. Mc Neal holds a Ph.D. in Transformative Studies in Education from the California Institute for Integral Studies in San Francisco. Mc Neal’s research focuses on Critical Pedagogy, Culturally and Linguistically Responsive studies, and Artistic Inquiry and lies at the intersection of arts, cultural responsiveness, and educational equity as he devises solutions to the pressing issues of education reform and racial equity in the arts.
Katherine Franke is the James L. Dohr Professor of Law at Columbia University, and Director of the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law. She is also on the Executive Committees of Columbia’s Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender, and the Center for Palestine Studies. She is among the nation's leading scholars writing on law, sexuality, race, and religion drawing from feminist, queer, and critical race theory.
Professor Franke is the founder and faculty director of the Law, Rights, and Religion Project, a think tank based at Columbia Law School that develops policy and thought leadership on the complex ways in which religious liberty rights interact with other fundamental rights. In 2021, Professor Franke launched the ERA Project, a law and policy think tank to develop academically rigorous research, policy papers, expert guidance, and strategic leadership on the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution, and on the role of the ERA in advancing the larger cause of gender-based justice.
Professor Franke is currently leading a team that is researching Columbia Law School’s relationship to slavery and its legacies.
Her first book, Wedlocked: The Perils of Marriage Equality (NYU Press 2015), considers the costs of winning marriage rights for same sex couples today and for African Americans at the end of the Civil War. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011 to undertake research for Wedlocked. Her second book, Repair: Redeeming the Promise of Slavery’s Abolition (Haymarket Press 2019), makes the case for racial reparations in the United States by returning to a time at the end of slavery when many formerly enslaved people were provided land explicitly as a form of reparation, yet after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated the land was stolen back from freed people and given to former slave owners.
Ashley Gallegos works as the Belonging Coordinator at the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley. Her work is at the intersection of belonging research, application, and societal change. Ashley’s work centers the application of OBI’s unique conception of belonging which is rooted in both the feeling or sense of belonging and the necessary structural design for belonging. Ashley works closely with the director of the Institute to advance initiatives of belonging, currently focusing on Places of Belonging. This initiative works with high impact collaborators nationally and internationally to align and advance belonging in varying contexts.
Ashley creates and circulates belonging educational materials, amplifies belonging practices in motion, and uses her understanding of the Institutes frames of Belonging, Bridging and Targeted Universalism to support initiatives. Ashley engages in complex considerations of how belonging moves with and positively contributes to our world's biggest necessary shifts like that of global human rights, climate justice, cross-movement alignment and much more. Ashley is one of three co-facilitators at Belonging a Weekly Practice, a free, low barrier virtual belonging space open to all. Registration information for the sessions is available here
Before working with OBI, Ashley worked within public health and healthcare to advance health equity and racial equity in application. She directed state wide equity coalitions and believes in the power of network models to co-create momentum beyond any one entity's capacity.
While born in Southern California, Ashley was raised in Belen, NM, grew as an adult in Denver, CO, and found her way to the place where her spirit feels aligned in Oakland, CA. In her free time, Ashley enjoys spending time with loved ones, building community, experiencing and contributing to the arts, reading, being near water and maintaining a spiritual groundedness.
Ajmel Quereshi serves serves as Senior Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF). In that role, Ajmel maintains a diverse caseload spearheading LDF’s work in the areas of education and economic justice, among others. In 2019, Ajmel led LDF’s efforts in Bradford v. Maryland State Board of Education, a case on behalf of a class of school children in Baltimore who have been denied a constitutionally adequate education. In 2018, Ajmel served as lead counsel for LDF in multiple suits challenging the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s suspension of housing regulations that would have made housing more accessible and affordable. In Open Communities Alliance v. Carson, LDF obtained a preliminary injunction, enjoining the Trump Administration from suspending the regulation. That same year, Ajmel led LDF’s work in Morningside v. Sabree, regarding discriminatory tax foreclosures in Wayne County, Michigan. The resulting settlement saved hundreds of homes in Detroit from foreclosure. In 2016, Ajmel launched LDF’s work on behalf of airline passengers who have been subject to racial and religious profiling. The project resulted in the issuance of new federal agency documents guiding airline staff as to the proper procedures for the questioning of individuals aboard planes. In 2015, Ajmel spearheaded the filing of a federal complaint regarding the cancellation of the Baltimore Red Line. The filing was covered by and Ajmel was quoted in The Guardian, among others. The Washington Post described the complaint as raising the “next civil rights issue of our time.” While at LDF, Ajmel has also assisted in filing a lawsuit challenging the Trump Administration’s termination of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians on account of the President’s derogatory statements regarding Haiti, settled a class action against the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority regarding its racially discriminatory background check policy, filed suit against the U.S. Department of Education regarding its failure to comply with the Freedom of Information Act, coordinated a national coalition of organizations working to reduce the over-criminalization of African-American children in schools, and composed a report – Locked Out of the Classroom – regarding the role of implicit bias in the over-disciplining of African-American children. In addition, he represents an individual sentenced to death in Arkansas as well as African-American parents in four school desegregation cases in Alabama.
Beyond his work at LDF, Ajmel serves as Director of the Civil Rights Clinic at Howard University School of Law, where he also has taught courses in Torts, Federal Civil Rights, and Appellate Litigation. Under his direction, the Clinic has filed amicus briefs in several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as in Fletcher v. Lamone, in which the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland upheld the nation’s first statewide law to prohibit prison-based gerrymandering. Last fall, the Clinic filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump Administration’s termination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. His teaching has been recognized by Harvard Law School, which in 2016, awarded him a Wasserstein Fellowship. The fellowship recognizes exemplary lawyers who have distinguished themselves in public interest work and who can assist students who are considering similar career paths.
Before joining LDF, Ajmel worked as Staff Counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, where he litigated complex class action claims involving the United States’ most inhumane correctional facilities. He served as one of the lead counsel in Dockery v. Epps, challenging conditions at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility, and assisted in the representation of the Plaintiff class in Parsons v. Ryan, a statewide class action concerning the lack of health care and conditions of confinement in Arizona’s prisons.
Before joining NPP, Ajmel received a Skadden Fellowship and directed the Immigrants’ Rights Project at the ACLU of Maryland. In that capacity, he argued before Maryland’s highest court and regularly testified before the Maryland legislature. He currently serves on the ACLU of Maryland’s Board of Directors.
Ajmel frequently speaks with the media, having been interviewed by the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and National Public Radio, among many others. In addition, he regularly presents on racial justice issues to large audiences. In 2016, he debated the future U.S. Solicitor General regarding the Supreme Court’s decision in Bank of America v. Miami, concerning whether cities had standing under the Fair Housing Act. Likewise, he has represented LDF at multiple Supreme Court reviews, debating various Supreme Court advocates from the public and private bar.
Ajmel’s editorial writings have appeared in the Baltimore Sun and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; he has published articles in several legal journals on topics ranging from international environmental law to the compatibility of Islam and democracy; and his cases have been featured by the New York Times and the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, among others. He has spoken at law schools around the country, including Columbia University, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Connecticut, the University of Maryland, American University, and George Mason University. In 2010, the Maryland Daily Record named him one of the top legal professionals in Maryland under 40 and the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s DC Chapter recognized him for his work in legislative advocacy.
Ajmel is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Minnesota Law School. After graduating, Ajmel clerked for the Honorable Damon J. Keith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and the Honorable James G. Carr of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.
While at LDF, Ajmel has also assisted in filing a lawsuit challenging the Trump Administration’s termination of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians on account of the President’s derogatory statements regarding Haiti, settled a class action against the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority regarding its racially discriminatory background check policy, filed suit against the U.S. Department of Education regarding its failure to comply with the Freedom of Information Act, coordinated a national coalition of organizations working to reduce the over-criminalization of African-American children in schools, and composed a report – Locked Out of the Classroom – regarding the role of implicit bias in the over-disciplining of African-American children. In addition, he represents an individual sentenced to death in Arkansas as well as African-American parents in four school desegregation cases in Alabama.
Beyond his work at LDF, Ajmel serves as Director of the Civil Rights Clinic at Howard University School of Law, where he also has taught courses in Torts, Federal Civil Rights, and Appellate Litigation. Under his direction, the Clinic has filed amicus briefs in several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as in Fletcher v. Lamone, in which the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland upheld the nation’s first statewide law to prohibit prison-based gerrymandering. Last fall, the Clinic filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump Administration’s termination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. His teaching has been recognized by Harvard Law School, which in 2016, awarded him a Wasserstein Fellowship. The fellowship recognizes exemplary lawyers who have distinguished themselves in public interest work and who can assist students who are considering similar career paths.
Before joining LDF, Ajmel worked as Staff Counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, where he litigated complex class action claims involving the United States’ most inhumane correctional facilities. He served as one of the lead counsel in Dockery v. Epps, challenging conditions at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility, and assisted in the representation of the Plaintiff class in Parsons v. Ryan, a statewide class action concerning the lack of health care and conditions of confinement in Arizona’s prisons.
Before joining NPP, Ajmel received a Skadden Fellowship and directed the Immigrants’ Rights Project at the ACLU of Maryland. In that capacity, he argued before Maryland’s highest court and regularly testified before the Maryland legislature. He currently serves on the ACLU of Maryland’s Board of Directors.
Ajmel frequently speaks with the media, having been interviewed by the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and National Public Radio, among many others. In addition, he regularly presents on racial justice issues to large audiences. In 2016, he debated the future U.S. Solicitor General regarding the Supreme Court’s decision in Bank of America v. Miami, concerning whether cities had standing under the Fair Housing Act. Likewise, he has represented LDF at multiple Supreme Court reviews, debating various Supreme Court advocates from the public and private bar.
Ajmel’s editorial writings have appeared in the Baltimore Sun and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; he has published articles in several legal journals on topics ranging from international environmental law to the compatibility of Islam and democracy; and his cases have been featured by the New York Times and the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, among others. He has spoken at law schools around the country, including Columbia University, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Connecticut, the University of Maryland, American University, and George Mason University. In 2010, the Maryland Daily Record named him one of the top legal professionals in Maryland under 40 and the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s DC Chapter recognized him for his work in legislative advocacy.
Ajmel is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Minnesota Law School. After graduating, Ajmel clerked for the Honorable Damon J. Keith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and the Honorable James G. Carr of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.
Ama Nyamekye Anane is the founder of Good Influence Consulting, a Black-owned boutique firm helping organizations engage and learn from stakeholders, refine their strategy, and communicate more meaningfully. Ama facilitated virtual and in-person listening sessions on behalf of the California Reparations Task Force.
Trevor Smith is a writer, researcher, and strategist focused on the topics of racial inequality, wealth inequality, reparations, and narrative change. He is currently the Director of Narrative Change at Liberation Ventures, a field builder fueling the movement for Black-led racial repair, where he is building a “Reparations Narrative Lab.” The Lab is a first-of-its-kind creative space designed to build narrative power behind reparations. He is also the creator, curator, and editor of a newsletter titled Reparations Daily (ish).
Trained as a journalist, he has extensive experience working within advocacy communications on an array of issues including housing, economic opportunity, criminal justice, voting rights, education inequality, and fiscal policy. He has previously held program and communication roles at various racial and social justice organizations, including the Surdna Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
His research and writing on reparations have been published in academic journals like The Review of the Black Political Economy and major media outlets like Business Insider, USA Today, and TIME Magazine.
A first-generation American with Sierra Leonean roots, he is the son of Gerald and Olivette Smith, and brother to Megan. He spent a large portion of his life in New Delhi, India, and Seoul, South Korea, and owes a large part of who he is today to the people and experiences that shaped him throughout his time there. He received his B.A. in Journalism from American University and his Masters in Public Administration from New York University. He is an avid reader, taker of walks, food buff, and joke-teller. He currently resides in what he considers the best neighborhood in New York City, the Lower East Side.
Learn more about his work at his website.
Learn more about his work at his website.
Donald K. Tamaki is a Senior Counsel at Minami Tamaki LLP. Prior to January 1, 2021, he was the firm’s Managing Partner.
For over 40 years, Mr. Tamaki has specialized in providing value-driven legal counsel to entrepreneurs, privately-held companies, and nonprofit corporations, with special focus on commercial leasing, personnel and employment law, corporate governance and other internal practices, licensing, acquisition, and other business transactions.
In addition, Mr. Tamaki has extensive experience negotiating talent agreements and endorsement deals, representing Olympic ice skating gold medalist Kristi Yamaguchi, and various television news anchors, reporters and weather persons including Carolyn Johnson, Kristen Sze, Mike Nicco, Carolyn Tyler, Lyanne Melendez, David Louie, Matt Keller and Jonathan Bloom.
For 19 years straight (2004-2022), Mr. Tamaki has been selected to Northern California Super Lawyers, and has received the highest rating for competency and ethics, AV® Preeminent™, from the Martindale-Hubble attorney directory. He is the recipient of the ABA Spirit of Excellence Award (2020), the National Asian Pacific Bar Association Trailblazer Award (2003), and the State Bar of California Loren Miller Award (1987).
Representative clients include, the Straits Restaurant and Sino Restaurant chain, Konica Minolta, East Bay Pediatrics Group, the California HealthCare Foundation, the State Bar of California, the Consulate General of Japan in San Francisco, the Kristi Yamaguchi Always Dream Foundation, the Asian Pacific Fund, the Chinatown Community Development Center, the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum, and Baker Places, Inc.
In keeping with the firm’s tradition of community service, Mr. Tamaki served on the pro bono team that reopened the landmark Supreme Court case of Korematsu v. the United States, overturning Fred Korematsu’s conviction for refusing as an American citizen to be incarcerated on account of his racial ancestry. Mr. Tamaki is past member of the board of Glide Foundation and is the board president of the San Francisco Japantown Foundation.
On May 7, 2021, California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Mr. Tamaki to serve on the Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans. The Task Force is charged with studying the institution of slavery and its lingering negative effects on living African Americans, including descendants of persons enslaved in the United States and on society. By statute, the Task Force will issue a report to the Legislature by June 1, 2022, which will be available to the public.
On May 7, 2021, California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Mr. Tamaki to serve on the Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans. The Task Force is charged with studying the institution of slavery and its lingering negative effects on living African Americans, including descendants of persons enslaved in the United States and on society. By statute, the Task Force will issue a report to the Legislature by June 1, 2022, which will be available to the public.
Jean-Pierre Brutus is a senior counsel in the Economic Justice Program at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice.
He leads the Institute’s reparations advocacy. He was a member of the Reparations Narrative Lab and represented the Institute as a community fellow on the Rutgers- Newark Crafting Democratic Futures Project on community dialogues on reparations.
Prior to joining the Institute, Jean-Pierre worked at Legal Services NYC, where he represented Bronx tenants facing eviction as part of New York City’s right to counsel program. Jean-Pierre is a graduate of Georgetown University. He earned his PhD in African American Studies and JD from Northwestern University.
Kellie Farrish is a professional genealogist and active advisory participant concerning reparations eligibility based on race or lineage for California’s AB3121 Reparation Task Force. Kellie spent 15 years helping African-American families trace their ancestry. She also facilitates workshops on transforming race narratives and dismantling systems of racial inequality. Prior to Kellie’s work in training and genealogy, she worked for 20 years in the banking and finance sector for major US institutions.
