Logo for InfluenceWatch InfluenceWatch

Donate
Other Group

UC Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies

Founded:

2009 1

References

  1. “About CRWS.” Institute for Study of Societal Issues. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://issi.berkeley.edu/centers/crws/about
Project of:

University of California Berkeley Institute for Study of Societal Issues

Contact InfluenceWatch with suggested edits or tips for additional profiles.

The Center for Right-Wing Studies (CRWS) a University of California, Berkeley-based organization that conducts research on right-of-center movements and organizations in America and around the world and is supported by private tax-deductible donations. 1 2

The organization claims to be “nonideological, and only interested in scholarship of the Right.” 3 4 However, the organization has received donated archives from far-left organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the People for the American Way. 5 Meanwhile, some of the group’s conferences and events have cast the political right as extreme, violent, and racist. 6 7

Background

The Center for Right-Wing Studies is a stand-alone research unit under the University of California Berkeley Institute for Study of Societal Issues, or ISSI, but gets no financial support from the university. 8

CRWS claims to look “at the Right in its diversity,” noting that some movements are about social or religious issues, others focus on nationalism or race, some are based on “militaristic tendencies,” and other movements are based on “economic doctrines.” It adds the “most successful right-wing movements manage to assemble coalitions that include elements from more than one of these categories.” 9

The Center studies the right through the 20th and 21st centuries. 10 CRWS says it researches the right in the United States, Europe, Latin America, and other regions of the world over the past century. 11

The group says it nurtures “academic scholarship, dialogue and debate on all aspects of right-wing movements and thought.” 12

It provides “mini-grants” of up to $500 for full-time undergraduate students and up to $1,000 for full-time graduate students at UC Berkeley to conduct research projects on the right. 13

The group claims that it has two missions: The first is to identify right-wing movements and flesh out their histories. The second is to “understand the state of the contemporary Right and identify its likely directions and successes.” 14

Founding

Lawrence Rosenthal is the chairman and founder of the UC Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies. He has taught at University of California, Berkeley in the Sociology and Italian Studies Departments. He was a Fulbright Professor at the University of Naples in Italy. He studied the right in the United States and in Italy. Rosenthal co-edited Steep: The Precipitous Rise of the Tea Party and The New Nationalism and the First World War. 15

The center was founded in March 2009 shortly after the inauguration of President Barack Obama and the rise of the Tea Party movement and was initially called the Center for the Comparative Study of Right-Wing Movements. 16 17

When the center was founded, many people thought that it advocated for right-leaning causes on campus, said Christine Trost, academic coordinator of CRWS and associate director of UC Berkeley Institute for Study of Societal Issues. 18

After it was founded, it gained some positive reception from the right. Stanford’s Hoover Institution and the Barry Goldwater Center for the Southwest expressed hope for a conservative perspective on Berkeley’s campus, while former UC regent and conservative activist Ward Connerly suggested the organization change the “right-wing” in the name to “conservative. 19

Rosenthal, the founder, said that UC Berkeley’s historical identification with the political Left might make the campus seem an odd fit for such a center. But, he said political alignment is a secondary concern in academia. 20

Rosenthal asserted in 2018, “We don’t start from the premise that the right wing is, either by virtue of its tactics or its ideology, good or bad. We start from the premise: ‘What is it? Where does it come from? What is its history? What is its trajectory?’ ”21 However, after the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, Rosenthal said “There’s no way in which it was a surprise,” and that, “The markers were not sudden at all” because of the history of the American Right. 22

Archives and Publications

The UC Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies is building an archive of video and print materials about the right to make the materials available to scholars. 23

The organization keeps audio and visual recordings from the 1960s and early 1970s from the far-right John Birch Society. The collection was funded by a grant from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Other recordings include right-of-center activist figures such as Phyllis Schlafly, Lola Belle Holmes, G. Edward Griffin, W. Cleon Skousen, and Robert Welch. 24

In June 2010, the left-wing People for the American Way donated its archive of resources on conservatives from 1980-2004 to CRWS. The archives contained information about 1,220 organizations, 300 individual files, and 80 rare magazines and newspapers from the right. It tracks pamphlets, direct mailings, publications, speeches, conference programs, internal financial records, membership lists, fundraising strategies, voter guides, manuals, and other documents of right-leaning organizations and individuals, including what it called the “religious right.” 25

People for the American Way also donated an archive of conservative broadcasting, including speeches by President Ronald Reagan and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, coverage of congressional proceedings such as the Robert Bork Supreme Court confirmation hearing, and coverage of important conservative events such as past Conservative Political Action Conferences (CPAC). 26

