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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 10, 2019

BERKELEY, CA: The Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at UC Berkeley and partners are launching a new, two-week fellowship aimed at training policymakers to understand how biases may unwittingly be influencing their work, and how that awareness can be used to tailor equity-based policies.

The Social Inclusion Policy Fellowship, created in collaboration with UC Berkeley's Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project and the Our Three Winners Foundation, will host 10 fellows for a series of workshops and training sessions on UC Berkeley’s campus From July 22 to August 2. The fellowship will include training in media, education, and healthcare.

One of the aims of the program is to craft more equitable policies by engaging policymakers to identify and root out harmful stereotypes and misleading narratives of certain social groups from their policy approaches.

“We hope the Social Inclusion Fellowship will serve as a robust program to train the next generation of policymakers on explicit and implicit biases, provide cultural humility education, and equip fellows with interventions aimed at disrupting hate and bigotry that is often at the root of policy formation,” Elsadig Elsheikh, director of the Haas Institute’s Global Justice Program, said.

Topics to be covered during the fellowship include an examination of implicit bias, the social constructions that produce narratives around certain groups and the policy implications of that, an exploration on how bias enters the policymaking process, and a discussion on grounding policy in equity.  

“Our work with researchers, psychologists, and activists has led us to the important goal of tackling implicit biases,” Somayeh Nikooei, Director of Operations at the Our Three Winners Foundation, said. “We are expecting to see more equitable policies and government interventions through this initiative.”

Ideal candidates for the fellowship will have at least a college junior-level education, two years of experience in policy work, and have demonstrated interest in de-biasing techniques, which serve to make policy more equitable. Fellows are required to attend all 10 days of the fellowship and all sessions.

As a pilot program, the first cohort will mainly consist of fellows from Northern California. The fellowship plans to expand applicants to the entirety of California for its 2020 program, and will solicit applicants from the rest of the country by 2021. Applications are available here.

The last day to apply for the 2019 fellowship is June 30.

Media Contact
Marc Abizeid