The Center for Race and Gender is an interdisciplinary research and community outreach center at the University of California Berkeley dedicated to fostering explorations of race and gender and their intersections. It is virtually unique within the academic community in its focus on both race and gender. Its aim is to foster collegial support and exchange among faculty and students throughout the university and between the university and nearby communities of color. Among other activities, the Center will develop research projects and organize working groups, conferences, colloquia, and workshops on topics relevant to issues of race and gender. It will seek to form links with community groups and research centers at other universities. It will support development of outside funding for research projects and FOR publication and dissemination of research findings. The Center aspires to making a meaningful contribution to discussions of issues and policies affecting women and men of color at the national and international levels.

The creation of the Center for Race and Gender by the Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley on January 1, 2001, marked a major step forward by the University in recognition of significant new realities in the State of California and within the university community.

Since its founding 134 years ago, U.C. Berkeley has grown into one of the foremost public universities in the nation and has become an internationally recognized center of teaching and research in the natural and social sciences and humanities. U.C. Berkeley has served the State of California in many ways: intellectually, culturally, and economically. But in recent decades, the racial composition of the State has changed profoundly, and the Berkeley student body has mirrored this change by enrolling much greater numbers of Native American, African American, Latino, and Asian American students. Yet the university's faculty, administration, course offerings, and funding allocations lagged behind the needs and circumstances of the State's population and the new composition of Berkeley students. Accordingly, in the great tradition of Berkeley student activism, in 1999 a group of students demanded, via direct action, that the university address a variety of issues, including failure to allocate faculty positions to the Department of Ethnic Studies and insufficient support for research relating to people of color.

The agreement between the university, the students, and others, committed the university to take certain actions, one of which was the establishment of a new interdisciplinary research center. Although many other universities had already established centers focusing on specific ethnic groups, and a handful had established broader-based centers focusing on people of color, the decision by U.C. Berkeley to include gender as an integral component in the new center's mission, put it in the vanguard. The recognition of the close linkages and intersections between race and gender inequality and oppression enabled the university to create a unique new entity - the Center for Race and Gender (CRG).

CRG in the news:
2/28/01- Berkeleyan article about CRG’s beginnings
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2001/02/28_centr.html