As the University of Notre Dame’s scholarly home for interdisciplinary responses to questions of justice, the Institute for Social Concerns is inspired and emboldened by Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas. The encyclical’s calls to protect human dignity, serve the common good, foster solidarity, and care for the vulnerable are bedrocks of our mission…

Virtues & Vocations, a national forum for interdisciplinary scholars and practitioners housed at the Institute for Social Concerns, is pleased to announce that Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, will receive the 2026 Virtues & Vocations Book Award for his book The Student: A Short History, published by Yale University Press.

Delivering the annual Poverty Studies Distinguished Lecture at the Institute for Social Concerns, Rowe presented a chilling map of the “long shadow” cast by the American foster care system. Drawing on 35 years of reporting at the intersection of youth and government policy—research central to her recent book Wards of the State—Rowe described a system…