CRWS publishes the Journal of Right-Wing Studies. The group says the journal aims to shed light on the politics of the moment, with a focus on the issues of race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, class and markets, religion and culture, and media and communications. 27 The Journal of Right-Wing Studies claims both the publication and the CWRS are “nonideological.” The journal says it focuses on nationalism, populism, political realism, fascism, traditionalism, monarchism, libertarianism, conservatism, and other assortment of “new” and “alt” rights. 28

The center publishes working papers by CRWS affiliated faculty and students on subjects related to right-wing ideology, politics, and organizations. 29

The center has also published more than a dozen books, including Neo-nationalism and Universities: Populists, Autocrats, and the Future of Higher Education; Empire of Resentment: Populism’s Toxic Embrace of Nationalism; Crisis and Terror in the Age of Anxiety: 9/11, the Global Financial Crisis and ISIS 2017; The Extreme Gone Mainstream: Commercialization and Far Right Youth Culture in Germany; and Steep: The Precipitous Rise of the Tea Party. 30

Events

The Center for Right-Wing Studies is a member of the American Museum Association and claims to bring together scholars through conferences and other public events. 31

The Center began holding its annual Conference of Right-Wing Studies in 2019. 32

A session from the first conference included a lecture titled, “‘Be Rough, Be Violent, Don’t Drop Her On the Floor:’ The Christian Right’s Enactment of Female Purity through Evangelical Ballet Technique.” Other panels at the 2019 conference were titled, “A Time of War: The Rhetoric and Reality of the Theocratic Far Right’s Anti-Abortion ‘Crusade;’” “Klandidates: American Politics and the Ku Klux Klan;”
“Forging Fascism: Authoritarian Populism, Apocalyptic Aggression, and Scripted Violence;” “Religious Right Coalition-Building Strategies: Pro-Family Politics and the Rhetoric of Victimhood;” “From Birchers to Birthers: Understanding the Use of Figurative Language in the Narrative of The John Birch Society;” and “The Triumph of ‘Americanism’: How Ideas of the 1950s-60s Ultra-Conservative Anti-Communist Conspiracists Have Been Embraced and Developed In the Trump Era.” 33

Sponsors for the conferences have included the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, and the UC Berkeley Departments of History, Gender and Women’s Studies, and Sociology. 34

In 2024, the center held an event titled, “Surplus White Nationalism and GOP Climate Obstruction,” which tied opposition to environmental regulations to racism. 35