David Mayer is Founder and President of Mayer Laboratories, Inc, a North American medical device company. Founder of BeHOME (Berkeley Housing Opportunities for Municipal Employees). He has served in various capacities at numerous community organizations.
He presently serves as co-chair of Reparation Generation.
Asma Mhalla is an expert in Tech Politics and BigTech Geopolitics, she is a lecturer at Sciences Po Paris, Columbia GC and Polytechnique where she teaches the political and geopolitical issues of data economy. She is also an associate expert for the European Research Executive Agency (REA), mandated by the European Commission to support the EU Research and Innovation policy. On an academic level, she works on the new forms of power between structuring platforms (Big Tech) and States, with a focus on the associated democratic and sovereignty issues. She also advises governments, public institutions in their tech strategy.
Asma
Mhalla
Asma will be on the following panel: “Is Democracy Equipped for This?” (Day Two)
Dr. Bayo hopes to inspire what he calls a “diffractive network of sharing” and a “politics of surprise” that sees the crises of our times with a posthumanist lens.
In 2014, Dr. Akomolafe was invited to be the Special Envoy of the International Alliance for Localization, a project of Ancient Futures (USA). He left his lecturing position in Covenant University, Nigeria to help build this Alliance. Bayo has been Visiting Professor at Middlebury College, where he taught on his own formulated concepts of ‘transraciality’ and postactivism. He has also taught at Sonoma State University (CA, USA), Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada), and Schumacher College (Totnes, England) – among other universities around the world. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California and University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont as adjunct and associate professor, respectively. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (SAND).
Now living between India and the United States, Bayo is a father of Alethea Aanya and Kyah Jayden Abayomi. He is married to EJ, his dear life-partner of Indian descent.
The convener of the concepts of ‘postactivism’, ‘transraciality’ and ‘ontofugitivity’, Bayo is a widely celebrated international speaker an award-winning public intellectual, essayist and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak. He is also the Executive Director and Chief Curator for The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will dance with Mountains’. He is writing his third book about the spirituality and emancipatory lessons of the transatlantic slave journeys, called “The Times are Urgent, Let us Slow Down”.
Find him at https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/
Bayo
Akomolafe
Bayo will be present the following talk: “Closing Keynote: Reflections on Democracy & Belonging” (Day Two)
Ece Temelkuran is an award-winning Turkish novelist, a political thinker, and a public speaker whose work has appeared in the Guardian, New York Times, Le Monde, La Stampa, El Pais, New Statesman, and Der Spiegel, among several international media outlets.
She won the Edinburgh International Book Festival First Book award for her novel WOMEN WHO BLOW ON KNOTS and the Ambassador Of New Europe Award for her book TURKEY: THE INSANE AND THE MELANCHOLY. She is the author of the internationally acclaimed book HOW TO LOSE A COUNTRY and her most recent book, TOGETHER was shortlisted for the Terzani Award in Italy. Ece Temelkuran lived in Beirut, Tunis, Paris, to write her novels. She was a visiting fellow at Saint Anthony's College Oxford to write DEEP MOUNTAIN: ACROSS THE ARMENIAN TURKISH DIVIDE. She lived in Zagreb after the military coup attempt in Turkey in 2016 and after her fellowship at The New Institute in Hamburg, she is currently a fellow at Robert Bosch Foundation, working on a project/book "Home: A new definition for the 21st Century.” She ran lettersfromnow.com, a digital communication project based on her book TOGETHER. She is on the advisory board of Progressive International and Democracy Next also a regular contributor to Internazionale magazine. She wrote libretto for opera and her novels are adapted to stage both in and outside Turkey.
She won the El Mundo Award for her body of work in 2023.
Ece
Temelkuran
Ece will be on the following panel: “Reimagining what’s possible: From authoritarianism and othering to democracy and belonging” (Day One)
Indy Johar is co-founder of Dark Matter Labs and of the RIBA award winning architecture and urban practice Architecture00. He is also a founding director of open systems lab, seeded WikiHouse (open source housing) and Open Desk (open source furniture company).
He is focused on the strategic design of new super scale civic assets for transition - specifically at the intersection of financing, contracting and governance for deeply democratic futures.
Indy is a non-executive international Director of the BloxHub, the Nordic Hub for sustainable urbanization. He is on the advisory board for the Future Observatory and is part of the committee for the London Festival of Architecture. He is also a fellow of the London Interdisciplinary School.
Indy was 2016-17 Graham Willis Visiting Professorship at Sheffield University. He was Studio Master at the Architectural Association - 2019-2020, UNDP Innovation Facility Advisory Board Member 2016-20 and RIBA Trustee 2017-20.
He has taught & lectured at various institutions from the University of Bath, TU-Berlin; University College London, Princeton, Harvard, MIT and New School.
Indy Johar is an RIBA registered architect, serial social entrepreneur, and Good Growth Advisor to the Mayor of London. Indy was born in Acton, West London & is a lifelong Londoner.
He was awarded the London Design Medal for Innovation in 2022 and an MBE in 2023.
Indy
Johar
Indy will be on the following panel: “Is Democracy Equipped for This? Renewing civic infrastructure in a time of populism and polycrisis” (Day One)
Jeff Kwasi Klein is a Co-Director at the Multitudes Foundation, where he supports individuals and initiatives across Europe in reimagining more inclusive, representative and human politics. Before this role, he led the community-based funding project May Ayim Fonds and Germany's first anti-discrimination counselling centre for Black, African and African Diasporic people at Each One Teach One (EOTO).
Jeff is currently a member of the Berlin Equality Advisory Board (Gleichstellungsbegleitgremium or GBG), which focuses on combating anti-Black racism in Berlin, and he serves as a board member of the Migrationsrat Berlin. In these roles, he advocates for the interests of Black communities and various (post-)migrant self-organizations. Jeff is dedicated to addressing structural and institutionalized forms of racism, focusing on empowerment, leadership, and community building.
Jeff
Kwasi Klein
Jeff will be on the following panel: “Is Democracy Equipped for This? Renewing civic infrastructure in a time of populism and polycrisis” (Day One)
john a. powell (who spells his name in lowercase in the belief that we should be "part of the universe, not over it, as capitals signify") is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of civil rights, civil liberties, structural racism, housing, poverty, and democracy. He is the Director of the Othering & Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, a research institute that brings together scholars, community advocates, communicators, and policymakers to identify and eliminate the barriers to an inclusive, just, and sustainable society and to create transformative change toward a more equitable world.
john holds the Robert D. Haas Chancellor’s Chair in Equity and Inclusion and is a Professor of Law, African American Studies, and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. Previously, he was the Executive Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University where he also held the Gregory H. Williams Chair in Civil Rights & Civil Liberties at the Moritz College of Law. He has won several awards including the 2021 Housing Hero Award, 2021 John W. Gardner Leadership Award, and the Convergence Bridge-Building Leadership Award for 2022.
He regularly appears in major media offering expert insights on a host of issues. Recent appearances include NPR and WYNC's On The Media in an episode about free speech and the constitution, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver in an episode about housing segregation, and CBS Evening News where john discussed the Institute's frameworks like Targeted Universalism. john gives frequent keynotes talks at a range of institutions such as the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Washington State University, the Office of the Minnesota Attorney General, Nonprofit Quarterly, Project Democracy, the Gates Foundation, Habitat for Humanity, the InterFaith Leadership Council, the Permanente Medical Group, and many more.
john has written extensively on a number of issues including structural racism, racial justice, concentrated poverty, opportunity-based housing, voting rights, affirmative action in the United States, South Africa and Brazil, racial and ethnic identity, spirituality and social justice, and the needs of citizens in a democratic society. He is the author of several books, including his most recent work, Racing to Justice: Transforming our Concepts of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society.
The founder and director of the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota, john has also served as Director of Legal Services in Miami, Florida and was the National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, where he was instrumental in developing educational adequacy theory.
john led the development of an “opportunity-based” model that connects affordable housing to education, health, health care, and employment and is well-known for his work developing the frameworks of “targeted universalism” and “othering and belonging” to effect equity-based interventions.
john has lived and worked in Africa, where he was a consultant to the governments of Mozambique and South Africa, and has also worked in India and Brazil. He is one of the co-founders of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council and serves on the board of several national and international organizations. He is also a member of the New Pluralists. john has taught at numerous law schools including Harvard and Columbia University.
john holds the Robert D. Haas Chancellor’s Chair in Equity and Inclusion and is a Professor of Law, African American Studies, and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. Previously, he was the Executive Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University where he also held the Gregory H. Williams Chair in Civil Rights & Civil Liberties at the Moritz College of Law. He has won several awards including the 2021 Housing Hero Award, 2021 John W. Gardner Leadership Award, and the Convergence Bridge-Building Leadership Award for 2022.
He regularly appears in major media offering expert insights on a host of issues. Recent appearances include NPR and WYNC's On The Media in an episode about free speech and the constitution, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver in an episode about housing segregation, and CBS Evening News where john discussed the Institute's frameworks like Targeted Universalism. john gives frequent keynotes talks at a range of institutions such as the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Washington State University, the Office of the Minnesota Attorney General, Nonprofit Quarterly, Project Democracy, the Gates Foundation, Habitat for Humanity, the InterFaith Leadership Council, the Permanente Medical Group, and many more.
john has written extensively on a number of issues including structural racism, racial justice, concentrated poverty, opportunity-based housing, voting rights, affirmative action in the United States, South Africa and Brazil, racial and ethnic identity, spirituality and social justice, and the needs of citizens in a democratic society. He is the author of several books, including his most recent work, Racing to Justice: Transforming our Concepts of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society.
The founder and director of the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota, john has also served as Director of Legal Services in Miami, Florida and was the National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, where he was instrumental in developing educational adequacy theory.
john led the development of an “opportunity-based” model that connects affordable housing to education, health, health care, and employment and is well-known for his work developing the frameworks of “targeted universalism” and “othering and belonging” to effect equity-based interventions.
john has lived and worked in Africa, where he was a consultant to the governments of Mozambique and South Africa, and has also worked in India and Brazil. He is one of the co-founders of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council and serves on the board of several national and international organizations. He is also a member of the New Pluralists. john has taught at numerous law schools including Harvard and Columbia University.
john a.
powell
john will present the following talks: “Opening Welcome and Introduction to Othering & Belonging Berlin” and “Reimagining what’s possible: From authoritarianism and othering to democracy and belonging” (Day One)
Julia Roig has more than 30 years of experience working for democratic change and conflict transformation around the world, is best known for her ability to convene diverse coalitions and her facilitative leadership of global networks. An organizer at heart, in her role as Chief Network Weaver at The Horizons Project, Julia is committed to bridge-building across sectors, disciplines, and cultures. Throughout her career she has been called upon to translate between theory and practice, while seeding new approaches, organizing principles, and mindset shifts for social change. After serving for almost 14 years as the President and CEO of PartnersGlobal, one of the preeminent international democracy and peacebuilding organizations – in 2022 Julia launched The Horizons Project to focus on the intersection of peacebuilding, social justice, and democracy in the United States.
Julia
Roig
Julia will be on the following panels: “Turning towards each other, not against each other: Bridging to counter authoritarianism & advance belonging” (Day Two)
Karolína Miková has worked in Partners for Democratic Change Slovakia (PDCS) since 1996, starting as a volunteer, then a project manager, trainer and facilitator and today as executive director.
She studied urban planning at the Faculty of Architecture of the Slovak Technical University in Bratislava and took a one-year study program at the Institute for Public Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, U.S.A. She completed PhD. studies at the Department of Political Science at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Comenius University in Bratislava.
In 2011/2012 she worked as the head of the Office of the Slovak Government Plenipotentiary for the Development of Civil Society.
As an expert she deals mostly with public conflict resolution and prevention, citizen participation in public issues decision-making, the development of civil society, deliberative democracy, community development and cross-sector cooperation.
She has trained and consulted internationally in over 35 countries.
She studied urban planning at the Faculty of Architecture of the Slovak Technical University in Bratislava and took a one-year study program at the Institute for Public Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, U.S.A. She completed PhD. studies at the Department of Political Science at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Comenius University in Bratislava.
In 2011/2012 she worked as the head of the Office of the Slovak Government Plenipotentiary for the Development of Civil Society.
As an expert she deals mostly with public conflict resolution and prevention, citizen participation in public issues decision-making, the development of civil society, deliberative democracy, community development and cross-sector cooperation.
She has trained and consulted internationally in over 35 countries.
Karolína
Miková
Karolina will be on the following panels: “Turning towards each other, not against each other: Bridging to counter authoritarianism & advance belonging” (Day Two)
Kathryn Nwajiaku-Dahou is a Glasgow-born, London raised, British-Nigerian political scientist. She is currently Director of the Politics and Governance Programme, at ODI, a leading Global Affairs Think Tank. She gained a PhD in politics and international relations from Oxford University in 2006 and has for over twenty years written and published extensively about politics and conflict in Africa about which she is a widely acknowledged expert. She is particularly interested in power of narratives to generate individual and group identities and to transform lives and political fortunes, particularly in the contexts of struggles for environmental and racial justice.
Kathryn
Nwajiaku-Dahou
Kathryn will be on the following panels: “Is Democracy Equipped for This? Renewing civic infrastructure in a time of populism and polycrisis” (Day Two)
Magda Pocheć is a feminist and resource justice activist. In 2018 she initiated and co-founded the Feminist Fund in Poland which is a community-led, trust-based, particapatory grantmaker supporting grassroot and frontline organizers. Magda has a background in transformative philanthropy. In the past few years she’s been involved with FRIDA The Young Feminist Fund, FundAction and Fenomenal Funds. A cross-cultural psychologist by training, Magda co-authored and co-edited two subsequent alternative reports on the implementation of CEDAW (the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) in Poland.
Magdalena
Pocheć
Magda will be on the following panels: “Countering the gender backlash: Building coalitions against the populist playbook” (Day One)
Mamobo Ogoro is a Social Psychologist and award winning social entrepreneur. As the first Sanctuary PhD Fellow at the University of Limerick, Mamobo’s research investigates migrant identity construction in Ireland and how systems of inclusion and exclusion affect migrant communities in Ireland. Mamobo is on a personal mission to unify the world. She is the Founder and CEO of GORM, an award winning social enterprise on a mission to unify across differences and advance belonging for marginalised communities. Mamobo has been heralded for her work with GORM on countless occasions, and most recently won the ‘Catalyst Award’ in the Irish Tatler Woman of the Year Awards 2022 for bringing about social change in Ireland.
Mamobo spends most of her time working with organisations around the world, helping them develop intercultural leaders.
She lives in Dublin, Ireland, and considers herself as your friendly bisexual plant loving neighbour, who loves to read and take care of her home forest. She loves music, singing jazz and R&B, and spending with family & friends.
