Stony Brook University’s Center for Changing Systems of Power (CCSP) held a roundtable to highlight the work of four student recipients of its Social Justice Summer Grants. The event provided a platform for students from different academic backgrounds to present research projects that addressed social justice issues both locally and globally.
“This is the first year we’ve done this and we hope to do it every year,” said Manisha Desai, executive director of CCSP and Empowerment Trust Endowed Professor of Global Citizenship at Stony Brook University. “This program is to fund our students, grad and undergrad, who are doing work that’s related to social justice locally or globally.”
Kamilah Pasha, a junior majoring in social work, focused her project on mental health disparities among youth in Central Islip, New York. According to Pasha, 41.8 percent of residents in Central Islip live below the poverty line, with one in five children experiencing mental, behavioral, or developmental disorders. Her initiative called “Mental Health Toolbox” provides sensory items and educational resources for special education classrooms.
“This number is attention grabbing,” said Pasha. She noted that economic hardship often forces families to deprioritize mental health care, perpetuating cycles of trauma. “It infuriates me because the issue isn’t changing, and New York State’s mission on poverty and the economy focuses on child tax credits and inflation refunds, instead of adjusting the systemic injustices. Long Island is one of the most segregated places in America so this becomes a multifaceted issue no longer about economics alone but race as well.”
Pasha’s toolkits aim to foster self-awareness and emotional well-being among children while supporting teachers and parents in low-income communities.
Merica Griffin’s project combined academic research with creative work centered on Indigenous land rights and cultural sovereignty. The first part contributed to ongoing policy research regarding environmental justice in Latin America; the second involved photography documenting Indigenous knowledge on Setalcott Nation land where Stony Brook University sits.
“Oftentimes, through colonialism, these countries do not have sovereignty,” said Griffin ’25. “Specifically, what we are looking at is fire policy. Through lack of land sovereignty, these communities aren’t able to steward their land.”
Griffin developed a dataset covering South America, Central America, and Caribbean nations’ access to land management policies while also photographing state parks across Long Island.
“Long Island is separate from South and Central America, of course, but there is still an indigenous history,” she said. I wanted to look at Long Island through a photography lens.”
She expressed interest in connecting with people at Stony Brook through artivism: “There’s history to why things are state parks or why they’re protected lands… I think it would enrich Stony Brook to showcase that art.”
Ariek Norford presented research titled “Settler Colonialism, Ecocide, and the Climate Crisis in Occupied Palestine.” As an ecologist familiar with Palestinian farming communities’ history with loss of land due to occupation by Israel—Norford examined how ecological degradation impacts public health among Palestinians.
“My part of this research was as a Palestinian who is familiar with Palestine’s history, and also as an ecologist who works in farming communities,” said Norford. “It’s this connection between people and the land where neither can live without the other, and it’s very contrary to Western thinking of people and nature as separate.”
Norford described settler colonialism as involving displacement alongside cultural destruction: “One tool of this is ecocide… This can be so damaging for indigenous and native communities.” Norford linked environmental damage directly with malnutrition risks caused by lost agricultural lands.
A fourth project was conducted anonymously by a PhD candidate in clinical psychology exploring how racism affects brain function using EEG technology. The study investigated neural responses associated with depression risk after race-related social rejection experiences.
“In a meta-analysis stress and depression were among top three most frequently reported mental health problems associated with racism,” stated the researcher.
The findings suggested stronger links between racism-related stressors for Asian American/Latino participants compared with African Americans; however mechanisms remain unclear.
“Social rejection has been proposed as one possible pathway through which this translates,” explained the researcher.“Race-based rejection sensitivity was associated with greater negative emotions in African American students… So there is a small but growing body starting to look at neurobiological measures.”
Desai summarized CCSP’s purpose: “CCSP’s mission is to promote epistemic aesthetic & social justice locally & globally… By providing grants…we hope [to] be bridge[s] [for] community engaged research activism & advocacy that contributes [to] social justice at home & abroad.”
