The University of California (UC) Berkeley has announced a $2.6 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in support of a multiyear initiative.

The funding to UC Berkeley’s Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry and the International Consortium of Critical Theory will support programming focused on bringing together academics, artists, activists, and other community members to develop concrete strategies, tools, and proposals to create a “counter-imaginary” to authoritarianism. A counter-imaginary is a hypothetical construct that proposes an alternative version in opposition to the dominant societal structure for purposes of critiquing current power structures.

The project, A Counter-Imaginary in Authoritarian Times, will be undertaken in collaboration with Environmental Arts and Humanities Initiative, and New York University’s Critical Racial Anti-Colonial Study Co-Lab. The UC initiative will confront censorship and surveillance that targets academic and artistic freedom, particularly in relation to fields and policies focusing on gender, race, ethnic studies, migration, diversity, and sexuality.

“We want to consider how a variety of art forms can provide vehicles for connection, deliberation, provocation, and re-imagination,” said UC Berkeley history of art department chair Shannon Jackson. “All sectors need to mobilize right now, including the cultural sector. We are ready to do our part in providing experimental spaces to assemble, to renew, and to model a different kind of future.” 

(Photo credit: Getty Images/skynesher)