Call for Proposals
Research on Islamophobia, Anti-Arab Hate, and Antisemitism
The UCLA Initiative to Study Hate (ISH) is pleased to announce a call for applications to support research on Islamophobia, anti-Arab hatred, and/or antisemitism in this country and the world, including research on hate and related phenomena. We invite research proposals from within the UCLA community from a wide range of disciplines that engage with the past or present of Islamophobia, anti-Arab hate, and antisemitism. UCLA faculty, research staff, and students (graduate and undergraduate) are welcome to apply, and collaborative projects are especially encouraged. Researchers studying antisemitism will be co-housed within the UCLA Leve Center for Jewish Studies.
Student Opportunities
Aerin Project Graduate Student Researcher
About
The UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute (BKI) advances research, education, and public engagement aimed at understanding and strengthening kindness in society. BKI is launching a new partnership with the Aerin Project, a national letter-writing initiative inspired by the life and letters of Aerin Glaser that invites young people to write messages of encouragement, support, and connection for others to open when they need them. Together, BKI and the Aerin Project will build a permanent, accessible archive of these letters while expanding opportunities for UCLA students to engage in the practice of letter-writing and kindness.
Aerin Project Graduate Student Researcher
BKI seeks an exceptional UCLA graduate student with experience or demonstrated interest in archival development, qualitative research, and education to serve as the Aerin Project Graduate Student Researcher (GSR). The GSR will play a central role in developing the Aerin Project Archive as a lasting resource for education and public engagement, while exploring its potential to support new research on kindness, connection, and letter-writing. This position is under the supervision of BKI Interim Director, Professor Aliza Luft.
Responsibilities:
- Archive Development: Evaluate the existing collection of Aerin Project Letters; help transform it into a living, accessible, and researchable digital archive. Develop recommendations regarding the archive’s organization, metadata and thematic structure, ethical and privacy considerations, technical needs, and long-term infrastructure in consultation with BKI, the Aerin Project, and relevant UCLA experts.
- Collection Protocols: Work with the Aerin Project to develop, refine, and document protocols for collecting and submitting letters from participating schools and other settings. Identify and troubleshoot barriers to participation and submission, including teacher engagement, privacy considerations, and opportunities to streamline the collection process. Support the ongoing collection and incorporation of letters into the archive.
- Research Development and Scholarly Engagement: Explore potential research questions and areas of inquiry that could be informed by the Aerin Project letters. Build familiarity with the collection and identify opportunities for its use by researchers across disciplines. Engage BKI’s research community, share the archive as a potential scholarly resource, and help cultivate future research interest in the collection.
- Undergraduate student partnership: Collaborate closely with the Aerin Project Undergraduate Student Intern as they bring Aerin Project programming to UCLA. Draw on the intern’s experiences with students and campus partners to inform the development of the archive, collection protocols, and future programming. Ensure that letters generated through UCLA activities are appropriately collected and incorporated into the archive.
- Record work: Maintain a running log of work and progress throughout the project.
Qualifications:
- Current UCLA graduate student in a relevant field, such as information studies, education, social sciences, humanities, public policy, or a related discipline.
- Experience with or demonstrated interest in archives, digital collections, qualitative research, or information management.
- Familiarity with qualitative research methods, including approaches to coding, thematic analysis, and/or working with textual data.
- Strong research, organizational, and project-management skills, with the ability to work independently and develop new systems and processes.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills and ability to collaborate effectively with researchers, students, educators, and external partners.
- Experience working in educational or youth-serving contexts preferred.
- Experience with digital archive platforms, metadata standards, database management, or digital humanities tools is a plus, but not required.
- Must meet and maintain all academic eligibility standards appropriate to this appointment (such as GPA, units of incomplete grades, academic progress, etc.).
Position details:
- This position is between 25-50% FTE, depending on project needs and the candidate’s availability.
Apply here by Sunday October 25 at 11:59pm PT.
