SOCIAL JUSTICE INSTITUTE
The Founding and Purpose of the Social Justice Institute
The Social Justice Institute was founded by Bakersfield College President Sonya Christian and fellow administrators in collaboration with local community leaders, including Bakersfield Mayor Harvey Hall and civil lawyer and philanthropist Milt Younger. A non-partisan entity at Bakersfield College, the Social Justice Institute explores issues of equity that affect BC students and the diverse local communities that the college serves. The Social Justice Institute hosts public speaking engagements and events featuring scholars, authors, and cultural bearers whose work and experiences speak to both equity and the significance of local cultures,histories, and narratives in the broader state and national contexts.
Attendees at the 2015 kick off for the Social Justice Institute included founders KCCD Chancellor Dr. Sonya Christian (5th from left), BC Interim President Zav Dadabhoy (last on the right), BC Professor and philanthropist Dr. Jack Brigham (2nd from left), Milt Younger (7th from left), Mayor Harvey Hall (next to Younger), and special guest Dolores Huerta along with Bakersfield College administrators and faculty who participated in the Institute's inaugural Leadership & Equity Academy. Also pictured is the current faculty lead of the Social Justice Institute, Dr. Oliver Rosales (3rd from right).
Educational Equity Statement
Educational equity—that's the focus of the Bakersfield College Social Justice Institute. Their mission: to create a collaborative space for the BC community to engage in conversation and analyze issues of social justice, equity and pedagogy in the community college. They'll also study the impact of biases—both intentional and unintentional—in instruction, as well as other professional teaching and service contexts.
Mapping Common Ground:
Agriculture, Migration, and Labor in Rural California
Events associated with the Mapping Common Ground project are made possible by a grant from the Whiting Foundation. A description of the project and its expected outcomes is available on the Whiting Foundation's website. (Visit the project's page at the Whiting Foundation)
Upcoming Events
Past Events
Justice without Age Limit: Child Activism and the United Farm Workers
Tuesday, July 9, 2024 - 12:00PM – 1:15PM
A Free Webinar Event with Dr. Jennifer Robin Terry (Zoom, registration required)
Jennifer Robin Terry is a Visiting Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and the President of the Western Association of Women Historians. She is a social and cultural historian who specializes in the history of childhood in the United States during the twentieth century. She has published articles on the Mid-Century White House Conference on Children and Youth; the internment of American children from expat families in the Philippines during World War II; and on child labor in the entertainment and agriculture industries. Her most recent article, “Niños por la causa: Child Activists and the United Farm Worker Movement, 1965-1975,” published last year in the Pacific Historical Review, serves as the basis for this talk.
With support from the Bakersfield College Social Justice Institute in collaboration with Digital Ethnic Futures.
A Central Valley: California's Chicana/o Art Corridor
Tuesday, June 25, 2024
Guest speaker Professor Ella Diaz
Dr. Ella Maria Diaz will take you on a ride down “el 99,” touring and discussing primary sources of Chicana/o art history, poetry, and other cultural production from the 1960s and 1970s Chicano movement to propose California’s Central Valley as a corridor of and for a Chicana/o art history.
ELLA MARIA DIAZ is Professor and Chair of the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at San José State University and serves on the Editorial Board of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies (UCLA). She specializes in Chicano/a art, performance, and political activism during the U.S. civil rights era, and in the visual and cultural analyses of testimonio as an art of the Americas. Her first book Flying Under the Radar with the Royal Chicano Air Force: Mapping a Chicano/a Art History (2017) won the 2019 National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Book Award. In 2021, her second book José Montoya (2020) received Gold Medal awards for Best Arts Book and Best Biography from the International Latino Book Awards. Among several chapters and journal articles, Diaz’s 2017 essay in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies was anthologized in The Chicano Studies Reader: An Anthology of Aztlán, 1970-2016.
With support from the Bakersfield College Social Justice Institute in collaboration with Digital Ethnic Futures.
Please visit the Bakersfield College Social Justice Institute YouTube channel to watch a recording of this presentation.
"Sowing the Sacred: Mexican Pentecostal Farmworkers in California 1916-1966 - A Book Talk"
Tuesday, April 16, 2024
Guest speaker Professor Lloyd Barba
Lloyd Barba is an Assistant Professor of Religion and Core Faculty in Latinx and Latin American Studies at Amherst College. He is the author of the award-winning book, Sowing the Sacred: Mexican Pentecostal Farmworkers in California published by Oxford University Press in 2022. He is originally from Stockton and earned a BA (History and Religion) from the University of the Pacific and a PhD in American Studies from the University of Michigan.
With support from the Bakersfield College Social Justice Institute in collaboration with Digital Ethnic Futures.
Please visit the Bakersfield College Social Justice Institute YouTube channel to watch a recording of this presentation.
