Community partnership and public commitment lie at the heart of everything we do
The Center on Global Justice (CGJ) is an Organized Research Unit (ORU) at UC San Diego, launched in 2012 to advance interdisciplinary research on poverty and global development, with an emphasis on collective action at community scale. The CGJ is home to initiatives focused on global ethics and cooperation (the conventional terrain of global justice), but the majority of our initiatives localize the global, focusing on real-word intervention at local scale, in partnership with nonprofits, government agencies and civic stakeholders—top-down and bottom-up.
We are committed to the public mission of the University of California. We pursue high-impact public projects that empower and improve the health and well-being of underserved populations. We are also committed to increasing public knowledge through academic, consultative, civic and cultural channels, working in partnership with governments, civic organizations, non-profits, cultural institutions and K-12 schools. We host high-profile public events on campus and across the border region, summon community-based leaders and youth to our campus as "public scholars," circulate dozens of researchers and students into our regional community each year through internship and mentorship programming, and exhibit our work in important cultural venues across the world.
The CGJ is presently committed to three research clusters
SPATIAL JUSTICE
The Center on Global Justice is dedicated to advancing research on equitable, green urban development, with a particular focus on the San Diego-Tijuana border region, and cross-sector strategies to increase community capacity in marginalized communities divided by a wall.
CLIMATE JUSTICE
The Center on Global Justice is committed to research and action on social and environmental justice, and particularly the urgent, disproportionate impact of climate disruption on the world’s most vulnerable people.
GLOBAL ETHICS + COOPERATION
The Center on Global Justice participates in global conversations about poverty, human rights, collective responsibilities and coordinated strategies to protect those who are most vulnerable. We are committed to rethinking academic and policy narratives that are too often abstracted from real-world experiences.
The CGJ is also home to the UCSD Community Stations and the Blum Summer Field Internship
UCSD Community Stations
A network of field hubs located in disadvantaged neighborhoods across the San Diego–Tijuana border region, designed for collaborative research, teaching and advocacy
Blum Summer Field Internship
An immersive, team-based field research program in the UCSD Community Station sites, designed to enrich undergraduate classroom learning.