JUSTICE
EDUCATION
Engaging injustice everywhere
We cultivate moral imagination, practical wisdom, and the courage to act through a range of curricular and co-curricular programs for undergraduates, graduate, and professional students.
- Undergrad courses
- For grad students
- Programs
- Minors
Spring 2025 courses
Appalachia
The Appalachia course is designed to introduce students to the cultural and social issues of the Appalachian region — its history, people, culture, challenges, and strengths — through study and immersive experience during spring break.
Art and Social Change
Students will work with a South Bend neighborhood to explore a structural challenge and, with the guidance of a local artist, respond to this challenge alongside community members in creating an artistic piece that serves the good of the neighborhood.
Brain Health Community-Centered Research
This is designed to support an interdisciplinary approach for students with a background in neuroscience who wish to deepen community-centered research practice in partnerships with community organizations.
Discernment and the Common Good
This seminar provides undergraduate students an opportunity to reflect on their undergraduate education and to explore their respective vocations as it relates to the common good.
Global Poverty and Inequality
This course examines global poverty through the lens of Catholic social teaching. Poverty implies more than lack of income or wealth; as Pope Francis reminds us, the worst form of poverty is exclusion.
Housing and the Common Good Research Lab
This research lab will involve community engagement as students pursue research projects that will lead into their own constructive proposals for a concrete contribution to meeting the current low-income and supportive housing needs locally, regionally, and/or nationally.
Human Rights Advocacy: The Blueprint
This interdisciplinary course equips students in Strategic Human Rights Advocacy — an innovation-driven approach to solve society’s most wicked problems.
Introduction to Catholic Social Thinking
This course examines the origins, development, and continued relevance of Catholic social teaching, providing a comprehensive overview of modern CST through examination of key papal encyclicals and Church documents.
Introduction to Poverty Studies
In this gateway course we ask, “Why are people poor?” We take an interdisciplinary look at poverty to better understand the forces that maintain poverty and the forces that resist it.
Just Peace: A Case Study on Ukraine
This course examines Christian approaches to peace and justice in the context of contemporary global conflicts, with particular focus on the challenges posed by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Just Wage Research Lab
This interdisciplinary research lab enlists students in the efforts of the Just Wage Initiative (JWI), a collaborative research and advocacy project of the Higgins Labor Program at the Institute for Social Concerns.
Knowing Me, Seeing You, and Engaging in the World
Explore a better understanding of self, a more differentiated look at the other person, and cultural and religious differences to find out how one can best contribute to a common good oriented society.
Mass Incarceration Research Lab
This research lab will employ an interdisciplinary approach to research on a range of issues related to mass incarceration.
Music and Social Change in the USA
Students will explore American popular music in its many forms to understand its power and limits as both a force for social change and a window into major themes of the American experience.
NDBridge
This course prepares students for the institute’s NDBridge summer program, which includes an eight-week immersive experience of living and working alongside marginalized communities in the U.S. and around the world. Application required.
Organizing Power & Hope
Through a series of trainings and hands-on application, students will build public relationships, amplify their voices, cultivate power and leverage it for justice.
Peace, Prints & Protest
This introductory course, open to non-majors and majors, will show students how the reproduction of images has created social change for better or for worse.
Poverty & Justice: Inside Out
This course involves inside students (people incarcerated at the Westville Correctional Facility) and outside students (people enrolled at Notre Dame, St. Mary’s, or Holy Cross) learning with and from one another and breaking new ground together.
Proximities: Arts of Dignity
Explore how the arts can be a tool to promote justice and the common good. Students will travel to Los Angeles over spring break to engage with community organizations and local artists who are navigating the art world through a lens of justice.
Proximities: Environmental Justice in Cancer Alley
This course examines the structure of environmental racism and the impact on people and their communities. Students will engage with these concerns in New Orleans and nearby “Cancer Alley” during spring break.
Proximities: Justice at the US-Mexico Border
This course examines why migrants leave their home countries and what they encounter at the border. Students will engage with these questions in the Tucson, Arizona, borderlands area during spring break.
Proximities: Whole Person Healthcare
This one-credit course will examine the U.S. healthcare system’s intersections with poverty, housing, addiction, and migration. The course will involve a five-day immersive experience to Minneapolis-St. Paul during spring break.
Refugees, Rights, and Resettlement
This seminar will provide an overview of and framework to understand the global refugee crisis. We will trace the evolution of international refugee law and policy dealing with this ever-growing population.
Social Concerns Summer Fellowship
This course will prepare students for an eight-week immersive summer experience where they will work alongside a community organization in the U.S. or internationally. Application required.
Technology and Justice
Explore the responsibility inherent in using, creating, and developing new technology. Students will begin with the following questions: What is justice? How does technology promote or reduce justice? Does it do both?