Mamobo
Ogoro
Mamobo will be on the following panels: “Turning towards each other, not against each other: Bridging to counter authoritarianism & advance belonging” (Day Two)
Míriam Juan-Torres is a multidisciplinary social scientist with expertise on polarization, authoritarian populism, conflicts, and human rights. She currently works as the Head of Research of the Democracy & Belonging Forum, Senior Advisor at More in Common, where she was the co-author of “Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape” and the lead author of “Britain’s Choice: Common Ground and Division in 2020s Britain” and as associate professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona where she teaches a course on human rights. She has also contributed as a consultant to a variety of projects across the globe. Míriam has fieldwork experience in Ghana and Colombia, where she worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and interned at the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. She holds a master in Global Affairs from Yale University and a law degree from the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. She has received several awards, including the Fox Fellowship from Yale University and the la Caixa Fellowship in Spain. Míriam is also yoga student and teacher, is fascinated by yoga philosophy and Buddhist teachings, and loves food and cooking.
Míriam
Juan-Torres
Miriam will present the keynote: “Same Playbook, Different Players: Charting shared tactics of anti-democratic movements from Türkiye to Texas (Day One)
Monika Jiang is a curator, community organizer, and experience designer sensing into what revives a shared reality in a lonely, polarized neoliberal age.
Over the past five years, she held the position as head of curation and community at the House of Beautiful Business, a global network for the life-centered economy. As a main host, facilitator, and contributor to both events and thought leadership content and publications, she covered topics ranging from climate action and relationships in the age of AI to diversity and inclusion in Web3, business’ social and political responsibility, the future of work and leadership, and more.
A highly intuitive, fantastical soul, and second-generation Chinese immigrant based in Berlin, Germany, she’s committed to reaching to the margins, asking essential questions, and gently stepping into the reality of others to make more feelings known, more faces seen, more voices heard.
Connect with Monika via LinkedIn.
Photograph is by João Noguiera.
Monika
Jiang
Monika will be our graceful and gracious emcee for the two days.
Nim Ralph is a UK-based trans writer, educator and activist. They have led campaigns and organised extensively for queer and trans liberation in Britain's toxically transphobic cultural landscape, and work with activists around the world. Nim has spent time coordinating with trans folks globally to develop organising and comms strategies to fight against the populist playbook. Outside of trans organising they've been active in organising around anti-racism, disability and climate justice for over nearly 20 years. Additionally, Nim works as an educator in social movements on movement building strategy, anti-oppression and political education. They are designer of multiple activist training programmes with an approach to education that centres relationship and connection. They have bylines in Gal-Dem and OpenDemocracy and were recently featured as a trans activist in GQ.
Nim
Ralph
Nim will be on the following panels: “Countering the gender backlash: Building coalitions against the populist playbook” (Day One)
Phillip M. Ayoub is a professor in the Department of Political Science at University College London and Editor of the European Journal of Politics and Gender. He is the author of three books, including When States Come Out: Europe’s Sexual Minorities and the Politics of Visibility (Cambridge University Press, 2016), and his articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, the European Journal of International Relations, the European Journal of Political Research, Mobilization, the European Political Science Review, among others. Among a variety of awards, he has received the Janice N. and Milton J. Esman Graduate Prize for distinguished scholarship, the George McT. Kahin Prize for research in the areas of international relations and foreign policy studies judged to hold the greatest promise as a contribution to the discipline, and honorable mention for the 2023 Henrik Enderlein Prize.
Learn more about Phillip's work at his website.
Phillip M.
Ayoub
Phillip will be on the following panels: “Countering the gender backlash: Building coalitions against the populist playbook” (Day One)
Stefánia Kapronczay currently serves as the Director of Strategy at the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (since April 2023). Previously, she had been the Executive Director of the HCLU for ten years during transformative years for the organization. During these ten years, the organization has adapted to the closing democratic space in Hungary by broadening its previously predominantly legal tools and topics addressed. During these ten years, the HCLU has also seriously diversified its budget from being dependent on one institutional donor to having several institutional donors and 30% of its funding from Hungarian private donors.
Kapronczay graduated cum laude from the Faculty of Law at ELTE as a lawyer and completed a five-year master's program in sociology in 2010. Stefania started working at the HCLU in 2005. She was the Head of the Patients’ Rights Program from March 2008 to August 2012; as program director, Kapronczay led HCLU's effort to stop restrictions on reproductive rights and criminalization of homelessness and to foster the rights of persons with disabilities.
Between August 2012 and July 2013, she was a scholar at Stanford University, attending courses on human rights and public interest work and graduating as Master of the Science of Law. Stefania wrote her dissertation on the sexual and reproductive rights of people with disabilities. She was elected co-chair of the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations in May 2014.
Currently, she is a member of the board of the digital rights organization Access Now and the advisory board of Lakmusz, a Hungarian fact-checking website. She was a German Marshall Fund fellow in 2015. Stefania is an advisory board member to the School of Public Life, a community-based research and training center, and a former member of the Rajk László College for Advanced Studies advisory board. She is a 2018 European Young Leaders (EYL40) program class member.
Stefánia
Kapronczay
Stefánia will be on the following panels: “Countering the gender backlash: Building coalitions against the populist playbook” (Day One)
Sarah Farina is an international DJ, music producer, curator and activist. She hosts and curates the interdisciplinary Berlin event series Emergent Bass with her friends, which focuses on the historical awareness of cultural contexts of music and celebrates and uplifts the Afro-diasporic influences in underground club culture.
She’s innovative, she’s skilful, and she’s the smiling antithesis of genre cliques and sour scene elitists and sprinkles positivity over the darkest bass.
What you hear is all you need to know. And what you’ll hear from Sarah Farina’s sets and music productions are seamlessly blended bass-heavy frequencies and futuristic beats with fearless forays through the hardcore continuum and beyond.
It’s inclusive, forward-thinking and unrestrained. It’s a genre-rejecting style that she’s named Rainbow Bass.
She’s vocal about the issues of current club culture and runs the project „Transmission“ with researcher Dr. Kerstin Meißner, which aims to make the political relevance and history of international sound, club and rave culture audible and visible.
DJ Sarah
Farina
DJ Sarah Farina will be spinning danceable, grounding music on both days of the conference.
The Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley is thrilled to invite the co-founders of A Song For You, Dhanesh Jayaselan & Noah Slee, to produce and curate the Arts & Culture mainstage program for the Othering & Belonging Berlin conference.
A Song For You:
A Song For You is a vocal ensemble project rooted in the Berlin neo-soul/RnB/HipHop scene, consisting of approximately 60 vocalists and a dynamic band. Founded by singer Noah Slee and creative director Dhanesh Jayaselan, the group aims to celebrate the abundant talent present in Berlin's live soulful music scene while providing a platform for BiPOC & underrepresented voices to shine in their own artistic medium.
In late 2022, the ensemble dedicated their efforts to crafting their debut album, which was recorded at Limusic Studios in Limoux, France, and Brewery Studios in Berlin, Germany. Guided by the expertise of producer S. Fidelity, the album features captivating collaborations with artists like Theo Croker, Annahstasia, Moses Yoofee, and others. Simultaneously, ASFY has created a captivating live performance experience that seamlessly combines music, dance, storytelling, and visual installations. ASFY made their grand debut on March 8, 2023, at Volksbühne in Berlin. The performance, entitled "Matriarch," was a 90-minute theatrical production that paid tribute to International Women's Day. Through the powerful mediums of song, dance, and visual imagery, the ensemble conveyed the story of the "Matriarch." The show featured a lineup of 34 singers, an eight-piece band encompassing strings and a rhythm section, as well as five talented dancers from “Movement Seven”. Notably, "Annahstasia" made a special guest appearance. The overwhelming response to ASFY's announcement led to the show selling out all 800 tickets within a mere two weeks, marking a momentous achievement for the group.
Following their successful debut, ASFY has also graced the festival frontlines at XJAZZ! 2023 and MELT festival's Mainstage, meanwhile performing at the historical “Expressions: In The Garden”, which saw them reimagine the music of Noah Slee, Kelvyn Colt, and LARY, alongside their house band and The Expressions Orchestra - to close out the summer, the group performed a conceptual show as a headline act at this years’ Pop-Kultur. A Song For You explored a new pathway with a recent collaboration with Soundwalk Collective, wherein they were invited to co-create and perform a choral arrangement and choreography of the Soundwalk Collective’s score on the recent film “All The Beauty & The Bloodshed” - at Berlin’s newest feature performance space - Reethaus. With their captivating performances, dedication to amplifying underrepresented voices, and their commitment to pushing the boundaries of live soulful music, A Song For You continues to leave a lasting impression on Berlin's music scene.
Dhanesh Jayaselan
Malaysian born, of Indian heritage, raised in Melbourne Australia - Jayaselan, 26, is a multidisciplinary artist who explores his concoction of identities through a variety of story-telling artistic mediums such as music, film, and events. Jayaselan focuses his attention and passion towards creative production of projects that explore the contemporary cultural landscapes, navigating an aesthetic that showcases organic beauty, intimate and poetic storytelling, and his own experience as a person of colour - using his position to platform the beauty of culture and ethnic experience.
Jayaselan also finds himself working alongside the flourishing Neo-Soul/NuJazz scene in Berlin as a musical and event curator, producer, and project commissioner. Standout projects include his role as the curator of the opening night of “Expressions: In The Garden'' as part of Kultursommerfestival 2023 program, XJAZZ 2022/2023, Cassette Head Sessions event curator, and artist manager of the Selassie and, previously, phenomenom, Moses Yoofee. Alongside these musical projects, Jayaselan has worked with artists such as, but not limited too, NOWNESS, Soundwalk Collective, Wayne Snow, Noah Slee, Jesper Munk, ZFEX, Abase, WizTheMC, Rodes Rollins, James Chatburn, JuJu Rogers and more; solidifying his role in the Berlin Jazz scene.
Noah Slee
Noah Slee is an artist for whom the term ‘community’ is a defining factor in his creativity. Be it in the relatively recent sense of belonging found as part of the free-thinking, queer community of Berlin, the community he is forever tied to through his Tongan roots, or the artist community he cultivates through running grass-roots events which strives to support home-grown Berlin talent.
Known for slick and evocative vocals, Slee was well and truly put on the map with the release of 2017 debut album Otherland (Wondercore Island / Majestic Casual), for which he was awarded two prestigious Pacific Music Awards in 2018. Fast forward a couple of years, a couple of international tours and tens of millions streams later and Slee continued pushing boundaries with his 2019 EP TWICE. The EP was crafted largely by Slee himself with help from his Berlin dynasty of trusted creatives but also showcasing talent from all corners of the globe.While the indie-club artist holds nostalgia for growing up in a Tongan household in West Auckland, Aotearoa, New Zealand, Slee is resolute about his choice to pack up his life and move to Germany in 2015. It’s a long way from home but ‘a big part of being in Berlin was coming into myself ’ he admits. Slee’s work has seen support from the likes of Zane Lowe, BBC1, Clash, Complex and Nylon. Relishing in the potential forces of the arts, Noah Slee is as determined as ever to create wavy ground swells with his heart opening breezy rnb dance jams.
Malaysian born, of Indian heritage, raised in Melbourne Australia - Jayaselan, 26, is a multidisciplinary artist who explores his concoction of identities through a variety of story-telling artistic mediums such as music, film, and events. Jayaselan focuses his attention and passion towards creative production of projects that explore the contemporary cultural landscapes, navigating an aesthetic that showcases organic beauty, intimate and poetic storytelling, and his own experience as a person of colour - using his position to platform the beauty of culture and ethnic experience.
Jayaselan also finds himself working alongside the flourishing Neo-Soul/NuJazz scene in Berlin as a musical and event curator, producer, and project commissioner. Standout projects include his role as the curator of the opening night of “Expressions: In The Garden'' as part of Kultursommerfestival 2023 program, XJAZZ 2022/2023, Cassette Head Sessions event curator, and artist manager of the Selassie and, previously, phenomenom, Moses Yoofee. Alongside these musical projects, Jayaselan has worked with artists such as, but not limited too, NOWNESS, Soundwalk Collective, Wayne Snow, Noah Slee, Jesper Munk, ZFEX, Abase, WizTheMC, Rodes Rollins, James Chatburn, JuJu Rogers and more; solidifying his role in the Berlin Jazz scene.
Noah Slee
Noah Slee is an artist for whom the term ‘community’ is a defining factor in his creativity. Be it in the relatively recent sense of belonging found as part of the free-thinking, queer community of Berlin, the community he is forever tied to through his Tongan roots, or the artist community he cultivates through running grass-roots events which strives to support home-grown Berlin talent.
Known for slick and evocative vocals, Slee was well and truly put on the map with the release of 2017 debut album Otherland (Wondercore Island / Majestic Casual), for which he was awarded two prestigious Pacific Music Awards in 2018. Fast forward a couple of years, a couple of international tours and tens of millions streams later and Slee continued pushing boundaries with his 2019 EP TWICE. The EP was crafted largely by Slee himself with help from his Berlin dynasty of trusted creatives but also showcasing talent from all corners of the globe.While the indie-club artist holds nostalgia for growing up in a Tongan household in West Auckland, Aotearoa, New Zealand, Slee is resolute about his choice to pack up his life and move to Germany in 2015. It’s a long way from home but ‘a big part of being in Berlin was coming into myself ’ he admits. Slee’s work has seen support from the likes of Zane Lowe, BBC1, Clash, Complex and Nylon. Relishing in the potential forces of the arts, Noah Slee is as determined as ever to create wavy ground swells with his heart opening breezy rnb dance jams.
A Song for You
A Song For You will be performing and curating art on both days of the conference.
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Berlin-based singer-songwriter Aka Kelzz has always loved making music. Growing up in the UK, coming from a musical family and heavily influenced by Neo-Soul artists such as Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, and India Arie, Kelzz always dreamt of creating their own music.
Whilst growing up and working to find their own voice, Kelzz faced several difficulties being told their voice was not at the same standards as others. Plus being a fat dark-skinned teen with limited representation in the media, Kelzz was unable to see where they would fit in and be visible.
Having to deal with these difficulties, Kelzz then started journaling as a form of empowerment and resistance to write their feelings and emotions in a safe space, which would then help create songs in the future.
It took leaving their home in the UK - their personal and musical base - and moving to Berlin, when Kelzz decided to try music again and find new artists to collaborate with. After many failed band attempts, the pandemic seemed to be the perfect time to learn and produce their own music.
Finding Rafa Mura, seemed to be the final link to the start of their career and now Aka Kelzz has become a household name in Berlin in the Soul music scene. And after a successful year supporting the likes of Pip Millet and Madison Mcferrin, Aka Kelzz is set to skyrocket and continue to build and share their caressing vibe, which allows people “to feel what I feel with my creations.-”
When you look at me, remove any assumptions that you may have and enjoy the simplicity and creativity of the music.
Aka Kelzz
Aka Kelzz will perform on Friday, October 27 at 9am.
Darius Mick is a 90's born saxophonist, composer and producer currently residing between Leipzig and Berlin.
Darius
Mick
Darius Mick will perform on Thursday, October 26 at 9:20 am.
A Song For You presents a session of collective harmonizing, inviting the audience to tap into the spirituality of singing together. Led by singer and choir director, Noah Slee, the collective harmonizing session will be presented as a micro-workshop on how to find and express one’s own voice and blend it in a group setting.
Harmonizing Choir
The Harmonizing Choir will perform an audience choir session on Friday, October 27 at 4:15 pm.
