Social Justice

When she was working as the social impact and marketing director at Molly Moon’s, UW communication alum Emily Kim, ’08, saw an opportunity: a free pastry education program to help people facing barriers to employment. Thus the Pastry Project, complete with a Pioneer Square storefront, was born. 

UW Magazine’s Aleenah Ansari checks in with Kim about the origins of the Pastry Project, what it means to run a social impact business and how she developed the curriculum for their free pastry education program.

The first comprehensive national study on fatal police violence in and around American Indian/Alaska Native (AIAN) reservations, from researchers at the UW and Drexel University, found that roughly 73% of AIAN people killed by police violence were on or within 10 miles of a reservation. Theresa Rocha Beardall, co-author and UW associate professor of sociology, is quoted.

Indigenous people in the United States are at higher risk of fatal police violence in and around American Indian/Alaska Native (AIAN) reservations, according to the first comprehensive national study on the subject from researchers at the University of Washington and Drexel University. The researchers found that roughly 73% AIAN people killed by police violence were on or within 10 miles of a reservation.

Pulitzer-winning reporter Evelyn Iritani uncovers the diplomatic exchange of American and Japanese civilians while the two countries were at war.

Founded in 2007 by late UW professor Quintard Taylor, Blackpast.org is a non-profit website documenting African American history and ancestry.

About 100 people rallied on the morning of Feb. 7 exactly 140 years to the day at Hing Hay Park in Seattles Chinatown-International District, where community groups, civic leaders and residents marked the anniversary of the 1886 expulsion that forced more than 350 Chinese residents from their homes and businesses at gunpoint. Connie So, teaching professor of American ethnic studies at the UW, is quoted.

Undergrad Francesca Espey receives a Mary Gates Scholarship for disability rights research, inspired by observations of society's attitude toward her father's disease. Meet Francesca

Upper Skagit elder Vi Hilbert's legacy in language and culture preservation lives on through archival records collected in the Vi Hilbert Collection, first curated and digitized by retired longtime UW Ethnomusicologist Laurel Sercombe and now housed through UW LIbraries, and through a documentary film and symphony she commissioned, Healing Heart of the First People of This Land," staged at the UW in February 2026 by the UW Symphony and soloist (and School of Music alumna) Adia S. Bowen.  

Emma Teal Laukitis, ’18, and her sister Claire not only catch and sell Alaska’s most famous fish, they help feed hundreds of thousands Alaskans through their donations.

“This Is Native Land” is a permanent, 3,000-square-foot exhibition at the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma that weaves the stories of Indigenous peoples into the fabric of the 30-year-old institution. Co-curated by Associate Professor Danica Sterud Miller (Puyallup) and Todd Clark (Wailaki), tribal liaison for the Washington State Historical Society, the project engaged more than 100 Native contributors from more than 60 tribes. 

Key collaborators include elder Philip H. Red Eagle, ’83, ’87 (Dakota and Puget Sound Salish); artist Joe Feddersen, ’83, (Colville); Owen Oliver, ’21 (Quinault); current UW museology student Markus Teuton, ’24 (Cherokee); and museum staff, including head of collections Maggie Wetherbee, ’00, and director of audience engagement Mary Mikel Stump, a former UW student. Viewpoint spoke with Miller, who is on faculty at UW Tacoma, for a look at the making of “This Is Native Land.”

A bilingual educator with 18 years of experience at both the college level and in K–12 public schools, Whitemarsh hopes to give back to her hometown of Pasco.

"Survivor accounts of the lasting effects of their prostitution at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein and his wealthy friends repeat the story of every trafficked girl and woman on Aurora Avenue in Seattle," writes Debra Boyer, affiliate faculty in the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the UW.

Former Husky basketball star and NBA player Bobby Jones is a big hit in Compton and beyond with his community-oriented organizations.

Jones, who earned his B.A. in writing from the UW, has already published a children’s book. And the small forward who was always known as a dogged defender for three Husky teams that made the NCAA tournament from 2004 to 2006, is just as fired up to provide representation to his communities. “I’m from Compton,” he says, “I played in the NBA, and I look like the kids from this area. It means so much for them to see someone who looks like them teaching yoga and mentoring them.”

In February, the UW Symphony will perform a symphony that Coast Salish elder Vi Hilbert commissioned years ago to heal the world after the heartbreak of 9/11. The symphony was first performed by the Seattle Symphony in 2006.

Public safety in the Chinatown-International District (CID) takes an important step forward with a targeted educational campaign. More than 100 elderly residents and their family members gathered on Nov. 15 at the International District/Chinatown Community Center for CID Cares, a community safety program for one of Seattles most vulnerable populations. The event is supported in part by the UW American ethnic studies department.