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Together building a more just future

The Center for Social Concerns is an interdisciplinary institute responding to the complex demands of justice through a combination of justice education and research for the common good. We bring people together to think carefully about the world’s most pressing social concerns in order to develop creative and effective approaches to addressing them.

Justice Education

We cultivate moral imagination, practical wisdom, and the courage to act through a range of curricular and co-curricular programs for undergraduate, graduate, and professional students.

Research for the Common Good

We work with academics, advocates, and artists to study the world’s most pressing social concerns and develop creative and effective community-based approaches to addressing them.

Critical Conversations

We convene critical conversations that include diverse perspectives and foster innovative approaches to questions of justice from religious freedom to gun violence to racial health inequalities.

Center stories

Geddes Hall

Five new scholars join the center

Megan Levis, Katie Comeau, Helal Mohammed Khan, Geneva Hutchinson, and Samuel Sokolsky-Tifft bring expertise in technology, religion, peace, art, and mass incarceration to forward the Center’s efforts to promote justice and the common good.

Inaugural commencement celebrated at Indiana Women’s Prison

Through a program administered by Notre Dame Programs for Education in Prison, 14 formerly or currently incarcerated women received bachelor’s or associate’s degrees from Marian University. “This is a distinct privilege for me today,” Marian president Dan Elsener told the graduates, “because I admire you.” 

180 people gather around a speaker at the groundbreaking ceremony

Community collaboration celebrates the past and promises a welcoming future

More than 180 people from around South Bend gathered for the groundbreaking of Foundry Field, a public-access baseball field designed to celebrate the Foundry Giants and other underrepresented baseball teams from South Bend’s past.  

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Coming up at the center

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1,000

More than 1,000 students a year

550

Community partners in 36 states and 26 countries

40

Years of transformative impact

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