Aerin Project Undergraduate Internship
About
The UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute (BKI) advances research, education, and public engagement aimed at understanding and strengthening kindness in society. BKI is launching a new partnership with the Aerin Project, a national letter-writing initiative inspired by the life and letters of Aerin Glaser that invites young people to write messages of encouragement, support, and connection for others to open when they need them. Together, BKI and the Aerin Project will build a permanent, accessible archive of these letters while expanding opportunities for UCLA students to engage in the practice of letter-writing and kindness.
Aerin Project Undergraduate Student Intern
BKI seeks an exceptional undergraduate student intern who is passionate about spreading kindness on campus and beyond. The student will serve as an ambassador for the Aerin Project at UCLA, developing creative opportunities to bring its letter-writing model into campus life and building connections between the Aerin Project, UCLA students, and BKI’s broader work.
Responsibilities:
- Aerin Project at UCLA: Brainstorm and develop creative ways to bring the Aerin Project’s letter-writing practice into different facets of UCLA campus life—from student organizations and residence halls to classes, events, and other campus communities. Work with the Aerin Project, BKI staff, and campus partners to turn promising ideas into activities and programs. Collaborate with the Graduate Student Researcher (GSR) to ensure that letters generated at UCLA are appropriately collected for the Aerin Project Archive.
- Ambassador: Serve as a student ambassador for the Aerin Project and its mission. Build relationships with student organizations and campus partners; introduce students to the Project; and encourage participation in letter-writing as a practice of kindness, encouragement, and connection.
- Connect with other intern activities: Work alongside other BKI and Dialogue Across Difference (DaD) student interns and staff to identify opportunities for collaboration and connect Aerin Project activities with BKI programs, events, and other student-facing initiatives where appropriate.
- Learning and Feedback: Gather informal feedback from participating students and campus partners about their experiences with Aerin Project activities. Share observations and lessons learned with the GSR, BKI, and the Aerin Project to help strengthen future programming and engagement.
Qualifications:
- Current UCLA undergraduate student with a demonstrated interest in kindness, community-building, education, student engagement, or related areas.
- Creative and entrepreneurial thinker who is excited to develop new ways of bringing the Aerin Project to UCLA students.
- Strong interpersonal and communication skills, with enthusiasm for building relationships across campus.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
- Highly organized, dependable, and comfortable taking initiative and working independently.
- Knowledge of UCLA student life and/or experience participating in campus organizations, programs, or leadership activities preferred.
Position Details
- This internship will be 5-8 hours/week and pay $19/hour.
Apply here by Sunday October 25 at 11:59pm PT.
Closed Opportunities
2026-2027 Research Proposals
Overview
The UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute (BKI) is pleased to announce its call for research proposals for the 2026-2027 year. As home to the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate, we seek proposals that study both kindness and kindness-adjacent topics and hate and hate-related themes. BKI welcomes a diverse array of methodological and disciplinary approaches, as well as collaborative projects with researchers across campus. The Research Innovation Fund will support projects that range in scale from $5,000 (intended as seed funding) to $25,000 during the 2026-27 academic year.
This funding cycle takes place in incredibly fraught times, with hate, polarization, and inequity on the rise. Research and interventions that address these troubling trends and aim to inculcate compassion, prosociality, kindness, and constructive dialogue are more critical than ever. With that in mind, we are particularly interested in projects that:
- Have the potential for demonstrable outcomes within one year
- Examine or pilot interventions aimed at increasing kindness or constructive dialogue across differences or mitigating hate
- Measure the efficacy of kindness- and hate- related interventions
- Involve partnerships with community organizations that implement/design such interventions
- Propose kindness-related research that has direct application to the LA Olympics of 2028.
Expectations of Grantees
Receiving a research grant from BKI means becoming an active, dedicated member of our research community. The project PI (or at least one member from the project team) must be available to attend the monthly, in-person ISH seminar to encourage ongoing and productive cross-fertilization across disciplines and methods. Applicants who cannot commit to participating in the in-person seminar on a regular basis should not apply. In addition, we expect BKI researcher team members to participate in the following activities:
- Quarterly BKI-sponsored events on campus;
- Opportunities to engage in outreach work with extramural partners that include nonprofit and governmental organizations committed to fighting hate (e.g., presenting or providing research progress, participating on panels, etc., on behalf of BKI);
- Submit both a midyear report and end-of-year report.
