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The Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity (Warren Institute) is a multidisciplinary, collaborative venture to produce research, research-based policy prescriptions, and curricular innovation on issues of racial and ethnic justice in California and the nation. Launched in 2005, the Warren Institute’s mission is to engage the most difficult topics related to civil rights, race and ethnicity in a wide range of legal and public policy subject areas, providing valuable intellectual capital to public and private sector leaders, the media, and the general public, while advancing scholarly understanding. Central to its methods are concerted efforts to build bridges connecting the world of research with the world of civic action and policy debate so that each informs the other, while preserving the independence, quality and credibility of the academic enterprise.
The Warren Institute is:
- Multidisciplinary in its intellectual method, combining several disciplines and professions, including law, the social and behavioral sciences, public admin-istration, and public health;
- multiracial in that its agenda encompasses the challenges of defining and achieving racial and ethnic justice in the face of color-based discrimination, hierarchy and group relations;
- multisectoral in its range of current and prospective subject matter — K-12 education, higher education access (including California’s Proposition 209), voting and democratic engagement, immigration policy and immigrant communities, health care disparities, employment, international comparative race relations, and more;
- vertically integrated in its reach from basic research to policy development, to dissemination, to training and public education; and
- collaborative in its partnerships with other research entities at Berkeley and beyond, and also in its outreach to California and national civic organizations.
In addition to research and policy work, education and training are part of the Warren Institute’s mission. The Institute seeks to promote curriculum innovation at Berkeley, and actively involves professional and graduate students as research assistants, student fellows, and through a student advisory committee. As it expands, the Institute will fashion programs to provide non-degree training and technical assistance to policymakers, journalists, business and nonprofit leaders, and community leaders.
Now more than two academic years old, the Warren Institute has established itself as an important interlocutor in some of today’s most pressing legal and political topics. These include the following:
- Voting Rights and Democratic Engagement
- Unincorporated Communities and Discriminatory Municipal Service Provision
- K-12 Achievement and Accountability, and the Civil Rights Implications of the Federal No Child Left Behind Legislation
- K-12 Adequacy, Equity, Financing, and the Fundamental Right to Education
- California’s Proposition 209 and Diversity in Post-Secondary Education
- Immigration Policy and its Reform at the Federal, State and Local Levels
- Immigrant Communities, Integration, Participation and Education
- Rethinking the Contours and Functions of Discrimination and Racism
For details on Warren Institute research and events pertaining to these topic areas, please visit the appropriate pages of this website.
The Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute, named to honor the racial justice legacy of Brown v. Board and other contributions of the Warren Court, is in significant respects modeled after The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. That project was co-founded in 1996 by UCLA Professor Gary Orfield and UC, Berkeley Law School Dean Christopher Edley, Jr., when both were professors at Harvard. The Civil Rights Project and the Warren Institute are collaborating on several activities, including a major K-12 education grant from the Gates Foundation and higher education work supported by the Ford Foundation.
The Warren Institute is funded principally by donations from alumni of Boalt Hall and by project-specific foundation grants. It is among the several multidisciplinary research centers which together comprise one pillar of Boalt’s major fundraising effort, The Campaign for Boalt Hall, launched in January 2006.
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