Jumoke Adeyanju is an interdisciplinary multilingual writer, curator and dancer. Under her alias mokeyanju, she occasionally performs as a vinyl selector and aspiring sound artist. Jumoke is the founder of The Poetry Meets Series [est. 2014], co-curator of Sensitivities of Dance at SAVVY Contemporary and hosts her own radio show sauti ya àkókò on Refuge Worldwide.
Her multidimensional sound, words and movement art has been commissioned by Arthouse Foundation Lagos, AAF Lagos, CUNY NYC, Kölnischer Kunstverein and Deutschlandfunk Kultur & PUNGWE collective amongst others.
She has presented her artistic works at international literary festivals performing in English, German, Kiswahili and Yorùbá.
Jumoke's poetry and translation work will be published as part of the anthology "Kontinentaldrift: Das Schwarze Europa" (ed. Fiston Mwanza Mujila) in 2021.
As an allround-artist, Jumoke’s approach touches on topics like diaspora nostalgia, memory, spiritual liminal spaces, sonic tonalities, and how various elements of expressive art forms interrelate and incorporate the potential to (re-)create moments of reviving other or displaced selves.
Her multidimensional sound, words and movement art has been commissioned by Arthouse Foundation Lagos, AAF Lagos, CUNY NYC, Kölnischer Kunstverein and Deutschlandfunk Kultur & PUNGWE collective amongst others.
She has presented her artistic works at international literary festivals performing in English, German, Kiswahili and Yorùbá.
Jumoke's poetry and translation work will be published as part of the anthology "Kontinentaldrift: Das Schwarze Europa" (ed. Fiston Mwanza Mujila) in 2021.
As an allround-artist, Jumoke’s approach touches on topics like diaspora nostalgia, memory, spiritual liminal spaces, sonic tonalities, and how various elements of expressive art forms interrelate and incorporate the potential to (re-)create moments of reviving other or displaced selves.
Jumoke
Adeyanju
Jumoke Adeyanju will perform on Thursday, October 26 at 9:20 am.
Movement Seven is a multifaceted dance ensemble, birthed by A Song For You, that comprises of excelling BiPOC dancer talents from Berlin and beyond, led by Stephanie Ilova. At the very core of the groups work lies the premise of dance existing as a universal language of communication – if one has a body one will refer to dance. Movement Sevens mission is to put the storytelling at the center of their works and build the narration by highlighting every movement artists unique body language. Choreography and Improvisation work hand in hand with exploring the interconnectedness of dance and live music, creating an experience that people not only witness but experience.
Movement Seven is going to showcase a research based dance piece exploring every dancers movement practice while creating moments of encounter. A piece rooted in rhythms and seeking to express what speaks through us and what we mirror when we move and let go. The ensemble invites Ricco-Jarret and Maelle Fiand as dancers and will be led and joined by choreographer Stephanie Ilova.
Movement Seven
Movement Seven will perform on Thursday, October 26 at 1:30pm.
Multifaceted New Zealand talent Noah Slee is widely regarded as a community leader. The storyteller identifies as a musician, songwriter, producer, artist, and director. Combining traditional soul influences with electronic production, Slee’s music defies genre boundaries while allowing him to express himself vulnerably and empowering community and culture.
Noah Slee’s music will be accompanied by a string trio Neneh Sowe, Yassin Sowe and Eurico Ferreira joined by Käthe Johanning on piano. All string parts written by the talented composer and conductor Zacharias S. Falkenberg. This will be an explorative journey through Slee’s catalogue focusing on a soulful, intimate rendition taken from his previous works.
Noah
Slee
Noah Slee will perform on Thursday, October 26 at 3:50 pm.
Yasmeen Daher is a feminist activist and a writer. She holds a Doctorate degree from the department of philosophy, University of Montreal with focus on ethics and political philosophy, she had taught previously in different institutions including Bir-Zeit University in Palestine and Simone de Beavour Institute in Canada. She is currently the co-director and editorial director of Febrayer - A Network for independent Arab Media Organizations, based in Berlin.
Yasmeen
Daher
Yasmeen will be on the following panel: “Turning Towards Each Other, Not Against Each Other: Bridging in Times of Crisis” (Day Two)
Udi Raz is a doctoral fellow at the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies. There she investigates the contemporary self-understanding of Germany, as a nation state, as emerges through public attempts to regulate encounters beween 'Muslims' and 'Jews'. She grew up in Haifa, between Tel-Aviv and Beirut. Her work is shaped by local and global, anti- and decolonial, as well as queer liberation movements. She has lived in Berlin since 2010, where she first studied Culture and History of the Middle East and then Islamic Studies at the Free University Berlin. Raz is a board member of the Germany based organization Jewish Voice for Just Peace in the Middle East.
Udi
Raz
Udi will be on the following panel: “Turning Towards Each Other, Not Against Each Other: Bridging in Times of Crisis” (Day Two)
Cecilie Surasky is the Communications Director at the Othering & Belonging Institute. She brings two decades of movement-building strategy and communications experience to her position which she started in the spring of 2020. She worked most recently on a range of justice and equity issues including prison exoneree advocacy, LGBTQ health, Palestinian legal rights and climate justice in indigenous communities. Before that, Cecilie spent 13 years building the largest progressive Jewish grassroots organization in the United States, Jewish Voice for Peace, where she designed and led high-impact communication and advocacy campaigns to leverage influencers and shift narratives with the aim of building grassroots support for policies that uphold the inalienable human rights of Palestinians. Cecilie has also been a columnist for an East Coast daily newspaper, host of one of the country's first LGBTQ commercial talk radio programs, and a videomaker whose work has been shown at NY's Museum of Modern Art and in festivals around the world.
Cecilie
Surasky
Cecilie will be on the following panel: “Turning Towards Each Other, Not Against Each Other: Bridging in Times of Crisis” (Day Two)
Christiana Bukalo is a social change maker, speaker and co-founder of Statefree. Statefree is a non-profit organisation which follows the mission of empowering stateless people by creating community and belonging. End of 2021 the organisation launched the first global community platform for stateless people and their allies. Statefree.world allows stateless people to connect with each other, share stories and discuss questions. As a stateless person born from Germany, Christiana has had first-hand experience with the lack of transparency around statelessness and aims to fill this void by offering a space for stateless people to participate in the conversations that concern them. Furthermore Christiana has the honour of serving as a trustee and member of the Advisory Committee of the European Network on Statelessness and has been awarded the Echoing Green Fellowship (2022/2023).
Indy is a non-executive international Director of the BloxHub, the Nordic Hub for sustainable urbanization. He is on the advisory board for the Future Observatory and is part of the committee for the London Festival of Architecture. He is also a fellow of the London Interdisciplinary School.
Indy was 2016-17 Graham Willis Visiting Professorship at Sheffield University. He was Studio Master at the Architectural Association - 2019-2020, UNDP Innovation Facility Advisory Board Member 2016-20 and RIBA Trustee 2017-20.
He has taught & lectured at various institutions from the University of Bath, TU-Berlin; University College London, Princeton, Harvard, MIT and New School.
Indy Johar is an RIBA registered architect, serial social entrepreneur, and Good Growth Advisor to the Mayor of London. Indy was born in Acton, West London & is a lifelong Londoner.
He was awarded the London Design Medal for Innovation in 2022 and an MBE in 2023.
Christiana
Bukalo
Christiana will make opening remarks on day one, Thursday.
Winta Berhe (they/them) is a climate justice organizer with a background organising with the climate movement in Germany. Currently, they are actively involved with an anti-fascist and anti-racist group in Frankfurt, Germany. Their work prioritises climate justice education and the establishment of accessible community spaces led by and for BIPOC activists. Their work is driven by an abolitionist and system-change perspective that prioritises fostering global collaboration between Black, indigenous, and communities of colour in both the Global North and South to mobilise around climate justice.
Winta
Berhe
Winta will be on the following panel: “From Climate Change to Climate Justice: A BIPOC Perspective in Europe” (Day Two)
Samia Dumbuya (she/they) is a freelance consultant, facilitator and community organiser focusing on community and movement building for climate justice. They are also currently a Master's student at UCL studying MSc Sustainable Resources: Economics, Policy and Transitions observing the flow and availability of global natural resources using tools from multiple disciplines, such as economics, political science, environmental science, engineering and more. Samia's background is centring community care and empowerment in their professional experience. They co-authored Towards Climate Justice: Rethinking the European Green Deal from a Racial Justice Perspective, a project led by Equinox: Initiative for Racial Justice. Samia has the drive to weave different approaches led by communities and green organisations to eliminate silos, as working in silos brings us further away from climate justice.
Samia
Dumbuya
Samia will be on the following panel: “From Climate Change to Climate Justice: A BIPOC Perspective in Europe” (Day Two)
Samie Blasingame (she/her) is a social justice facilitator with a background in environmental policy, intercultural studies, and creative communications. She regularly curates, hosts, and facilitates events on topics related to sustainability, environmental justice, intersectional organizing, and network mapping. She is the Creative Director of Food in my Kiez, sits on the board of Greenbuzz Berlin with whom she runs the #FeedingBerlin series, and organises with the Berlin-based climate and environmental justice collective, Black Earth. Her work and political ethos revolves around community building and collective imaginations toward a just and resilient future.
Samie
Blasingame
Samie will be on the following panel: “From Climate Change to Climate Justice: A BIPOC Perspective in Europe” (Day Two)
Nani Jansen Reventlow is an internationally recognised human rights lawyer specialised in strategic litigation at the intersection of human rights, social justice, and technology. She is the founder of Systemic Justice, a new organisation that seeks to radically transform how the law works for communities fighting for racial, social, and economic justice. Previously, Nani founded and built the Digital Freedom Fund, where she initiated a decolonising process for the digital rights field. She is Adjunct Professor at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government, an Associate Tenant at Doughty Street Chambers, and has been an Ashoka Fellow since 2021.
Nani
Jansen Reventlow
Nani will be on the following panel: “From Climate Change to Climate Justice: A BIPOC Perspective in Europe” (Day Two)
Art, Culture & Ethics
Where belonging meets culture and society.
Banner illustration by Evan Bissell, “4 energy sources, 4 medicines, 4 tools, 4 foods”
Black lives matter, But to whom? Why We Need a Politics of Exile in a Time of Troubling Stuckness (Part I)
Essay — Báyò Akómoláfé, 19 January 2023
Four days away from the Christmas of 1848, in the dark and occult hours before morning wakes, Ellen and William Craft beheld each other through tearful eyes for the last time... Read more >>
Contemporary Cases of Shared Sacred Sites: Forms of Othering or Belonging?
Essay — Karen Barkey, Fall 2018
This article investigates one particular narrative of “othering and belonging,” one that brings together the historical and contemporary experience of particular communities of... Read more >>
Cultures of Care: a project from the Othering & Belonging Institute
Project — Evan Bissell and Giovanna Fischer, April 2022
Cultures of Care celebrates people that practice collective care in unconventional and insurgent ways. Care is an essential, immediate and practical way to create belonging... Read more >>
Faith Communities as Partners of Hope
Essay — Rev. Deborah Lee, 18 April 2018
Bringing forth an inclusive, fair, and humane society will require a coordinated movement of diverse sectors of society working towards this compelling vision. I am heartened and hopeful that faith communities... Read more >>
Object to Subject: Three scholars on race, othering, and bearing witness
Interview — Andrew Grant-Thomas with Erin Kerrison, Wizdom Powell, and Abigail Sewell, Fall 2018
On March 19, 2018 The New York Times published an article entitled “Extensive Data Shows Punishing Reach of Racism for Black Boys.” Drawing on longitudinal data on millions of American children... Read more >>
Artist Christine Wong Yap on her Places of Belonging Project
Podcast — Sara Grossman with Christine Wong Yap, 29 July 2019
In this episode of “Who Belongs?” host Sara Grossman interviews Christine Wong Yap, who became the Haas Institute's first Artist in Residence in the fall of 2018, about her "Places of Belonging" project... Read more >>
Transcending Borders Through Music: An Interview with Alsarah from the Nile Project
Interview — Elsadig Elsheikh with Alsarah, 31 August 2015
The Nile Project was created for the purpose of using the performing arts as a tool for transforming disputes and suspicion into meaningful understanding, and to advance sustainability efforts... Read more >>
Nile Project founder Mina Girgis on how music can be used for bridging
Video — Mina Girgis, 5 June 2019
Mina Girgis, an Egyptian musicologist and Haas Institute senior fellow, presents on his Nile Project collective during a talk on June 5, 2019 at UC Berkeley... Read more >>
Us, Reimagined: Where Culture Can Take Community
Essay — Sara Grossman, 24 May 2018
This spring, singer and rapper Childish Gambino set off a heated national debate after releasing the music video for his song This is America. The video, both cryptic and startling, is shot entirely in a warehouse... Read more >>
Belonging Through Connection, Connecting Through Love: Oneself, the Other, and the Earth — O&B Conference 2015
Video — john a. powell and bell hooks, 26 April 2015
There are three constructed schisms to oneself, the other, and the earth. In reality, there is no schism, but rather a need to acknowledge and live through connection... Read more >>
Breaking & Othering
Explore the mechanisms fragmenting society.
The Mechanisms of Othering — O&B Conference 2015
Video — john. a powell, 26 April 2015
“This whole conference is about othering and belonging, and in some ways I would say that's the problem of the 21st century. It’s not just a problem here in California in the United States. It’s a problem all over the world...” Hear more >>
Bridging: Towards A Society Built on Belonging
Video and Curriculum — 14 November 2018
This animated explainer video gives a high-level snapshot of our analysis of bridging and breaking as possible responses in our current times. As Director john a. powell explains in the voiceover, “Of all the forces...” Read more >>
The Problem of Othering: Towards Inclusiveness and Belonging
Essay — john a. powell and Stephen Menendian, Summer 2016
The problem of the twenty-first century is the problem of “othering.” In a world beset by seemingly intractable and overwhelming challenges, virtually every global, national, and regional conflict is wrapped within or organized around one or more dimension of group-based difference... Read more >>
Legalizing Othering: The United States of Islamophobia
Report — Elsadig Elsheikh, Basima Sisemore, and Natalia Ramirez Lee, 8 September 2017
This report on the anti-Sharia movement in the United States addresses the legalized othering of Muslim communities across the nation through anti-Muslim legislation and bills between the years 2000 and 2016. Within the broader context of rising anti-Muslim sentiment... Read more >>
Islamophobia in the United States: A Reading Resource Pack
Literature Review — Rhonda Itaoui and Elsadig Elsheikh, 12 September 2018
This Reading Resource Pack was developed by researchers from the Global Justice Program at the Othering & Belonging Institute, as part of its larger project of documenting and countering Islamophobia...
Read more >>
Read more >>
Understanding Islamophobia in the Global Context
Video — Elsadig Elsheikh, Dr. Farid Hafez, Dr. Linda Hyökki, Dr. Rhonda Itaoui, and Basima Sisemore, 22 September 2018
On Friday, Sept. 22, we hosted a 90-minute virtual event to mark the launch of our Islamophobia Reading Resource Packs for the Asia-Pacific region and Europe, which featured the publications’ authors. The panelists provided an overview... Read more >>
California Dog Whistling
Essay — Ian Haney López, 18 April 2018
Over the last half-century, politicians have exploited a public discourse emphasizing fear of nonwhites. This is “dog whistle politics,” a dynamic grounded in powerful racial narratives expressed in coded terms. The code allows these racial stories to be defended as benign, even as... Read more >>
Bridging & Belonging
Learning to expand the “we.”
