Blog Posts

This post was originally published on the Berkeley Blog. Throughout the history of our nation, many faith traditions have led on social issues. Religious leaders and faith-based communities played a critical role in the abolitionist movement...

Editor's note: For a more recent article by professor john a. powell on the same topic published in response to the killing of George Floyd click here. --- July 15, 2015 By john a. powell At a recent training on implicit bias and targeted...

This article originally appeared on the Berkeley Blog. On April 28, 2015, the Supreme Court heard historic oral argument in a set of consolidated cases styled Obergefell v. Hodges involving state-level same-sex marriage bans. [1] The parties...

Saddening and Inspiring—these are the two words that can best describe this past week for me. On June 17th, 2015, the lives of nine members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina were stolen, taken away...

In the past few months, tragic deaths of migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean sea have propelled the European “migration crisis” to the centre of international attention. The drowning of over 800 migrants off the coast of Malta on April 23...

On Wednesday, a young white man named Dylann Roof killed nine black people at prayer in South Carolina. Some have called it racism. Others say it was a crazy, isolated act. “He was one of these whacked out kids,” said Senator Lindsey Graham. “I don’t...

On April 24th, Armenians worldwide will solemnly commemorate the 100th anniversary of one of the first modern genocides, the massacre of more than one million ethnic Armenians in eastern Turkey in 1915. This occasion is an opportunity to consider not...

On February 21, 2015, the Haas Institute participated in an all-day Food Justice Forum organized by Holy Names University in Oakland, California.

On February 28, at the 6th annual Wisdom 2.0 conference in San Francisco, California, Berkeley Law Professor and Director of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, john a. powell, participated in a panel discussion entitled “Expanding...

Critiquing the legal system for not taking into consideration the voices of marginalized communities has been long overdue, and still most law school campuses lack a Critical Race Theory (“CRT”) course. This conference, therefore, offered an...

March 4, 2015 By Stephen Menendian As I wrote over a year ago, the “tragedy of Trayvon Martin perfectly captures this nation's deepest race problems, and yet almost no one is talking about what those problems really are.” The trial itself, the media...

With respect to civil rights, this term at the Supreme Court has the pall of a funeral. Advocates and supporters of civil rights are grimly preparing for what is likely to be a series of (hopefully) narrow losses from Affirmative Action to Voting...

In late March, the Supreme Court will have an opportunity to weigh in on the question of gay marriage under the federal Constitution in two separate cases. First, the Court will hear oral argument on the issue of whether the equal protection clause...

On February 21, 2013, the Supreme Court heard legal arguments on Bowman v. Monsanto in what is sure to become a landmark patent and intellectual property case in the United States. The case involves the giant seed agrichemical company Monsanto vs. a...

By: Amariah Hash and Stephen Menendian On January 25, 2013, the United States Department of Education Office for Civil Rights issued new guidance for primary, secondary, and university educators on providing inclusionary athletic opportunities for...