Mission

The Center for Changing Systems of Power is committed —through collaborative research, teaching, advocacy, and activism — to furthering epistemic, aesthetic, and social justice locally and globally.

Epistemically, we are committed to co-producing knowledge with those within and outside the academy to develop solidarities of epistemologies that will not only illuminate interlocking relationships between inequality and multiple systems of oppression —defined by class, gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, ability, geography, and other markers of socially constructed difference— but also how communities locally and globally are challenging those systems of power.

Currently, our affiliates are focused on ecological, health, and carceral systems that are in urgent need of transformation.

Aesthetically, through our artivist in residence program, we seek to showcase practices and visions of art that draw upon dynamic local and global traditions and practices that envision a better world for us all.

Socially, the Center is committed to promoting justice, both within and beyond the academy, in communities and causes on Long Island, greater New York, and globally.

Our mission is rooted in bringing together academics, community groups, artists, advocates, and public policy makers by sponsoring dialogues and debate as well as teach-ins over issues of importance within and outside SBU.

The Center is committed to fostering a world in which everyone, regardless of race, gender, sex, or sexuality reach their full potential as human beings along with the more than human who constitute our world. We seek to build bridges among a new generation of researchers, practitioners, artists, and activists who work to achieve these ends.