Belonging Design Principles: A resource guide for building belonging
Essay — Ashley Gallegos and Cecilie Surasky, 7 August 2023
Across our planet, people are looking for effective ways to build just, equitable, and inclusive institutions that serve and support everyone. Even more challenging... Read more >>
Bridging: Towards A Society Built on Belonging
Video and Curriculum — 14 November 2018
This animated explainer video gives a high-level snapshot of our analysis of bridging and breaking as possible responses in our current times. As Director john a. powell explains in the voiceover, “Of all the forces...” Read more >>
Bridging to Belonging Case Series
Project — Blueprint for Belonging, 2021
This Bridging to Belonging Case Series captures real-world examples of bridging and belonging through writings and podcast interviews. In this series, we analyze a range of breaking moments and bridging opportunities... Read more >>
The Circle of Human Concern
Video and Curriculum — 2020
In this animated video voiced by Institute Director john a. powell, the differences between public and private space, and their alternatives are discussed as they relate to the circle of human concern... Read more >>
Developing a shared vocabulary: Introduction to Othering, Bridging & Belonging
Podcast — Miriam Magaña Lopez with john a. powell, 6 October 2021
In this episode we hear from john a. powell, who is our director, and a professor of law and African American Studies here at UC Berkeley. In the interview we discuss a brand new primer... Read more >>
On Bridging: Evidence and Guidance from Real-World Cases
Essay — Rachel Heydemann and john a. powell, 19 August 2020
As the pace of change in our world intensifies, humanity is confronting unprecedented global challenges. There are many paths we can take to respond to this moment: some encourage greater cooperation... Read more >>
Will humanity survive? The philosophy of john a. powell
Video — john. a powell, May 2018
This previously unreleased video from May 2018 features Othering & Belonging Institute Director john a. powell on the urgent need to create a world of greater belonging and avoid the impulse toward smaller... Read more >>
Why We Need to Build and Bridge
Video — Eboo Patel, john a. powell, and Allison Briscoe-Smith, 25 April 2023
At a time of deep social polarization and division, it is easy to lose hope in the potential for positive social change and a more diverse and just democracy. But for the past 20 years — inspired by love-based activists... Read more >>
The Risk and Possibility of Bridging Keynote — O&B Conference 2021
Video — john a. powell and Judith Butler, 18 October 2021
In this intimate discussion, OBI Director john a. powell and philosopher Judith Butler will engage in a deep exploration of bridging, particularly in the context of our current moment... Read more >>
Belonging Through Connection, Connecting Through Love: Oneself, the Other, and the Earth — O&B Conference 2015
Video — john a. powell and bell hooks, 26 April 2015
There are three constructed schisms to oneself, the other, and the earth. In reality, there is no schism, but rather a need to acknowledge and live through connection... Read more >>
Victor Pineda on “Radical Inclusion: Cities, Technology and the Power of Inclusive Thinking”
Video — Victor Pineda, 20 October 2017
Haas Institute Senior Fellow Victor Pineda, who heads the organization World Enabled, gives a keynote at the Bioneers Conference on “Radical Inclusion: Cities, Technology and the Power of Inclusive Thinking”... Read more >>
Identity Politics: Friend or Foe?
Essay — Alicia Garza, 24 September 2019
The term “identity politics” was first coined by Black feminist Barbara Smith and the Combahee River Collective in 1974. Identity politics originated from the need to reshape movements that had until then prioritized... Read more >>
let me hold your hand
Essay — Míriam Juan-Torres González, 30 June 2022
I am optimistic by choice and cynical in nature. For years, whenever the latter started to take over, I reminded myself of how lucky I am to be a woman today. If I could choose being born at any point in time, I’d choose our era... Read more >>
Climate Justice
Extinguish the fires threatening our people and planet.
Banner illustration by Evan Bissell, “Victory at Xwe'chi eXen, 2016”
OBI’s Climate Justice Principles
Essay — November 2022
The climate crisis is not fundamentally an engineering or environmental problem, it’s a problem with dominant ways of thinking, of relating to each other and the dominant systems we have created. To survive and thrive... Read more >>
Climate Crisis, Displacement, and the Right to Stay
Project — Global Justice Program, November 2023
The Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley advances groundbreaking approaches to exposing the dire impacts of the climate crisis and building climate resilience. We develop compelling research tools, analyses... Read more >>
Connecting the Local and the Global: A Call to Climate Justice Action
Essay — Emnet Almedom, 14 November 2018
Where I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, much of our drinking water comes from the Chattahoochee River. The river, whose name comes from the Creek/Muscogee words chato ("rock") and huchi ("painted")... Read more >>
Climate Refugees: The Climate Crisis and Rights Denied
Report — Hossein Ayazi and Elsadig Elsheikh, December 2019
The burning of fossil fuels and other sources of greenhouse gas emissions have been transforming the earth’s climate and putting the world’s most vulnerable communities at risk. Our global dependence on petroleum... Read more >>
Climate Refugees: Facts, Findings, and Strategies for ‘Loss and Damage’
Report — Hossein Ayazi and Elsadig Elsheikh, 27 July 2023
Despite the growing consensus among climate scientists and international governing bodies that forced migration is an effect of climate change, and although the expression “climate refugees” is often used... Read more >>
Moving Targets: An Analysis of Global Forced Migration
Report — Elsadig Elsheikh and Hossein Ayazi, September 2017
“Moving Targets” investigates the historical and contemporary causes of forced migration as well as both the challenges and capacities of national and international refugee protections and resettlement efforts... Read more >>
We Can't Have Climate Justice Without Global Justice: US Energy Policy and the Inflation Reduction Act in Perspective
Essay — Hossein Ayazi, 29 August 2022
On Tuesday, August 16, 2022, US President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law. The IRA is the largest explicit investment for mitigating climate change in federal history... Read more >>
Taking Stock: Visioning Beyond the Refinery
Report — Alfredo Angulo, Marisol Cantu, Tera Johnson, Eli Moore, Natalia Urzola, and Mylanah Yolangco, 31 August 2022
Richmond, CA has been called a "refinery town" because of the widely-felt presence of Chevron's oil refinery in the city. But what is the actual web of relationships between the oil refinery and... Read more >>
Community Belonging & Climate Futures
Essay and Video — 27 May 2022
How can communities plan for an economy beyond fossil fuels? What are the pathways to an economy that is not only free of fossil fuels but also provides a good life for all its members? Read more >>
Naomi Klein: Imagining a Future without Sacrifice Zones
Video — Naomi Klein, 26 April 2015
Renowned journalist Naomi Klein speaks at the 2015 Othering & Belonging Conference about the stakes and urgency of climate justice, and who is sacrificed when we do not address climate catastrophe. Read more >>
Immigration Justice is Climate Justice
Essay — Evan Yoshimoto, 16 August 2018
The struggles for immigration justice and climate justice are inextricably linked. Their victories exist as a positive feedback loop, each imperative to the other’s success as trials of climate change, displacement, and... Read more >>
Disability & Accessibility
Delve into how the built environment determines access.
Aimi Hamraie on “Making Access Critical: Disability, Race, and Gender in Environmental Design”
Video — Aimi Hamraie, 25 February 2019
The Haas Institute's Disability Studies cluster and School of Environmental Design on February 25 hosted a talk by disability scholar Aimi Hamraie titled “Making Access Critical...” Read more >>
Reinventing the Wheelchair: The globe-trotting engineer who turns shoddy, unsafe wheelchairs into vehicles of real mobility
Essay — Marc Abizeid, 24 May 2018
Engineer Ralf Hotchkiss has made it his life-long mission to bring “real mobility” to millions around the world in need of durable, safe, and low-cost wheelchairs. Read more >>
Reinventing the Wheelchair: Interview with Ralf Hotchkiss
Podcast — Marc Abizeid with Ralf Hotchkiss, 3 August 2018
We interviewed Ralf Hotchkiss, a renowned disability rights activist, engineer, and co-founder of the Whirlwind Wheelchair project, based in Berkeley... Read more >>
Victor Pineda on “Radical Inclusion: Cities, Technology and the Power of Inclusive Thinking”
Video — Victor Pineda, 20 October 2017
Haas Institute Senior Fellow Victor Pineda, who heads the organization World Enabled, gives a keynote at the Bioneers Conference on “Radical Inclusion: Cities, Technology and the Power of Inclusive Thinking”... Read more >>
Economics & Class
Find out how class interacts with othering.
Building An Economics of Belonging
Video — Martin Sandbu, Catherine Fieschi, Saru Jayaraman, and Simon-Reid Henry, 10 October 2020
Representative democracies have seen the liberal post-war consensus challenged by various forms of populist, nationalist, and breaking politics. The United States offers a troubling display of deep polarization... Read more >>
Does “Belonging” Mean Economic Inclusion or New Economic Structures?
Essay — Eli Moore, 27 March 2019
In the last couple years, the conversation around "belonging" as a social and political term has become more salient, sparking important debates around how it is used to interpret and imagine social change... Read more >>
New Bay Area mural humanizes housing crisis
Video and Essay — 18 October 2017
A powerful new mural informing renters of their rights was unveiled this month on the facade of a building in Richmond, CA, as part of a... Read more >>
Realizing the Possibilities of the Connected Economy: Innovative Ideas To Tackle Extreme Inequality and Drive Enduring Prosperity
Essay — Mark Gomez, 3 July 2015
What do we want out of life? Are we fulfilling our hopes and dreams for ourselves and for those we love? And if not, what can we do about it? Too often, we race ahead to engage in analysis before... Read more >>
Gender & Sexuality
Investigate concepts of feminism and queerness.
Banner illustration by Daniel Liévano, “We Share the World”
Creating Bathroom Access & a Gender Inclusive Society
Policy Brief — Eric Peterson, September 2018
Transgender people face both subtle and overt forms of bias and discrimination in a number of areas including healthcare, housing, education, and employment. They report high rates of homelessness... Read more >>
Masculinity, Anxiety, and Fear of the Other in the Age of Trump
Essay — Sara Grossman, 6 November 2016
On February 9, 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy stood before the Ohio County Women’s Republican Club in Wheeling, West Virginia and presented a list of over 200 State Department employees... Read more >>
Histories & Stories
Dig through the past to understand how we arrived here.
Banner illustration by Fernando Marti, “The View from Ohlone/Mission Bay: 1776-2016”
Roots, Race, & Place: A History of Racially Exclusionary Housing in the San Francisco Bay Area
Report — Eli Moore, Nicole Montojo, and Nicole Mauri, October 2019
The rampant displacement seen today in the San Francisco Bay Area is built upon a history of exclusion and dispossession, centered on race, and driven by the logic of capitalism... Read more >>
The History of Corporate Power
Essay— john a. powell and Stephen Menendian 17 January 2023
The concentration of wealth and influence held by corporations in the US is clear evidence of a serious structural distortion in our economy and political system... Read more >>
Why are people around the world knocking down old statues?
Podcast — Marc Abizeid with Adam Hochschild, 22 June 2020
In this episode of “Who Belongs?,” we hear from Adam Hochschild, a prominent historian, journalist, and a best selling author who wrote King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa... Read more >>
Mandela’s Work Is Our Own
Essay — john a. powell, 16 December 2013
On December 5th, the world lost not only a wise and inspiring leader, but a wonderful person in Nelson Mandela. Touching virtually all of our lives, he not only changed the course of world history... Read more >>
Contemporary Cases of Shared Sacred Sites: Forms of Othering or Belonging?
Essay — Karen Barkey, Fall 2018
This article investigates one particular narrative of “othering and belonging,” one that brings together the historical and contemporary experience of particular communities of... Read more >>
On Good Conflict: What If We Called In, Rather Than Called Out
Video — Amanda Ripley, Curtis Toler, Eboo Patel, Molly Crockett, Pat McCabe, and Loretta Ross, 19 October 2021
Outrage and conflict have long offered an easy way to build political power for advocates on both the political right and left. While moral outrage is a critical motivator for change... Read more >>
Healing the Earth: Black and Native Women, Two Spirit, and Gender Expansive Folks in the Climate Justice Movement
Essay — Miriam Magaña Lopez, 2021
The historical relationship between Native and Black people in the United States is complex and often untold. Since the colonization of what is now known as the United States... Read more >>
A 21st Century Movement-Building Challenge: Forging a Common Identity Among ‘People of Color’
Essay— Gerald Lenoir, 18 April 2018
One of the essential elements in the building of a cohesive social movement across communities of color aimed at dismantling structural racism is the formation of a common identity... Read more >>
New Bay Area mural humanizes housing crisis
Video and Essay — 18 October 2017
A powerful new mural informing renters of their rights was unveiled this month on the facade of a building in Richmond, CA, as part of a... Read more >>
Measuring Inequality
Gauge inequality through qualitative and quantitative methods.
Inclusiveness Index
Project — Stephen Menendian, Elsadig Elsheikh, and Samir Gambhir, 2021
The Othering and Belonging Institute’s “Inclusiveness Index” is a holistic gauge of the degree of inclusivity experienced by marginalized groups across the globe and within the United States. Read more >>
Racial Disparities Dashboard
Project — Equity Metrics, 7 June 2023
The Othering and Belonging Institute is pleased to launch the Racial Disparities Dashboard. A racial disparity is defined as a persistent difference in outcomes between racial groups, and to highlight... Read more >>
Racial Segregation in the San Francisco Bay Area
Project — 6 February 2019
Segregation is one of our nation’s most enduring and intractable problems. More than 60 years since the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision denounced racial segregation... Read more >>
Anti-Democracy Cascades: Disproportional Representation in State Legislatures, and the Attack on Voters
Essay — Joshua Clark, 5 January 2022
As efforts to secure voting rights at the federal level remain at a standstill, the most consequential legislation determining how we vote, who can vote, and how much our votes count... Read more >>
Islamophobia in the United States: A Reading Resource Pack
Literature Review — Rhonda Itaoui and Elsadig Elsheikh, September 2018
This Reading Resource Pack was developed by researchers from the Global Justice Program at the Othering & Belonging Institute, as part of its larger project of documenting and countering Islamophobia... Read more >>
Islamophobia in Asia-Pacific: A Reading Resource Pack
Literature Review — Rhonda Itaoui and Elsadig Elsheikh, September 2023
This reading resource pack provides a thematic overview of current academic research published over the last few decades on Islamophobia in the Asia-Pacific region... Read more >>
Islamophobia in Europe: A Reading Resource Pack
Literature Review — Elsadig Elsheikh, Farid Hafez, and Linda Hyökki, September 2023
In response to the experiences of Muslims worldwide, we seek to counteract all forms of discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance to expose the power structures that generate them... Read more >>
Creating Bathroom Access & a Gender Inclusive Society
Policy Brief — Eric Peterson, September 2018
Transgender people face both subtle and overt forms of bias and discrimination in a number of areas including healthcare, housing, education, and employment. They report high rates of homelessness... Read more >>
Policy & Practice
Analyze laws, policies, and institutional forces.
