This is an introductory course for students who want to better understand theories, principles, and methods of community-based participatory action research (CBPAR), which is research done with communities and community partners. CBPAR is a means for community planning and organizing to address local issues and social needs that center individuals and communities directly impacted.

This course will introduce students to the history of and contemporary fight for voting rights in the United States. We will begin with a brief overview of historical struggles over access to the ballot box, up through and including the 15th Amendment and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The bulk of the course will focus on the contemporary context of voting rights, looking specifically at recent Supreme Court decisions, and include scholarship about white backlash against the growing political power of Americans of color.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of U.S. workers involved in work stoppages in 2018 reached its highest point since the mid-1980s. The resurgence of the use of strikes and worker activists withholding labor is set against the backdrop of enormous societal challenges like wealth and income inequality, climate change, and a lack of affordable, quality health care.  

This course assesses the role of inclusive business (IB) as a strategy for economic growth, private-­‐sector development and poverty reduction, and the two main IB financing modalities: bank debt and private equity. Analytical frameworks are provided for understanding how IB strategies incorporate and affect the poor as consumers, producers, suppliers, distributors and employees.

This course will provide a field opportunity for students to investigate the current practices of an El Salvadoran social enterprise, Acceso Oferta Local – El Salvador, which aggregates agricultural  products (fruit, vegetable, fish and seafood)  procured from low-income producers.

Organizational storytelling both effectively communicates an organization’s mission and builds empathy for its cause. A story is more than an exposition, climax, and resolution. Effective storytelling weaves a narrative that tells a systemic story about the social justice movement. The course will offer an overview on how to strategically use values-based communications, helping students understand how to move persuadable audiences to garner support for social justice issues.

This course should help those who believe that the United States must reduce its pollution responsible for climate change. The course will provide an overview of climate science and politics. Next, we will examine the “theories of change” concept, and identify new theories of change and their policies to reduce climate pollution. Additionally, we will learn to design issue advocacy campaign plans that would create the political space essential to adopt these policies.

This course examines reproductive rights law and policy in the United States and how advocacy can impact it.

Elections In Action is for those that are interested in learning how a campaign works from start to finish. Whether one is working a local to national campaign the structure is still the same. This seven-session course will provide an overview and training in modern day campaign planning and implementation all the way from preparing as a candidate, staff roles, media, fundraising and Get Out the Vote strategies.

Capital is but a tool – one that can be used for many different purposes. This course explores the use of finance as a tool for social change.

This course will explore the public realm in New York City -- with a focus on libraries, parks and streets. It will consider how these components of our infrastructure were first built and how we maintain, manage and, in particular, share these spaces today. The course will look at how the City and other stakeholders balance competing demands, how conflicts over access to these public places have been resolved, and what larger issues are at play in these dialogues.

In this course, students examine the challenges and opportunities of national development. Following Lant Pritchett, we define national development as the lockstep improvement in (i) economic productivity, (ii) political representation, (iii) public sector’s administrative capacity, and (iv) respect for minority rights. In contrast to targeted or piece-meal policy interventions that strive to improve conditions in one sector or alleviate the poverty of a chosen group, the pursuit of national development promises sustained gains to the entire nation.