Our Mission

The Action Lab for Social Justice at the Columbia School of Social Work (CSSW) is an exploratory, student-driven center that aims to uproot systems of oppression and create conditions of love, care, and liberation in social work practice and academia. 

The Action Lab provides a space where faculty, staff, students, and community members can build community and break down the silos that so often plague academic institutions and impede change. It also provides a platform for community members to challenge the institution to be more conscious of its inequitable practices to demand better for students, employees, and the surrounding Harlem and NYC community. We simultaneously seek to challenge ourselves to critically assess our positionalities in order to continuously confront our biases. It is this internal and external work that allows us to espouse the values on which the lab is founded and to center the voices of minoritized and marginalized people.  

The Action Lab was created in June 2020 in response to George Floyd’s murder, ongoing police brutality against Black and Brown people, and widespread frustration with how little society has progressed in abolishing anti-Black racism. The first two initiatives to be incorporated into the lab were the Action for Black Lives initiative and the COVID-19 Action initiative, which had existed since March 2020. Since the Summer of 2020, students of the lab continue to mobilize additional initiatives.

All initiatives strive to encompass a three-pronged approach of education, practice and research through anti-racist and anti-oppressive lenses. We invite members of the CSSW, CU, and the broader community of faculty, staff, and students to join in and help us achieve our mission.  Learn more about each of these initiatives here. If you would like to connect, please email [email protected].