References

  1. “Center for Right Wing Studies.” Institute for Study of Societal Issues. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://issi.berkeley.edu/crws
  2. “CRWS Research.” Institute for Study of Societal Issues. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://issi.berkeley.edu/crws/research
  3. Journal of Right Wing Studies. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://jrws.berkeley.edu/
  4. Zhang, Phil. “’Our mission is scholarship’: Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies brings academic lens to conservative movements.” The Daily Californian. May 9, 2018. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://www.dailycal.org/archives/our-mission-is-scholarship-berkeley-center-for-right-wing-studies-brings-academic-lens-to-conservative/article_40ab5a54-62ad-5d6c-b2ef-a60918cc11a8.html
  5. “CRWS Archives and Resources.” Institute for Study of Societal Issues. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://issi.berkeley.edu/centers/crws/archives
  6. Schneider, Christian. “UC Berkeley’s ‘Right-Wing Studies’ conference casts right wing as alt-right white supremacists.” The College Fix. April 26, 2019. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://www.thecollegefix.com/uc-berkeleys-right-wing-studies-conference-casts-right-wing-as-alt-right-white-supremacists/
  7. “Surplus White Nationalism and GOP Climate Obstruction.” Events. University of California Berkeley. February 12, 2024. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://events.berkeley.edu/crws/event/238299-surplus-white-nationalism-and-gop-climate
  8.  Zhang, Phil. “’Our mission is scholarship’: Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies brings academic lens to conservative movements.” The Daily Californian. May 9, 2018. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://www.dailycal.org/archives/our-mission-is-scholarship-berkeley-center-for-right-wing-studies-brings-academic-lens-to-conservative/article_40ab5a54-62ad-5d6c-b2ef-a60918cc11a8.html
  9.  “About CRWS.” Institute for Study of Societal Issues. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://issi.berkeley.edu/centers/crws/about
  10.  Zhang, Phil. “’Our mission is scholarship’: Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies brings academic lens to conservative movements.” The Daily Californian. May 9, 2018. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://www.dailycal.org/archives/our-mission-is-scholarship-berkeley-center-for-right-wing-studies-brings-academic-lens-to-conservative/article_40ab5a54-62ad-5d6c-b2ef-a60918cc11a8.html
  11.  “CRWS Research.” Institute for Study of Societal Issues. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://issi.berkeley.edu/crws/research
  12.  “About CRWS.” Institute for Study of Societal Issues. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://issi.berkeley.edu/centers/crws/about
  13.  “CRWS Mini-Grants and Berkeley Students.” Institute for Study of Societal Issues. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://issi.berkeley.edu/crws/research/mini-grants
  14. “About CRWS.” Institute for Study of Societal Issues. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://issi.berkeley.edu/centers/crws/about
  15. “Lawrence Rosenthal.” Institute for Study of Societal Issues. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://issi.berkeley.edu/people/lawrence-rosenthal
  16. “About CRWS.” Institute for Study of Societal Issues. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://issi.berkeley.edu/centers/crws/about
  17. Zhang, Phil. “’Our mission is scholarship’: Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies brings academic lens to conservative movements.” The Daily Californian. May 9, 2018. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://www.dailycal.org/archives/our-mission-is-scholarship-berkeley-center-for-right-wing-studies-brings-academic-lens-to-conservative/article_40ab5a54-62ad-5d6c-b2ef-a60918cc11a8.html
  18.  Zhang, Phil. “’Our mission is scholarship’: Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies brings academic lens to conservative movements.” The Daily Californian. May 9, 2018. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://www.dailycal.org/archives/our-mission-is-scholarship-berkeley-center-for-right-wing-studies-brings-academic-lens-to-conservative/article_40ab5a54-62ad-5d6c-b2ef-a60918cc11a8.html
  19. Bergman, Barry. “Right-wing studies? At Berkeley? Stereotypes aside, fledgling campus center is about scholarship, not partisanship.” Berkeley News. January 18, 2011. Accessed April 21, 2024. https://news.berkeley.edu/2011/01/18/right-wing-studies
  20. Zhang, Phil. “’Our mission is scholarship’: Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies brings academic lens to conservative movements.” The Daily Californian. May 9, 2018. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://www.dailycal.org/archives/our-mission-is-scholarship-berkeley-center-for-right-wing-studies-brings-academic-lens-to-conservative/article_40ab5a54-62ad-5d6c-b2ef-a60918cc11a8.html
  21. Zhang, Phil. “’Our mission is scholarship’: Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies brings academic lens to conservative movements.” The Daily Californian. May 9, 2018. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://www.dailycal.org/archives/our-mission-is-scholarship-berkeley-center-for-right-wing-studies-brings-academic-lens-to-conservative/article_40ab5a54-62ad-5d6c-b2ef-a60918cc11a8.html
  22. Galloway, Kayla. “’Markers were not sudden’: US Capitol riot not surprising, chair of UC Berkeley’s Center for Right-Wing Studies says.” ABC 7 News San Francisco. January 14, 2021. Accessed April 19, 2024.https://abc7news.com/us-capitol-riot-washington-dc-uc-berkeley-right-wing-studies/9666808/
  23. “About CRWS.” Institute for Study of Societal Issues. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://issi.berkeley.edu/centers/crws/about
  24. “CRWS Archives and Resources.” Institute for Study of Societal Issues. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://issi.berkeley.edu/centers/crws/archives
  25. “CRWS Archives and Resources.” Institute for Study of Societal Issues. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://issi.berkeley.edu/centers/crws/archives
  26.  “CRWS Archives and Resources.” Institute for Study of Societal Issues. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://issi.berkeley.edu/centers/crws/archives
  27. “CRWS Publications.” Institute for Study of Societal Issues. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://issi.berkeley.edu/crws/publications-0
  28. Journal of Right Wing Studies. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://jrws.berkeley.edu/
  29. “CRWS Publications.” Institute for Study of Societal Issues. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://issi.berkeley.edu/crws/publications-0
  30. “CRWS Publications.” Institute for Study of Societal Issues. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://issi.berkeley.edu/crws/publications-0
  31. “About CRWS.” Institute for Study of Societal Issues. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://issi.berkeley.edu/centers/crws/about
  32.  “Inaugural Conference on Right-Wing Studies.” Institute for Study of Societal Issues. April 25-27, 2019. Accessed April 19, 2024.https://issi.berkeley.edu/crws/events/2019-right-wing-studies-conf
  33. Schneider, Christian. “UC Berkeley’s ‘Right-Wing Studies’ conference casts right wing as alt-right white supremacists.” The College Fix. April 26, 2019. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://www.thecollegefix.com/uc-berkeleys-right-wing-studies-conference-casts-right-wing-as-alt-right-white-supremacists/
  34. Schneider, Christian. “UC Berkeley’s ‘Right-Wing Studies’ conference casts right wing as alt-right white supremacists.” The College Fix. April 26, 2019. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://www.thecollegefix.com/uc-berkeleys-right-wing-studies-conference-casts-right-wing-as-alt-right-white-supremacists/
  35. “Surplus White Nationalism and GOP Climate Obstruction.” Events. University of California Berkeley. February 12, 2024. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://events.berkeley.edu/crws/event/238299-surplus-white-nationalism-and-gop-climate
  See an error? Let us know!