Ending Legal Bias Against Formerly Incarcerated People: Establishing Protected Legal Status
Policy Brief — Kimberly G. White, Eli Moore, Tamisha Walker, and Stephen Menendian, September 2019
What ideas exist that can rise to the scale of entrenched and emergent social problems and injustices? This new Bold Policy Ideas series focuses on that question with a new series of brief reports that... Read more >>
We Too Belong: A Resource Guide of Inclusive Practices in Immigration and Incarceration Law and Policy
Policy Brief — Stephen Menendian, Lupe Victoria Aguirre, Saba Ahmed, Guilherme Duraes, Sara Grossman, Bryan Lopez, Thomas Nolan, and Emily Stein, May 2016
The most marginalized populations in the history of our society were those that were denied public voice or access to private space. Historically, women and slaves experienced this form of marginality.... Read more >>
The Road Not Taken: Housing and Criminal Justice 50 Years After the Kerner Commission Report
Policy Brief — Stephen Menendian and Richard Rothstein, with Nirali Beri, 2020
In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed a bipartisan commission and charged it with analyzing the underlying causes and conditions that led to over 150 race-related riots during that summer... Read more >>
Targeted Universalism: Policy & Practice Primer
Primer — john a. powell, Stephen Menendian, and Wendy Ake, May 2019
In an era of political polarization and fiscal austerity, policy debates too readily become trapped in a binary of either universal responses or targeted solutions. Universal responses enjoy... Read more >>
Implementing Targeted Universalism Case Study: King County, WA
Report — Wendy Ake and Tracy Lam-Hine, 10 December 2020
Local and municipal governments anchor the day-to-day lives of US residents. Thousands of city and county governments across the US have an important role to play in building and sustaining equity for their residents... Read more >>
Trump attacks fair housing: What does the end of AFFH spell for integration?
Podcast — Marc Abizeid with Richard Rothstein and Stephen Menendian, 5 August 2020
Last week Trump announced he had eliminated an Obama-era fair housing rule put in place in 2015 to reverse patterns of residential segregation that have been in place for many decades. Read more >>
Principles for Reframing the National Security Narrative
Essay and Video — 7 December 2023
Our public discourse is seeded with dangerous and counterproductive ideas concerning national security that are so deeply embedded we may often be unaware that we... Read more >>
Creating Bathroom Access & a Gender Inclusive Society
Policy Brief — Eric Peterson, September 2018
Transgender people face both subtle and overt forms of bias and discrimination in a number of areas including healthcare, housing, education, and employment. They report high rates of homelessness... Read more >>
Targeted Universalism
Understand one of the most powerful tools for addressing inequity.
Targeted Universalism: Policy & Practice Primer
Primer — john a. powell, Stephen Menendian, and Wendy Ake, May 2019
In an era of political polarization and fiscal austerity, policy debates too readily become trapped in a binary of either universal responses or targeted solutions. Universal responses enjoy... Read more >>
Targeted Universalism: Animated Video
Video — 8 February 2017
Targeted Universalism is a different way—a powerful way—to make the transformational changes we need. Changes we need to improve life chances, promote inclusion, and... Read more >>
Targeted Universalism: Bibliography
Literature Review — Wendy Ake, 2023
The framework of targeted universalism has been a compelling framework for work in many different contexts. The sources referenced in this bibliography reflect this diversity of uses and application areas... Read more >>
Implementing Targeted Universalism Case Study: King County, WA
Report — Wendy Ake and Tracy Lam-Hine, 10 December 2020
Local and municipal governments anchor the day-to-day lives of US residents. Thousands of city and county governments across the US have an important role to play in building and sustaining equity for their residents... Read more >>
Targeted Universalism, with john a. powell
Podcast — Marc Abizeid with john a. powell, 8 May 2019
In this episode we hear from john a. powell, who is our director, and a professor of law and African American Studies here at UC Berkeley. In the interview we discuss a brand new primer... Read more >>
Developing a shared vocabulary: Introduction to Othering, Bridging & Belonging
Podcast — Miriam Magaña Lopez with john a. powell, 6 October 2021
In this episode we hear from john a. powell, who is our director, and a professor of law and African American Studies here at UC Berkeley. In the interview we discuss a brand new primer... Read more >>
Realizing the Possibilities of the Connected Economy: Innovative Ideas To Tackle Extreme Inequality and Drive Enduring Prosperity
Essay — Mark Gomez, 3 July 2015
What do we want out of life? Are we fulfilling our hopes and dreams for ourselves and for those we love? And if not, what can we do about it? Too often, we race ahead to engage in analysis before... Read more >>
Structural Racism
Learn how deeply racism is rooted — and how to uproot it.
Structural Racism Explained
Video and Curriculum — Othering & Belonging Institute, 15 January 2023
The “Structural Racism Explained” video draws upon many varied sources in formulating specific definitions for different types of racism. The video and prompts provided in this video and teaching guide... Read more >>
The Structural Racism Remedies Repository
Project — 20 March 2023
This a repository of policy-based recommendations for addressing structural and systemic racism or advancing racial equity drawn from a vast array of published material. A complete list of... Read more >>
Racial Disparities Dashboard
Project — 7 June 2023
The Othering and Belonging Institute is pleased to launch the Racial Disparities Dashboard. A racial disparity is defined as a persistent difference in outcomes between racial groups, and to highlight... Read more >>
Racial Segregation in the San Francisco Bay Area
Project — 6 February 2019
Segregation is one of our nation’s most enduring and intractable problems. More than 60 years since the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision denounced racial segregation... Read more >>
Leah Rothstein Presents “Just Action: How to Challenge Segregation Enacted Under the Color of Law”
Video — Stephen Menendian with Leah Rothstein, 6 July 2023
Author and community organizer Leah Rothstein presents her new book (co-authored with Richard Rothstein) during a presentation prepared for OBI staff on July 6, 2023... Read more >>
The future of freedom: Reparations after 400 years
Video — Bertrall Ross, Katherine Franke, Jovan Scott Lewis, and Michael Ralph, 18 November 2020
On November 18, 2020, a distinguished panel of scholars consider what the question of reparations means for this freedom’s fulfillment and what kind of future could follow for African-Americans beyond 400. Read more >>
The Road Not Taken: Housing and Criminal Justice 50 Years After the Kerner Commission Report
Policy Brief — Stephen Menendian and Richard Rothstein, with Nirali Beri, 2020
In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed a bipartisan commission and charged it with analyzing the underlying causes and conditions that led to over 150 race-related riots during that summer... Read more >>
Essays & Other Texts
Essays
Interviews
Reports
Policy Briefs
Lit Reviews
Books
Principles for Reframing the National Security Narrative
Essay and Video — 7 December 2023
Our public discourse is seeded with dangerous and counterproductive ideas concerning national security that are so deeply embedded we may often be unaware that we... Read more >>
Belonging Design Principles: A resource guide for building belonging
Essay — Ashley Gallegos and Cecilie Surasky, 7 August 2023
Across our planet, people are looking for effective ways to build just, equitable, and inclusive institutions that serve and support everyone. Even more challenging... Read more >>
Black lives matter, But to whom? Why We Need a Politics of Exile in a Time of Troubling Stuckness (Part I)
Essay — Báyò Akómoláfé, 19 January 2023
Four days away from the Christmas of 1848, in the dark and occult hours before morning wakes, Ellen and William Craft beheld each other through tearful eyes for the last time... Read more >>
OBI’s Climate Justice Principles
Essay — November 2022
The climate crisis is not fundamentally an engineering or environmental problem, it’s a problem with dominant ways of thinking, of relating to each other and the dominant systems we have created. To survive and thrive... Read more >>
Taking Stock: Visioning Beyond the Refinery
Report — Alfredo Angulo, Marisol Cantu, Tera Johnson, Eli Moore, Natalia Urzola, and Mylanah Yolangco, 31 August 2022
Richmond, CA has been called a "refinery town" because of the widely-felt presence of Chevron's oil refinery in the city. But what is the actual web of relationships between the oil refinery and... Read more >>
We Can't Have Climate Justice Without Global Justice: US Energy Policy and the Inflation Reduction Act in Perspective
Essay — Hossein Ayazi, 29 August 2022
On Tuesday, August 16, 2022, US President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law. The IRA is the largest explicit investment for mitigating climate change in federal history... Read more >>
let me hold your hand
Essay — Míriam Juan-Torres González, 30 June 2022
I am optimistic by choice and cynical in nature. For years, whenever the latter started to take over, I reminded myself of how lucky I am to be a woman today. If I could choose being born at any point in time, I’d choose our era... Read more >>
Anti-Democracy Cascades: Disproportional Representation in State Legislatures, and the Attack on Voters
Essay — Joshua Clark, 5 January 2022
As efforts to secure voting rights at the federal level remain at a standstill, the most consequential legislation determining how we vote, who can vote, and how much our votes count... Read more >>
Healing the Earth: Black and Native Women, Two Spirit, and Gender Expansive Folks in the Climate Justice Movement
Essay — Miriam Magaña Lopez, 2021
The historical relationship between Native and Black people in the United States is complex and often untold. Since the colonization of what is now known as the United States... Read more >>
On Bridging: Evidence and Guidance from Real-World Cases
Essay — Rachel Heydemann and john a. powell, 19 August 2020
As the pace of change in our world intensifies, humanity is confronting unprecedented global challenges. There are many paths we can take to respond to this moment: some encourage greater cooperation... Read more >>
Roots, Race, & Place: A History of Racially Exclusionary Housing in the San Francisco Bay Area
Report — Eli Moore, Nicole Montojo, and Nicole Mauri, October 2019
The rampant displacement seen today in the San Francisco Bay Area is built upon a history of exclusion and dispossession, centered on race, and driven by the logic of capitalism... Read more >>
Identity Politics: Friend or Foe?
Essay — Alicia Garza, 24 September 2019
The term “identity politics” was first coined by Black feminist Barbara Smith and the Combahee River Collective in 1974. Identity politics originated from the need to reshape movements that had until then prioritized... Read more >>
Does “Belonging” Mean Economic Inclusion or New Economic Structures?
Essay — Eli Moore, 27 March 2019
In the last couple years, the conversation around "belonging" as a social and political term has become more salient, sparking important debates around how it is used to interpret and imagine social change... Read more >>
Connecting the Local and the Global: A Call to Climate Justice Action
Essay — Emnet Almedom, 14 November 2018
Where I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, much of our drinking water comes from the Chattahoochee River. The river, whose name comes from the Creek/Muscogee words chato ("rock") and huchi ("painted")... Read more >>
Contemporary Cases of Shared Sacred Sites: Forms of Othering or Belonging?
Essay — Karen Barkey, Fall 2018
This article investigates one particular narrative of “othering and belonging,” one that brings together the historical and contemporary experience of particular communities of... Read more >>
Us, Reimagined: Where Culture Can Take Community
Essay — Sara Grossman, 24 May 2018
This spring, singer and rapper Childish Gambino set off a heated national debate after releasing the music video for his song This is America. The video, both cryptic and startling, is shot entirely in a warehouse... Read more >>
Faith Communities as Partners of Hope
Essay — Rev. Deborah Lee, 18 April 2018
Bringing forth an inclusive, fair, and humane society will require a coordinated movement of diverse sectors of society working towards this compelling vision. I am heartened and hopeful that faith communities... Read more >>
A 21st Century Movement-Building Challenge: Forging a Common Identity Among ‘People of Color’
Essay— Gerald Lenoir, 18 April 2018
One of the essential elements in the building of a cohesive social movement across communities of color aimed at dismantling structural racism is the formation of a common identity... Read more >>
Immigration Justice is Climate Justice
Essay — Evan Yoshimoto, 16 August 2018
The struggles for immigration justice and climate justice are inextricably linked. Their victories exist as a positive feedback loop, each imperative to the other’s success as trials of climate change, displacement, and... Read more >>
Reinventing the Wheelchair: The globe-trotting engineer who turns shoddy, unsafe wheelchairs into vehicles of real mobility
Essay — Marc Abizeid, 24 May 2018
Engineer Ralf Hotchkiss has made it his life-long mission to bring “real mobility” to millions around the world in need of durable, safe, and low-cost wheelchairs. Read more >>
New Bay Area mural humanizes housing crisis
Video and Essay — 18 October 2017
A powerful new mural informing renters of their rights was unveiled this month on the facade of a building in Richmond, CA, as part of a... Read more >>
Masculinity, Anxiety, and Fear of the Other in the Age of Trump
Essay — Sara Grossman, 6 November 2016
On February 9, 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy stood before the Ohio County Women’s Republican Club in Wheeling, West Virginia and presented a list of over 200 State Department employees... Read more >>
The Problem of Othering: Towards Inclusiveness and Belonging
Essay — john a. powell and Stephen Menendian, Summer 2016
The problem of the twenty-first century is the problem of “othering.” In a world beset by seemingly intractable and overwhelming challenges, virtually every global, national, and regional conflict is wrapped within or organized around one or more dimension of group-based difference... Read more >>
Realizing the Possibilities of the Connected Economy: Innovative Ideas To Tackle Extreme Inequality and Drive Enduring Prosperity
Essay — Mark Gomez, 3 July 2015
What do we want out of life? Are we fulfilling our hopes and dreams for ourselves and for those we love? And if not, what can we do about it? Too often, we race ahead to engage in analysis before... Read more >>
Mandela’s Work Is Our Own
Essay — john a. powell, 16 December 2013
On December 5th, the world lost not only a wise and inspiring leader, but a wonderful person in Nelson Mandela. Touching virtually all of our lives, he not only changed the course of world history... Read more >>
Object to Subject: Three scholars on race, othering, and bearing witness
Interview — Andrew Grant-Thomas with Erin Kerrison, Wizdom Powell, and Abigail Sewell, Fall 2018
On March 19, 2018 The New York Times published an article entitled “Extensive Data Shows Punishing Reach of Racism for Black Boys.” Drawing on longitudinal data on millions of American children... Read more >>
Transcending Borders Through Music: An Interview with Alsarah from the Nile Project
Interview — Elsadig Elsheikh with Alsarah, 31 August 2015
The Nile Project was created for the purpose of using the performing arts as a tool for transforming disputes and suspicion into meaningful understanding, and to advance sustainability efforts of the Nile Basin... Read more >>
Climate Refugees: Facts, Findings, and Strategies for ‘Loss and Damage’
Report — Hossein Ayazi and Elsadig Elsheikh, 27 July 2023
Despite the growing consensus among climate scientists and international governing bodies that forced migration is an effect of climate change, and although the expression “climate refugees” is often used... Read more >>
Racial Disparities Dashboard
Project — Equity Metrics, 7 June 2023
The Othering and Belonging Institute is pleased to launch the Racial Disparities Dashboard. A racial disparity is defined as a persistent difference in outcomes between racial groups, and to highlight... Read more >>
Taking Stock: Visioning Beyond the Refinery
Report — Alfredo Angulo, Marisol Cantu, Tera Johnson, Eli Moore, Natalia Urzola, and Mylanah Yolangco, 31 August 2022
Richmond, CA has been called a "refinery town" because of the widely-felt presence of Chevron's oil refinery in the city. But what is the actual web of relationships between the oil refinery and... Read more >>
Inclusiveness Index
Project — Stephen Menendian, Elsadig Elsheikh, and Samir Gambhir, 2021
