Justice is a topic that has been on my mind lately. 

It is the theme for this year’s Principles of Community week, which starts today. I’ve also been doing some writing recently on the topic of just city design as the word “justice” is often invoked by planning and design professionals, but its meaning varies significantly.

As I have reflected on the word justice, I’ve taken pause to contemplate—what does justice really mean and how can we put it into practice? 

Generally, scholars  describe three types of justice: distributional justice, i.e. how resources are allocated; procedural justice, i.e. that there are fair processes in which decisions are made; and interactional justice, i.e. how individuals are treated in their interactions with others. In sum, justice is fundamentally about our relationship to one another: from how wealth is shared across society and how processes are made fair, to how we are treated and how we are valued in our daily interactions. 

Regardless of the type of justice, individual actions are embedded in these processes.  In her posthumously published book, Responsibility for Justice, Iris Marion Young puts forth a model of justice in which our individual responsibility is connected to a collective responsibility–toward creating a community of justice. Given this embeddedness, the case can be made that all of us have a responsibility to address injustices in our everyday lives.

As Keith Watenpaugh shares in our feature blog this month, “as a professional in higher education, we have a responsibility to lead. Part of that leadership responsibility is understanding and meeting the needs of the public writ large.” This responsibility includes not only the pursuit of work committed to the values of justice, but also an awakening to injustices so we do not run the risk of being complicit in our passivity.

A responsibility for justice also extends to knowledge communities we create as scholars. Extending Young’s ideas to our own lives, we are called to pursue and create communities that care deeply about justice so we can better identify where injustices exist, integrate justice into our research and teaching, and be forward thinking in implementing change. It is why I am excited about this year's cohort of Community Engaged Faculty Fellows that will have a focus on equity and justice.

Equally important is providing opportunities for our students so that they are best prepared to enter into the academy or whatever career path they choose. Our office believes this is vital to society and the future of the academy, which is why we created a new fellowship program for doctoral students who are passionate about community engaged scholarship, called Public Scholars for the Future. In partnership with Graduate Studies, we hope this fellowship program will inspire and support the next generation of scholars to move beyond disciplinary boundaries and engage communities more deeply, impactfully, and as means of taking action toward justice.

These are only a few examples of how we aim to integrate the UC Davis Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Vision into our programs and initiatives. I encourage you to join us in our efforts to pursue greater justice for us all.

In community,

Michael Rios
Vice Provost, Public Scholarship and Engagement