Established in 2019, the Center for Racial Justice (CRJ) brings students, faculty, local community members, and invited guests together around the work of racial justice. Our work is grounded in a commitment to structural transformation and grassroots change on the UC Santa Cruz campus, throughout the state of California, and beyond. On a campus where, since 2008, a majority of undergraduates have been students of color, the CRJ addresses persistent student demand and institutional need for a central arena of study and collective organizing on racism and structural injustice.
The work of the CRJ extends beyond the UC Santa Cruz campus. We support emergent political organizing and advocacy work on and across other UC campuses, including by anchoring and administering the UC Ethnic Studies Council. The council enables ethnic studies faculty throughout the system to strengthen the work of ethnic studies across the UC, coming together in common cause with each other, as well as with ethnic studies practitioners in the California State University, community college, and K-12 systems as well as grassroots community settings.
Profoundly internationalist in its commitments, the CRJ serves as a fora for imagining and enacting solidarity with people’s struggles against racism and imperialist violence around the world. We have organized roundtables, workshops, and political education sessions on Indigenous dispossession in Mezcala, global fascisms, “comfort women” denialism, school closings in Puerto Rico, short-term political tourism in Palestine, the ongoing Korean War, and transnational casteism, among other areas of global concern.
Our Team
Christine Hong
Director | Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) and Literature
Christine Hong organized alongside students for ethnic studies at UC Santa Cruz and served as the founding chair of CRES. She serves on the board of directors of the Korea Policy Institute, an independent research and educational institute, and sits on the UC Ethnic Studies Council. She is a core member of the Ending the Korean War Teaching Collective and the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism. In greater Santa Cruz, she organizes with Pajaro Valley for Ethnic Studies and Justice (PVESJ) and serves on the board of Santa Cruz Black. Along with Deann Borshay Liem, she co-directed the Legacies of the Korean War oral history project. Her book, A Violent Peace: Race, Militarism, and Cultures of Democratization in Cold War Asia and the Pacific, was published by Stanford University Press in 2020.
Yitong Lei
Research Assistant, Community Archivist
Yitong Lei is a writer and ar(t)chivist whose work focuses primarily on Chinatowns and Chinatown history. Having graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, as well as East Asian Studies, she now works as an independent scholar, contributing to community-driven research and projects such as Santa Cruz in Color (housed under the CRJ). She also works as an independent journalist, contributing to publications like the Bay Area Current, The Objective, and more. Her debut poetry book, I Had a Hungry Dream, was published in December 2025 by Sleeping Dragons Press.
Talib Jabbar
Graduate Student Researcher
Interns
- Lucy Liu | Winter 2024 – Present
- Rafael Revolorio | Winter 2024 – Present
- Amara Collins | Winter 2025 – Present
- Ennis Opstad | Winter 2025 – Present
- Mohika Pandey | Winter 2025 – Present
- Advika Rajaraman | Winter 2025 – Present
Steering Committee
Courtney Bonam
Associate Professor of Psychology
Angel Dominguez
GANAS Graduate Services Counselor
Rick Flores
Horticulturist for the Arboretum | Steward, Amah Mutsun Relearning Program
Mark Gardner
Director of Academic and CoCurricular Programs
Jennifer Gonzalez
Professor of History of Art and Visual Culture
Autumn Johnson
Director, African American Resource & Cultural Center
Jennifer Kelly
Associate Professor, Feminist Studies and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
Nancy Kim
Managing Director, Resource Centers
Xavier Livermon
Associate Professor, Feminist Studies and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
Flora Lu
Professor, Environmental Studies
Nick Mitchell
Associate Professor, Feminist Studies and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
Jennifer Mogannam
Assistant Professor, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
Maywa Montenegro
Associate Professor, Environmental Studies
Norma Alicia Pino
Education Specialist and Program Coordinator, Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Christina Ravelo
Professor of Ocean Sciences
Felicity Amaya Schaeffer
Professor of Feminist Studies
Kriti Sharma
Assistant Professor, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
Nirvikar Singh
Professor, Economics
Jessica Taft
Professor, Latin American and Latino Studies
Lenora Willis
Executive Director, African, Black, Caribbean Student Success