The Othering and Belonging Institute’s “Inclusiveness Index” is a holistic gauge of the degree of inclusivity experienced by marginalized groups across the globe and within the United States. Read more >>
Implementing Targeted Universalism Case Study: King County, WA
Report — Wendy Ake and Tracy Lam-Hine, 10 December 2020
Local and municipal governments anchor the day-to-day lives of US residents. Thousands of city and county governments across the US have an important role to play in building and sustaining equity for their residents... Read more >>
Climate Refugees: The Climate Crisis and Rights Denied
Report — Hossein Ayazi and Elsadig Elsheikh, December 2019
The burning of fossil fuels and other sources of greenhouse gas emissions have been transforming the earth’s climate and putting the world’s most vulnerable communities at risk. Our global dependence on petroleum... Read more >>
Roots, Race, & Place: A History of Racially Exclusionary Housing in the San Francisco Bay Area
Report — Eli Moore, Nicole Montojo, and Nicole Mauri, October 2019
The rampant displacement seen today in the San Francisco Bay Area is built upon a history of exclusion and dispossession, centered on race, and driven by the logic of capitalism... Read more >>
Targeted Universalism: Policy & Practice Primer
Primer — john a. powell, Stephen Menendian, and Wendy Ake, May 2019
In an era of political polarization and fiscal austerity, policy debates too readily become trapped in a binary of either universal responses or targeted solutions. Universal responses enjoy... Read more >>
Racial Segregation in the San Francisco Bay Area
Project — 6 February 2019
Segregation is one of our nation’s most enduring and intractable problems. More than 60 years since the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision denounced racial segregation... Read more >>
Widening the Lens on Voter Suppression: From Calculating Lost Votes to Fighting for Effective Voting Rights
Report — Joshua Clark, 31 July 2018
An aggressive push over the past several years to adopt voter suppression laws in states across the country must be countered with a multi-faceted approach that includes comprehensive voter education... Read more >>
Legalizing Othering: The United States of Islamophobia
Report — Elsadig Elsheikh, Basima Sisemore, and Natalia Ramirez Lee, 8 September 2017
This report on the anti-Sharia movement in the United States addresses the legalized othering of Muslim communities across the nation through anti-Muslim legislation and bills between the years 2000 and 2016. Within the broader context of rising anti-Muslim sentiment... Read more >>
Moving Targets: An Analysis of Global Forced Migration
Report — Elsadig Elsheikh and Hossein Ayazi, September 2017
“Moving Targets” investigates the historical and contemporary causes of forced migration as well as both the challenges and capacities of national and international refugee protections and resettlement efforts... Read more >>
The Road Not Taken: Housing and Criminal Justice 50 Years After the Kerner Commission Report
Policy Brief — Stephen Menendian and Richard Rothstein, with Nirali Beri, 2020
In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed a bipartisan commission and charged it with analyzing the underlying causes and conditions that led to over 150 race-related riots during that summer... Read more >>
Ending Legal Bias Against Formerly Incarcerated People: Establishing Protected Legal Status
Policy Brief — Kimberly G. White, Eli Moore, Tamisha Walker, and Stephen Menendian, September 2019
What ideas exist that can rise to the scale of entrenched and emergent social problems and injustices? This new Bold Policy Ideas series focuses on that question with a new series of brief reports that... Read more >>
Creating Bathroom Access & a Gender Inclusive Society
Policy Brief — Eric Peterson, September 2018
Transgender people face both subtle and overt forms of bias and discrimination in a number of areas including healthcare, housing, education, and employment. They report high rates of homelessness... Read more >>
We Too Belong: A Resource Guide of Inclusive Practices in Immigration and Incarceration Law and Policy
Policy Brief — Stephen Menendian, Lupe Victoria Aguirre, Saba Ahmed, Guilherme Duraes, Sara Grossman, Bryan Lopez, Thomas Nolan, and Emily Stein, May 2016
The most marginalized populations in the history of our society were those that were denied public voice or access to private space. Historically, women and slaves experienced this form of marginality.... Read more >>
Targeted Universalism: Bibliography
Literature Review — Wendy Ake, 2023
The framework of targeted universalism has been a compelling framework for work in many different contexts. The sources referenced in this bibliography reflect this diversity of uses and application areas... Read more >>
Islamophobia in Asia-Pacific: A Reading Resource Pack
Literature Review — Rhonda Itaoui and Elsadig Elsheikh, September 2023
This reading resource pack provides a thematic overview of current academic research published over the last few decades on Islamophobia in the Asia-Pacific region... Read more >>
Islamophobia in Europe: A Reading Resource Pack
Literature Review — Elsadig Elsheikh, Farid Hafez, and Linda Hyökki, September 2023
In response to the experiences of Muslims worldwide, we seek to counteract all forms of discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance to expose the power structures that generate them... Read more >>
Islamophobia in the United States: A Reading Resource Pack
Literature Review — Rhonda Itaoui and Elsadig Elsheikh, 12 September 2018
This Reading Resource Pack was developed by researchers from the Global Justice Program at the Othering & Belonging Institute, as part of its larger project of documenting and countering Islamophobia...
Read more >>
Read more >>
Justice and the Politics of Difference
Book — Iris Marion Young, 26 April 2022
A landmark work of political theory on the central importance of group identity and cultural pluralism in political life. This book challenges the prevailing reduction of social justice to distributive justice... Read more >>
I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerous Divided Times
Book — Mónica Guzmán, 8 March 2022
Journalist Mónica Guzmán is the loving liberal daughter of Mexican immigrants who voted—twice—for Donald Trump. When the country could no longer see straight across... Read more >>
Our Search for Belonging: How Our Need to Connect Is Tearing Us Apart
Book — Howard J. Ross, 8 May 2018
We are living in a time of mounting political segregation that threatens to tear us apart as a unified society. The result is that we are becoming increasingly tribal, and the narratives of life that... Read more >>
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
Book — Robert M. Sapolsky, 1 May 2018
Behave is one of the most dazzling tours d’horizon of the science of human behavior ever attempted. Moving across a range of disciplines, Sapolsky—a neuroscientist and primatologist... Read more >>
Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age
Book — Sherry Turkle, 2015
Renowned media scholar Sherry Turkle investigates how a flight from conversation undermines our relationships, creativity, and productivity—and why reclaiming face-to-face conversation... Read more >>
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
Book — Robert D. Putnam, 2000
In a groundbreaking book based on vast data, Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and our democratic structures – and how we may reconnect. Read more >>
Tools & Curricula
Curricula
Tools
Lit Reviews
Policy Briefs
Climate Crisis, Displacement, and the Right to Stay
Project — Global Justice Program, November 2023
The Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley advances groundbreaking approaches to exposing the dire impacts of the climate crisis and building climate resilience. We develop compelling research tools, analyses... Read more >>
Belonging Design Principles: A resource guide for building belonging
Essay — Ashley Gallegos and Cecilie Surasky, 7 August 2023
Across our planet, people are looking for effective ways to build just, equitable, and inclusive institutions that serve and support everyone. Even more challenging... Read more >>
Racial Disparities Dashboard
Project — Equity Metrics, 7 June 2023
The Othering and Belonging Institute is pleased to launch the Racial Disparities Dashboard. A racial disparity is defined as a persistent difference in outcomes between racial groups, and to highlight... Read more >>
The Structural Racism Remedies Repository
Project — 20 March 2023
This a repository of policy-based recommendations for addressing structural and systemic racism or advancing racial equity drawn from a vast array of published material. A complete list of... Read more >>
Othering & Belonging Institute Decision Tool
Tool — Othering & Belonging Institute, 2023
This five-stage tool helps inform collective decision making process, whether you are collaborating in your workplace or organization or elsewhere. We trust it so much we use it at OBI too! Read more >>
Inclusiveness Index
Project — Stephen Menendian, Elsadig Elsheikh, and Samir Gambhir, 2021
The Othering and Belonging Institute’s “Inclusiveness Index” is a holistic gauge of the degree of inclusivity experienced by marginalized groups across the globe and within the United States. Read more >>
Targeted Universalism: Policy & Practice Primer
Primer — john a. powell, Stephen Menendian, and Wendy Ake, May 2019
In an era of political polarization and fiscal austerity, policy debates too readily become trapped in a binary of either universal responses or targeted solutions. Universal responses enjoy... Read more >>
Racial Segregation in the San Francisco Bay Area
Project — 6 February 2019
Segregation is one of our nation’s most enduring and intractable problems. More than 60 years since the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision denounced racial segregation... Read more >>
Targeted Universalism: Bibliography
Literature Review — Wendy Ake, 2023
The framework of targeted universalism has been a compelling framework for work in many different contexts. The sources referenced in this bibliography reflect this diversity of uses and application areas... Read more >>
Islamophobia in Asia-Pacific: A Reading Resource Pack
Literature Review — Rhonda Itaoui and Elsadig Elsheikh, September 2023
This reading resource pack provides a thematic overview of current academic research published over the last few decades on Islamophobia in the Asia-Pacific region... Read more >>
Islamophobia in Europe: A Reading Resource Pack
Literature Review — Elsadig Elsheikh, Farid Hafez, and Linda Hyökki, September 2023
In response to the experiences of Muslims worldwide, we seek to counteract all forms of discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance to expose the power structures that generate them... Read more >>
Islamophobia in the United States: A Reading Resource Pack
Literature Review — Rhonda Itaoui and Elsadig Elsheikh, 12 September 2018
This Reading Resource Pack was developed by researchers from the Global Justice Program at the Othering & Belonging Institute, as part of its larger project of documenting and countering Islamophobia...
Read more >>
Read more >>
Structural Racism Explained
Video and Curriculum — Othering & Belonging Institute, 15 January 2023
The “Structural Racism Explained” video draws upon many varied sources in formulating specific definitions for different types of racism. The video and prompts provided in this video and teaching guide... Read more >>
Bridging & Breaking Curriculum
Curriculum — Ashley Gallegos, Gerald Lenoir, Miriam Magaña Lopez, and Tanya Díaz, 2023
This training is made for movement based organizations, but could be modified for other organizations. The curriculum includes modules on the topics of othering, breaking, bridging and belonging... Read more >>
Rebuilding Public Power: Stopping Corporate Overreach
Curriculum — Emnet Almedom and Miriam Magaña Lopez, May 2023
This 90-minute workshop dives into the history of how corporate power is organized in the United States and contemporary cases of how growing corporate power has... Read more >>
Cultures of Care: a project from the Othering & Belonging Institute
Project — Evan Bissell and Giovanna Fischer, April 2022
Cultures of Care celebrates people that practice collective care in unconventional and insurgent ways. Care is an essential, immediate and practical way to create belonging... Read more >>
Teaching for Racial Equity & Housing Justice
Curriculum — April 2022
People are increasingly familiar with redlining and gentrification as processes that produce racially unjust conditions in housing. But these on their own are not enough to understand... Read more >>
Bridging to Belonging Case Series
Project — Blueprint for Belonging, 2021
This Bridging to Belonging Case Series captures real-world examples of bridging and belonging through writings and podcast interviews. In this series, we analyze a range of breaking moments and bridging opportunities... Read more >>
The Circle of Human Concern
Video and Curriculum — 2020
In this animated video voiced by Institute Director john a. powell, the differences between public and private space, and their alternatives are discussed as they relate to the circle of human concern... Read more >>
Bridging: Towards A Society Built on Belonging
Video and Curriculum — 14 November 2018
This animated explainer video gives a high-level snapshot of our analysis of bridging and breaking as possible responses in our current times. As Director john a. powell explains in the voiceover, “Of all the forces...” Read more >>
Blueprint for Belonging Popular Education Curriculum Resources
Curriculum — March 2018
Advancing a new strategic narrative will require popular education that provides spaces and resources for people concerned with social justice to gain new analysis and strategies for engaging with the world. Read more >>
The Road Not Taken: Housing and Criminal Justice 50 Years After the Kerner Commission Report
Policy Brief — Stephen Menendian and Richard Rothstein, with Nirali Beri, 2020
In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed a bipartisan commission and charged it with analyzing the underlying causes and conditions that led to over 150 race-related riots during that summer... Read more >>
Ending Legal Bias Against Formerly Incarcerated People: Establishing Protected Legal Status
Policy Brief — Kimberly G. White, Eli Moore, Tamisha Walker, and Stephen Menendian, September 2019
What ideas exist that can rise to the scale of entrenched and emergent social problems and injustices? This new Bold Policy Ideas series focuses on that question with a new series of brief reports that... Read more >>
Creating Bathroom Access & a Gender Inclusive Society
Policy Brief — Eric Peterson, September 2018
Transgender people face both subtle and overt forms of bias and discrimination in a number of areas including healthcare, housing, education, and employment. They report high rates of homelessness... Read more >>
We Too Belong: A Resource Guide of Inclusive Practices in Immigration and Incarceration Law and Policy
Policy Brief — Stephen Menendian, Lupe Victoria Aguirre, Saba Ahmed, Guilherme Duraes, Sara Grossman, Bryan Lopez, Thomas Nolan, and Emily Stein, May 2016
The most marginalized populations in the history of our society were those that were denied public voice or access to private space. Historically, women and slaves experienced this form of marginality.... Read more >>
Audio & Video
Explainer Videos
Panels & Presentations
Podcasts
Principles for Reframing the National Security Narrative
Essay and Video — 7 December 2023
Our public discourse is seeded with dangerous and counterproductive ideas concerning national security that are so deeply embedded we may often be unaware that we... Read more >>
Structural Racism Explained
Video and Curriculum — Othering & Belonging Institute, 15 January 2023
The “Structural Racism Explained” video draws upon many varied sources in formulating specific definitions for different types of racism. The video and prompts provided in this video and teaching guide... Read more >>
Community Belonging & Climate Futures
Essay and Video — 27 May 2022
How can communities plan for an economy beyond fossil fuels? What are the pathways to an economy that is not only free of fossil fuels but also provides a good life for all its members? Read more >>
The Circle of Human Concern
Video and Curriculum — 2020
In this animated video voiced by Institute Director john a. powell, the differences between public and private space, and their alternatives are discussed as they relate to the circle of human concern... Read more >>
Bridging: Towards A Society Built on Belonging
Video and Curriculum — 14 November 2018
This animated explainer video gives a high-level snapshot of our analysis of bridging and breaking as possible responses in our current times. As Director john a. powell explains in the voiceover, “Of all the forces...” Read more >>
Targeted Universalism: Animated Video
Video — 8 February 2017
Targeted Universalism is a different way—a powerful way—to make the transformational changes we need. Changes we need to improve life chances, promote inclusion, and... Read more >>
Leah Rothstein Presents “Just Action: How to Challenge Segregation Enacted Under the Color of Law”
Video — Stephen Menendian with Leah Rothstein, 6 July 2023
