Civic Engagement and Social Justice

At Lang, social justice is the ethical core of a liberal arts education. Lang’s Office of Civic Engagement and Social Justice (CESJ) is a hub that creates opportunities in which students can bridge their social justice passions and academic work and build community with others who are dedicated to leading social justice–centered lives. CESJ programs take the form of “learning communities,” composed of students, faculty, staff, and community partner organizations around New York City. Through our civic engagement and social justice programming, the community at Lang, including the Bachelor's Program for Adults and Transfer Students (Adult Bachelor's Program), connects theoretical frameworks with the lived experience of working to become a critical space where transformative learning occurs.

Our vision is for Lang to be a place where transformative learning occurs. To that end, we create spaces for students, faculty, and staff to show up fully and progress together toward a more just society. 

Current CESJ programs include:

• Year-Round Discretionary Funding (“Mini-Grants”) and Summer Fellowship Grants, which allocate financial resources to individual and student groups’ professional learning, activist initiatives, creative and research projects, and community-based activities that address themes of and take action toward social justice or civic engagement. The Summer Fellowships are dedicated to students who are pursuing unfunded or under-funded summer internships designed to promote social justice values, practice, and/or scholarship.
  
  
• I Have a Dream Tutoring (IHD). This internship offers Lang students the opportunity to serve the community by tutoring elementary school students in an after-school program for designated schools in East Harlem. Work with the same student one afternoon a week, tutoring them in math, reading, social studies, or science for one credit.
  
  
• Lang Prison Initiative Reading Group: Abolition Geography: Essays Toward Liberation. This online course explores the social justice road to abolition through Ruth Wilson Gilmore's work over three decades. The book presents "her singular contribution to the politics of abolition as theorist, researcher, and organizer" and offers ways to navigate the unsettling, chaotic, and lawless present. This program offers a unique opportunity to engage in substantive discussions through the writings of leading thinkers on punishment, policing, and abolition. Depending on the semester, people active in the transformative justice and prison abolition movements may join for a few sessions. 
  
  
• The New School Debate Team competes in collegiate policy debate at the Novice, JV, and Open levels. The team is a part of both the Cross Examination Debate Association (CDA) and the National Debate Tournament (NDT). New School students can join the team with any level of debate experience. The team also does campus and community outreach.