As Americans celebrate the nation's 250th birthday, there will be no shortage of speeches about freedom, pluralism, and the enduring promise of religious liberty. It is worth asking how well we are living up to that ideal.

With democracy everywhere on the defensive, a chance visit to Northern Ireland in the week racial violence tore through Belfast has helped me see exactly what we are up against, says the academic john powell

CEO Maury Giles announced this week a new organizational advisory council of “23 leaders who disagree on many things” but who agree to “stand together. The board includes Jonathan Haidt, Cornel West, Yuval Levin, Jonathan Rauch, Mónica Guzmán, john a. powell, among others.

Watch john powell discuss Othering with "Volle Kanne," a German-language morning show produced by public service broadcast ZDF. This segment aired May 21, 2026.

El profesor y catedrático de la Universidad de Berkeley, y director del Othering & Belonging Institute, explora la idea bajo el término ...

In the fifteenth installment of the Legacies of Eugenics series, Daniel Shanahan shows how algorithmically mediated music recommendations have a dark backstory. This series, organized by Osagie K. Obasogie in collaboration with the Los Angeles Review of Books, features essays by leading thinkers devoted to exploring the history of eugenics and the ways it shapes our present.

Belonging is more than feeling welcomed into a room — it is about being recognized as a full participant, with the agency to shape the meeting experience itself. It arises in tension with “othering,” and it prompts us to take into account who has been excluded, why and what systems made that possible. I joined Ashley Gallegos, the Places of Belonging director...

Presbyterian Rev. Jihyun Oh drew on OBI's work at the 2026 Georgia Presbyteries’ Gathering, describing a spectrum of behaviors — breaking, bridging and bonding. Most congregations, she suggested, are skilled at bonding with people like themselves but struggle with the bridging behaviors that connect across real differences. “I wonder if we're really just more comfortable bonding all the time,” she said, adding that bonding within a group is frequently paired with breaking behavior toward those outside it.

In the 12th essay of the Legacies of Eugenics series, three researchers describe how eugenic ideas linger in the institutions and practices of contemporary healthcare.

UC Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute, or the OBI, worked with an Orange County community organization to experiment with a new canvassing strategy to engage residents across the political spectrum. The approach, known as long bridging, is part of the institute’s Bridging for Democracy initiative. Long bridging prioritizes human conversation over gathering support for a particular political purpose.

The Philippines climbed nine places to 84th out of 152 countries in the 2025 edition of the Inclusiveness Index by UC Berkeley’s The Othering and Belonging Institute. With an overall index score of 58.35 out of possible 100...

The Bush Foundation and MPR News welcomed john a. powell, author of “The Power of Bridging,” to the historic Fitzgerald Theater on Dec. 2, to speak with MPR News’ Catharine Richert, who leads the “Talking Sense” reporting project.

In this new essay for Nonprofit Quarterly, Eli Moore writes about our new podcast "Real Solutions" — launched in partnership with 10 organizations — which uplifts bold policy solutions, explained by people with deep knowledge about them, for audiences that don’t know much about the issue or policy design.

Miriam Juan-Torres González, a leading expert on polarisation and democracy, joined The Good Apocalypse Podcast to discuss the evolution of political polarisation since 2016, the rise of authoritarian populism and strategies for building bridges and defending democracy in turbulent times.

Engineering nebulous threats like “gender ideology” can convince unruly coalitions to support authoritarian practices, says the Othering & Belonging Institute’s Míriam Juan-Torres González.

An internationally recognized expert in the areas of civil rights and civil liberties spoke and anchored a panel discussion Monday that drew a packed house to Angus Bowmer Theatre in Ashland for the launch of “All.Together.Now,” envisioned as a “multi-year, multi-generational, multi-cultural collaboration to strengthen our community for the future.”

Growing up in Detroit, I remember a time in junior high when a group of older boys came onto our playground looking for a fight, and to claim our grounds. They asked, “Who’s the toughest kid here?” Someone pointed to a boy sitting quietly under a tree. The high schoolers sent word: We’re here to kick your ass.

Structural racism — or the way systems like housing, education, employment and justice create racial disparities without overtly racist actors — is a concept that is often “deeply misunderstood,” according to Stephen Menendian.

In this Berkeley News story, Othering and Belonging Institute director john a. powell and OBI Campus Bridging Project leader Julia Mckeown share expertise and perspective around ways to bridge at UC Berkeley during a polarizing time.

OBI Director john a. powell speaks with Nonprofit Quarterly about his new book, co-authored with OBI Assistant Director Stephen Menendian, Belonging Without Othering: How We Save Ourselves and the World. This is the first of a two-part interview.

June 19 became a kind of July 4 celebration for African Americans, john a. powell, the director of the Othering and Belonging Institute at the University of California at Berkeley, told The Post. “It’s particularly important for African Americans...

When john a. powell arrived at the University of California at Berkeley about a decade ago, he found a competition that spoke to a struggle outside academia. The nationally renowned civil-liberties scholar (who spells his name all lowercase) had been picked to lead...