Author and community organizer Leah Rothstein presents her new book (co-authored with Richard Rothstein) during a presentation prepared for OBI staff on July 6, 2023... Read more >>
Why We Need to Build and Bridge
Video — Eboo Patel, john a. powell, and Allison Briscoe-Smith, 25 April 2023
At a time of deep social polarization and division, it is easy to lose hope in the potential for positive social change and a more diverse and just democracy. But for the past 20 years — inspired by love-based activists... Read more >>
On Good Conflict: What If We Called In, Rather Than Called Out
Video — Amanda Ripley, Curtis Toler, Eboo Patel, Molly Crockett, Pat McCabe, and Loretta Ross, 19 October 2021
Outrage and conflict have long offered an easy way to build political power for advocates on both the political right and left. While moral outrage is a critical motivator for change... Read more >>
A Poem in Three Parts: A Story of Now (Part 1)
Video — Michelle Mush Lee, 19 October 2021
The Othering & Belonging Institute commissioned poet Michelle Lee aka “Mush” to write and perform a poem in three parts on bridging and belonging for the 2021 Othering & Belonging Conference. Read more >>
The Risk and Possibility of Bridging Keynote — O&B Conference 2021
Video — john a. powell and Judith Butler, 18 October 2021
In this intimate discussion, OBI Director john a. powell and philosopher Judith Butler will engage in a deep exploration of bridging, particularly in the context of our current moment... Read more >>
The Risk & Possibility of Bridging Panel — O&B Conference 2021
Video — Akaya Windwood, ALOK, Bayo Akomolafe, 18 October 2021
Even short bridges can feel risky in this moment of polarization, political purity, and physical and emotional estrangement. In this panel, we will hear leading activists and culturemakers... Read more >>
The future of freedom: Reparations after 400 years
Video — Bertrall Ross, Katherine Franke, Jovan Scott Lewis, and Michael Ralph, 18 November 2020
On November 18, 2020, a distinguished panel of scholars consider what the question of reparations means for this freedom’s fulfillment and what kind of future could follow for African-Americans beyond 400. Read more >>
Building An Economics of Belonging
Video — Martin Sandbu, Catherine Fieschi, Saru Jayaraman, and Simon-Reid Henry, 10 October 2020
Representative democracies have seen the liberal post-war consensus challenged by various forms of populist, nationalist, and breaking politics. The United States offers a troubling display of deep polarization... Read more >>
Nile Project founder Mina Girgis on how music can be used for bridging
Video — Mina Girgis, 5 June 2019
Mina Girgis, an Egyptian musicologist and Haas Institute senior fellow, presents on his Nile Project collective during a talk on June 5, 2019 at UC Berkeley... Read more >>
Aimi Hamraie on “Making Access Critical: Disability, Race, and Gender in Environmental Design”
Video — Aimi Hamraie, 25 February 2019
The Haas Institute's Disability Studies cluster and School of Environmental Design on February 25 hosted a talk by disability scholar Aimi Hamraie titled “Making Access Critical...” Read more >>
Will humanity survive? The philosophy of john a. powell
Video — john. a powell, May 2018
This previously unreleased video from May 2018 features Othering & Belonging Institute Director john a. powell on the urgent need to create a world of greater belonging and avoid the impulse toward smaller... Read more >>
Victor Pineda on “Radical Inclusion: Cities, Technology and the Power of Inclusive Thinking”
Video — Victor Pineda, 20 October 2017
Haas Institute Senior Fellow Victor Pineda, who heads the organization World Enabled, gives a keynote at the Bioneers Conference on “Radical Inclusion: Cities, Technology and the Power of Inclusive Thinking”... Read more >>
New Bay Area mural humanizes housing crisis
Video and Essay — 18 October 2017
A powerful new mural informing renters of their rights was unveiled this month on the facade of a building in Richmond, CA, as part of a... Read more >>
Naomi Klein: Imagining a Future without Sacrifice Zones — O&B Conference 2015
Video — Naomi Klein, 26 April 2015
Renowned journalist Naomi Klein speaks at the 2015 Othering & Belonging Conference about the stakes and urgency of climate justice, and who is sacrificed when we do not address climate catastrophe. Read more >>
The Mechanisms of Othering — O&B Conference 2015
Video — john. a powell, 26 April 2015
“This whole conference is about othering and belonging, and in some ways I would say that's the problem of the 21st century. It’s not just a problem here in California in the United States. It’s a problem all over the world...” Hear more >>
Belonging Through Connection, Connecting Through Love: Oneself, the Other, and the Earth — O&B Conference 2015
Video — john a. powell and bell hooks, 26 April 2015
There are three constructed schisms to oneself, the other, and the earth. In reality, there is no schism, but rather a need to acknowledge and live through connection... Read more >>
Developing a shared vocabulary: Introduction to Othering, Bridging & Belonging
Podcast — Miriam Magaña Lopez with john a. powell, 6 October 2021
In this episode we hear from john a. powell, who is our director, and a professor of law and African American Studies here at UC Berkeley. In the interview we discuss a brand new primer... Read more >>
Trump attacks fair housing: What does the end of AFFH spell for integration?
Podcast — Marc Abizeid with Richard Rothstein and Stephen Menendian, 5 August 2020
Last week Trump announced he had eliminated an Obama-era fair housing rule put in place in 2015 to reverse patterns of residential segregation that have been in place for many decades. Read more >>
Artist Christine Wong Yap on her Places of Belonging Project
Podcast — Sara Grossman with Christine Wong Yap, 29 July 2019
In this episode of “Who Belongs?” host Sara Grossman interviews Christine Wong Yap, who became the Haas Institute's first Artist in Residence in the fall of 2018, about her "Places of Belonging" project... Read more >>
Targeted Universalism, with john a. powell
Podcast — Marc Abizeid with john a. powell, 8 May 2019
In this episode we hear from john a. powell, who is our director, and a professor of law and African American Studies here at UC Berkeley. In the interview we discuss a brand new primer... Read more >>
Reinventing the Wheelchair: Interview with Ralf Hotchkiss
Podcast — Marc Abizeid with Ralf Hotchkiss, 3 August 2018
We interviewed Ralf Hotchkiss, a renowned disability rights activist, engineer, and co-founder of the Whirlwind Wheelchair project, based in Berkeley... Read more >>
Intro to Belonging
Banner illustration by Burcu Köleli, “A Sense Of Belonging”
Belonging Design Principles: A resource guide for building belonging
Essay — Ashley Gallegos and Cecilie Surasky, 7 August 2023
Across our planet, people are looking for effective ways to build just, equitable, and inclusive institutions that serve and support everyone. Even more challenging... Read more >>
Structural Racism Explained
Video and Curriculum — Othering & Belonging Institute, 15 January 2023
The “Structural Racism Explained” video draws upon many varied sources in formulating specific definitions for different types of racism. The video and prompts provided in this video and teaching guide... Read more >>
Othering & Belonging Institute Decision Tool
Tool — Othering & Belonging Institute, 2023
This five-stage tool helps inform collective decision making process, whether you are collaborating in your workplace or organization or elsewhere. We trust it so much we use it at OBI too! Read more >>
Targeted Universalism: Policy & Practice Primer
Primer — john a. powell, Stephen Menendian, and Wendy Ake, May 2019
In an era of political polarization and fiscal austerity, policy debates too readily become trapped in a binary of either universal responses or targeted solutions. Universal responses enjoy... Read more >>
Widening the Lens on Voter Suppression: From Calculating Lost Votes to Fighting for Effective Voting Rights
Report — Joshua Clark, 31 July 2018
An aggressive push over the past several years to adopt voter suppression laws in states across the country must be countered with a multi-faceted approach that includes comprehensive voter education... Read more >>
New Bay Area mural humanizes housing crisis
Video and Essay — 18 October 2017
A powerful new mural informing renters of their rights was unveiled this month on the facade of a building in Richmond, CA, as part of a... Read more >>
The Problem of Othering: Towards Inclusiveness and Belonging
Essay — john a. powell and Stephen Menendian, Summer 2016
The problem of the twenty-first century is the problem of “othering.” In a world beset by seemingly intractable and overwhelming challenges, virtually every global, national, and regional conflict is wrapped within or organized around one or more dimension of group-based difference... Read more >>
Intro to O&B’s Key Frameworks
The Only Thing Integrating America
Article — Adam Harris for The Atlantic, 2 July 2023
Stephen Menendian, a researcher at UC Berkeley, has long worried that Americans don’t understand how pervasive housing segregation is. Read more >>
Justice and the Politics of Difference
Book — Iris Marion Young, 26 April 2022
A landmark work of political theory on the central importance of group identity and cultural pluralism in political life. This book challenges the prevailing reduction of social justice to distributive justice... Read more >>
Bridging: Towards A Society Built on Belonging
Video and Curriculum — 14 November 2018
This animated explainer video gives a high-level snapshot of our analysis of bridging and breaking as possible responses in our current times. As Director john a. powell explains in the voiceover, “Of all the forces...” Read more >>
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
Book — Robert M. Sapolsky, 1 May 2018
Behave is one of the most dazzling tours d’horizon of the science of human behavior ever attempted. Moving across a range of disciplines, Sapolsky—a neuroscientist and primatologist... Read more >>
Will humanity survive? The philosophy of john a. powell
Video — john. a powell, May 2018
This previously unreleased video from May 2018 features Othering & Belonging Institute Director john a. powell on the urgent need to create a world of greater belonging and avoid the impulse toward smaller... Read more >>
Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE)
Organization
GARE is a national network of government working to achieve racial equity and advance opportunities for all. The Alliance is a joint project of the new Race Forward and the Othering and Belonging Institute.... Read more >>
Bridging One: The Fundamentals
Banner illustration by Gustaf Öhrnell Hjalmars, “Build Bridges”
I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerous Divided Times
Book — Mónica Guzmán, 8 March 2022
Journalist Mónica Guzmán is the loving liberal daughter of Mexican immigrants who voted—twice—for Donald Trump. When the country could no longer see straight across... Read more >>
The Risk and Possibility of Bridging Keynote — O&B Conference 2021
Video — john a. powell and Judith Butler, 18 October 2021
In this intimate discussion, OBI Director john a. powell and philosopher Judith Butler will engage in a deep exploration of bridging, particularly in the context of our current moment... Read more >>
Belonging Through Connection, Connecting Through Love: Oneself, the Other, and the Earth — O&B Conference 2015
Video — john a. powell and bell hooks, 26 April 2015
There are three constructed schisms to oneself, the other, and the earth. In reality, there is no schism, but rather a need to acknowledge and live through connection... Read more >>
Bridging Two: Levels of Bridging
Banner illustration by Janice Chang, “We Live Better Together”
The Risk & Possibility of Bridging Panel — O&B Conference 2021
Video — Akaya Windwood, ALOK, Bayo Akomolafe, 18 October 2021
Even short bridges can feel risky in this moment of polarization, political purity, and physical and emotional estrangement. In this panel, we will hear leading activists and culturemakers... Read more >>
Developing a shared vocabulary: Introduction to Othering, Bridging & Belonging
Podcast — Miriam Magaña Lopez with john a. powell, 6 October 2021
In this episode we hear from john a. powell, who is our director, and a professor of law and African American Studies here at UC Berkeley. In the interview we discuss a brand new primer... Read more >>
Bridging to Belonging Case Series — Case Studies
Project — Blueprint for Belonging, 2021
Our series tells five powerful bridging stories that impact individuals, communities and structures. Each case identifies the breaking dynamic, the bridging action and how it fosters belonging. Read more >>
On Bridging: Evidence and Guidance from Real-World Cases
Essay — Rachel Heydemann and john a. powell, 19 August 2020
As the pace of change in our world intensifies, humanity is confronting unprecedented global challenges. There are many paths we can take to respond to this moment: some encourage greater cooperation... Read more >>
Our Search for Belonging: How Our Need to Connect Is Tearing Us Apart
Book — Howard J. Ross, 8 May 2018
We are living in a time of mounting political segregation that threatens to tear us apart as a unified society. The result is that we are becoming increasingly tribal, and the narratives of life that... Read more >>
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
Book — Robert M. Sapolsky, 1 May 2018
Behave is one of the most dazzling tours d’horizon of the science of human behavior ever attempted. Moving across a range of disciplines, Sapolsky—a neuroscientist and primatologist... Read more >>
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
Book — Robert D. Putnam, 2000
In a groundbreaking book based on vast data, Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and our democratic structures – and how we may reconnect. Read more >>
Bridging Three: Community Stories
Banner illustration by Bruna Borges Alves, “Weaving The Future”
On Good Conflict: What If We Called In, Rather Than Called Out
Video — Amanda Ripley, Curtis Toler, Eboo Patel, Molly Crockett, Pat McCabe, and Loretta Ross, 19 October 2021
Outrage and conflict have long offered an easy way to build political power for advocates on both the political right and left. While moral outrage is a critical motivator for change... Read more >>
A Poem in Three Parts: A Story of Now (Part 1)
Video — Michelle Mush Lee, 19 October 2021
The Othering & Belonging Institute commissioned poet Michelle Lee aka “Mush” to write and perform a poem in three parts on bridging and belonging for the 2021 Othering & Belonging Conference. Read more >>
A Poem in Three Parts: A Story of We (Part 2)
Video — Michelle Mush Lee, 19 October 2021
The Othering & Belonging Institute commissioned poet Michelle Lee aka “Mush” to write and perform a poem in three parts on bridging and belonging for the 2021 Othering & Belonging Conference. Read more >>
A Poem In Three Parts: Meet Me There (Part 3)
Video — Michelle Mush Lee, 19 October 2021
The Othering & Belonging Institute commissioned poet Michelle Lee aka “Mush” to write and perform a poem in three parts on bridging and belonging for the 2021 Othering & Belonging Conference. Read more >>
Bridging to Belonging Case Series — Podcast Series
Project — Blueprint for Belonging, 2021
The case series includes more than a dozen podcast interviews, offering compelling conversations and reflections with people who are bridging and are experiencing how it feels to find belonging. Read more >>
Bridging to Belonging Case Series — Case Studies
Project — Blueprint for Belonging, 2021
Our series tells five powerful bridging stories that impact individuals, communities and structures. Each case identifies the breaking dynamic, the bridging action and how it fosters belonging. Read more >>
Healing the Earth: Black and Native Women, Two Spirit, and Gender Expansive Folks in the Climate Justice Movement
Essay — Miriam Magaña Lopez, 2021
The historical relationship between Native and Black people in the United States is complex and often untold. Since the colonization of what is now known as the United States... Read more >>
Why I, as a black man, attend KKK rallies
Video — Daryl Davis at TEDxNaperville, November 2017
An encounter with prejudice early in life led black musician Daryl Davis on a quest to determine the source of the hate, leading to how and why he has attended KKK rallies.... Read more >>
Bridging Four: How to Bridge
Banner illustration by Adonis Papadopoulos, “Stronger Together”
Why We Need Indigenous Wisdom
Essay — Yuria Celidwen, 7 September 2022
The rich perspective of Indigenous Peoples has a crucial role to play in advancing climate solutions rooted in an understanding of our interdependence. Read more >>
How Curiosity Will Save Us
Video — Mónica Guzmán for TEDxSeattle, November 2021
For Mónica Guzmán, curiosity isn’t a muse that flits by when we wonder about something. It’s the most powerful tool we have to navigate our world, especially when our world... Read more >>
Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age
Book — Sherry Turkle, 2015
Renowned media scholar Sherry Turkle investigates how a flight from conversation undermines our relationships, creativity, and productivity—and why reclaiming face-to-face conversation... Read more >>