Social Justice College

Emily Haley, Social Justice College

What is justice? What are the fundamental human rights? How has society promoted and denied these rights to its various members? How does society determine who is worthy of full citizenship? How have individuals and organizations struggled for social justice? How can the government ensure rights and what are the appropriate responsibilities for individual citizens and groups? What current issues of social justice need to be addressed and by whom?

The Social Justice Foundation Seminar focuses on selected historic and contemporary themes of social justice in the United States. Although topics change from year to year and approaches may vary from seminar to seminar, all students are challenged to take the perspective of those who are marginalized in our society and to critically and compassionately examine issues of social justice from today’s headlines. Recent courses studied poverty, inequality in education and health care, immigration, and gay and lesbian civil rights.

Students are active participants in the learning process, identifying past and present examples of social change movements they wish to study in depth, and working cooperatively with others to develop and present educational projects on pressing issues.

Students also participate in additional social justice activities. For example, each year the college actively promotes and participates in the town-gown Stop the Hate Rally, involving hundreds of students and local residents. The college sponsors field trips to places like Washington, D.C. to tour the Holocaust Museum, New York City to see a social-justice-themed play, and Baltimore to learn about urban poverty and grassroots activism.

Through service-learning projects, students also relate what they are studying in the classroom to their own experiences while assisting the community. For example, students help at a local homeless shelter, and the Bucknell-sponsored soup kitchen. Social Justice students have become campus leaders in organizing and promoting service-learning projects and have raised campus awareness of issues like hunger, sweatshops, gun control, human trafficking and capitol punishment.