Support CLACS Graduate Student Research! | Fall 2026

What if the next groundbreaking idea about migration, climate justice, improving the rule of law, or fighting infectious disease comes from a graduate student at Berkeley — but they don’t have the resources or community to pursue it?

The most important research happens when scholars cross boundaries between traditional academic disciplines. At the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS), Working Groups provide graduate students the space, community, and resources to do exactly that. 

Not just discussion groups. Incubators for new ideas.

Graduate students from across Berkeley come together to read, debate, workshop research, host international scholars and community experts, and challenge one another’s assumptions. A student studying migration might find a new approach through anthropology. A scholar of environmental justice might connect with a renewable power innovator. A researcher examining race and representation might discover entirely new questions through the lens of visual culture.

The result is scholarship that is more ambitious, more collaborative, and better able to address the complicated problems of our world.

Dozens of students, and a world of questions. Your gift to the CLACS Working Groups program in turn supports students answering critical questions, such as:

1. How do artists and visual storytellers across the African diaspora represent race, identity, memory, and belonging?
2. How can we better understand the histories, politics, migration, and diasporas shaping Central America and its communities around the world?
3. What does gender have to do with environmental crises? And what would a more just future look like if we centered women?  
4. What can studying informal governance across Latin America and the Middle East teach us about how societies actually function? 

Why this Matters Now

The problems facing our world do not respect the boundaries of academic disciplines. At the same time, graduate students are being asked to tackle increasingly complex problems with continually diminishing resources. Training scholars to think across disciplines is a necessity, not a luxury.

And that collaboration requires resources. 

A small amount of funding can make an enormous difference: it can bring students together around a table, put a book or archival source in a student’s hands, bring an expert to Berkeley, or turn a student’s emerging idea into a serious research project.

That impact doesn’t end. The students in these groups become professors, journalists, policymakers, artists, and leaders. They will carry the questions and skills developed here into classrooms, communities, institutions, and the wider world. When you support a Working Group, you are not simply funding a meeting. You are investing in the people who will help us understand — and change — the world.

Together, we can ensure Berkeley graduate students have the resources and intellectual community they need to think ambitiously, researching and developing the ideas that will shape our understanding of the Americas and our world.

Give today. Help build the next generation of knowledge.

Note: All donations to the CLACS campaign will support graduate student research, public events, and workshops. While CLACS has residual funding to support some Working Groups for the 2026–27 academic year, your gift helps us provide these students with more opportunities, resources, and intellectual connection — and every dollar above our goal helps us continue, strengthen, and expand the reach of the Working Group Program for future cohorts.

Want to make your gift by check, donor-advised fund, or employer matching program? We are happy to help! Please email calcrowdfunding@berkeley.edu and include how you would like to support this project. Our team will provide the appropriate instructions, coordinate gift processing, and help ensure your contribution is credited to this campaign whenever possible.