Just Education Policy Institute 2025
Justice is and has always been an important yet elusive target in education policy. Throughout history, the actions of the education system have both created devastating barriers to social justice and delivered crucial reforms for the path forward. Across all sectors, there is a continuing need for courageous and critical thinking in education policymaking. Now more than ever, the education policy scholarly community has at its disposal the tools to conduct rigorous research that can help fight racial injustice. The goal of the Just Education Policy scholars program is to inspire and engage the next generation of racial justice-focused education policy scholars.
Program Details
The 2025 JEP scholars program will be held in-person, October 15-18, 2025 from 8:30am-8:30pm ET each day. Accepted participants are expected to attend all of the program and will be compensated $800.00 at the end of the program for their participation.
This program is designed for doctoral students and recent graduates who are committed to advancing racial equity and justice education policy and politics and have ethical ambition to create policy change through research. It will include a mix of guided discussions about important concepts for those seeking to work in educational equity and justice as well as community-building and direct mentoring sessions. Content will cover four large areas of focus:
Contextualizing knowledge about racial equity and justice in education policy, including defining racial justice, historical perspectives, and institutional politics.
Understanding modern efforts that challenge educational equity and justice, including understanding the debates on race-consciousness vs. race-neutrality, political ideologies resisting acknowledgement of race, and spaces for action on federal, state, and local levels.
Engaging with racial equity and justice work as a public scholar, including what activists and practitioners need, getting involved, and public communication.
Doing research work that centers racial justice, including finding a research agenda, theory, methodology and design, finding support, and working in the field.
Eligibility
Applications will be accepted from those who (a) will be active doctoral students as of October 2025 OR are recent graduates (who graduated in Spring 2025 or later), (b) have completed at least two years of coursework, and (c) are interested in pursuing work in racial equity and justice in education policy.
We will be particularly targeting admissions towards applicants who demonstrate a commitment to working on education policy. The researchers who contribute to education policy are diverse, including those in traditional education policy programs and those in other fields (e.g., history, economics, law, political science, social policy) that work on issues relevant to education policy.
Ineligible groups include students who have not taken at least two years of coursework, those who graduated from their doctoral programs in Fall/Winter 2024 or earlier, and those who participated in the Just Education Policy program in any of the previous years.
All eligible students and recent graduates are encouraged to apply, and we especially encourage applications from people who do not have access to this type of content in their home programs. This program is open for full participation by all individuals regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or any other protected category under applicable federal and state law.
Application Details
Please click the application link below to submit your application. Note that applications will be kept confidential to the planning team. If you have any questions about the application, email Charlotte O'Keefe Stralka at charlotte.okeefe@berkeley.edu.
Applications must be submitted by 11:59pm ET on Monday, June 30, 2025.
Applicants should submit, in this form:
A current CV or resume,
Responses to some brief background questions, and
Answers (written in the form) to the following questions (maximum of 1000 characters each):
Please describe why you are applying for the Just Education Policy program, how it relates to your professional goals, and what gap in your current academic journey you think the program will help supplement.
Name a policy area in education in which you would like to combat racial injustice/advance racial justice, and describe your current thoughts about how you would like to contribute to that change through research.
What about your experiences and background leads you to be interested in pursuing work that advances racial justice in education policy?