The Institute for the Study of Societal Issues (ISSI) is UC Berkeley's hub for interdisciplinary social justice research. Since 1976, the Institute has been fostering qualitative and quantitative interdisciplinary research on the issues central to social stratification and inequality while training and supporting new generations of social change scholars.

ISSI is home to:

Sign up for our newsletter

Keep up with current events.

Institute for the Study of Societal Issues

Support Fund
an orange image with the words "50th Anniversary - Please design a better graphic than this to help us commemorate this milestone"

Enter our graphic design contest by December 8th! 

Grants for UCB Students doing Research on Native American Issues

Applications due November 17

Grants for UCB Students Researching the Right Wing

Applications due December 8, 2025

Recent Stories

Anti-immigration and the politics of housing affordability

November 13, 2025

Taesoo Song, Asian American Research Center Graduate Fellow, recently published an article in the Journal of Urban Affairs. The paper examines the evolution and impacts of Foreign Buyer Taxes (FBTs) in British Columbia and Ontario, Canada. Song shows how FBTs gained political traction through racialized narratives that framed foreign—especially Chinese—buyers as key culprits of housing unaffordability, deflecting attention from broader structural issues in the housing...

In coal country, community works to heal political divisions

November 13, 2025

Center for Right-Wing Studies faculty affiliate Arlie Hochschild is featured in this PBS News Hour segment. Hochschild has spent more than seven years getting to know the people in Pike County, Kentucky, highlighting how the residents are grappling with growing political divisions in their community.

New Grant Funds Japanese Literary Journal Collection Preservation

November 7, 2025

Andrew Way Leong, a faculty affiliate of the Asian American Research Center, has been awarded a grant from The Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Charitable Foundation in the amount of $152,435 for his project, which works to conserve and digitize an archive of Japanese-language literary journals published at the Tule Lake Segregation Center during World War II. Led by Leong, the team is establishing a consultative framework for expanding English-language access to the Itaru Ina Tule Lake Literary Journal Collection. The collection will enhance the nation's understanding of...

News Archive