The Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry (CICI) fosters cross-divisional collaborations in order to address some of the most urgent political, social, religious and environmental questions of our time. We support collaborations between the arts, humanities, law, and the sciences (social, natural and digital) to address contemporary global challenges. Our current programs focus on religion and politics, the global forms of critical theory, authoritarianism old and new, borders, migration, and climate change. In addition to coordinating projects across disciplinary, divisional and regional lines, CICI provides a setting for emerging fields such as Environmental, Psychedelic, Medical, Public and Global Humanities.
CICI is a gathering place for critical and creative inquiry into these contemporary issues at UC Berkeley, throughout the UC system, and across the global community. We foster an inclusive, interdisciplinary and dynamic vision of the human and the Humanities for contemporary times, one that responds to the call to celebrate “the exultant divergence of humanities” (Edouard Glissant). We are committed to thinking across an array of fields to develop a capacious vision of the Arts and Humanities in relation to contemporary critical thought, creative practice, politics, and ethics.