Guidelines
- Projects can include individual PIs or teams of researchers.
- Graduate and undergraduate students are welcome to apply with a faculty PI.
- Research teams can include researchers/team members based at institutions and organizations outside of UCLA, but the PI must be a UCLA faculty or staff member.
- Applicants should be able to articulate the real-world significance of their projects (even if your project is not applied/focused explicitly on an intervention, how might practitioners, community organizations, or policy makers apply your research to interventions?) To that end, you should identify in your proposal at least 3 community partners with whom you plan to share your findings upon completion (i.e., who is the intended audience of your research?).
- Funding can be used to support research that will result in a creative project.
- Funding cannot be used for faculty salary support. Support for students and postdoctoral scholars is encouraged.
- Funding can be used to support research travel.
- Funding must be spent in accordance with university policies.
- Unless otherwise negotiated, funding will be dispersed in September 2026 and should be spent by September 2027.
To Apply
Applications should include the following:
(1) Project Title
(2) Project Abstract (up to 200 words)
(3) Project Budget
(4) CVs of participants
(5) Name/Contact information of the department’s finance officer (who will be responsible
for receiving and managing the transfer, as well as submitting a close-out report)
Please note that all funds need to be spent in compliance with University policies and procedures. The applicant’s home department must endorse the Principal Investigator and will be responsible for managing funds.
APPLICATION CLOSED
For questions about proposals, please contact Amalia Mora at amora@college.ucla.edu.
2026-2027 Student Dialogue Internship
Overview
The DaD Initiative is seeking four undergraduate student interns to join our team for the 2026-27 academic year! Student interns serve as key thought partners for Initiative staff and provide crucial support for the initiative’s daily operations and regular programming.
The internship application is now closed for AY26-27. Applications will open again during Spring 2027. Please sign up for the newsletter to stay informed when applications open.
Projects
DaD Student Interns are assigned one major project domain, but may be asked to work on any of the following projects and responsibilities throughout the academic year:
- Thought Partners for Student Engagement: All DaD Interns serve as crucial thought partners for the initiative – a key programmatic piece as we aim to cultivate engaged student leaders to promote culture change. This includes: brainstorming programming ideas to increase student engagement with DaD; recruiting students to attend programs/activities; offering feedback on program development; running Student Dialogue Network (SDN) meetings, and more.
- Programming & Events: outreach, staffing events, greeting people, interviewing people about their experiences, helping host dialogues, or facilitating during programs.
- Operations & Administration: Provide programming and operational support to staff. This involves supporting DaD staff in managing logistical details related to event planning, including but not limited to: file organization, data entry/management, drafting communications, program tracking, calendar management; communicating with other campus entities and departments, and other operational tasks that may arise.
- Digital Communications: Graphic Design or Photography/Video Production: Support DaD’s internal and external communications processes, including: develop program flyers, writing student newsletters, blog posts, web text updates; draft parts of DaD/BKI annual reports, and other miscellaneous communications that bring our work to students from a wide array of disciplines and departments; work with staff on different digital platforms to elevate the Institute’s various activities.
- Research & Evaluation: Assist DaD staff in managing evaluation processes for program & training activities, tracking attendance and impact, collecting and analyzing post-program surveys and feedback, refine processes for evaluation; updating existing internal and external dialogue resources for UCLA stakeholders; may include curation of a monthly reading/watch list related to bridge-building and dialogue; and providing on-site event support to solicit feedback and testimonials during or after events.
Position Details
- Up to 4 positions available
- $19 per hour, 5-8 hours per week
- Must be eligible for hire under university hiring policy
- Location: hybrid, with regular in-person attendance for staff meetings or events
- Interns must be available for occasional evening and weekend events or training
- Interns must be available for the full academic year: Fall, Winter and Spring
Required Qualifications
- Undergraduate students enrolled full-time for the entire 2026-27 academic year.
- Demonstrated understanding of and commitment to the values of the Dialogue Across Difference Initiative (active listening, empathy, intellectual engagement) and the Bedari Kindness Institute.
- Experience with or exposure to dialogue or bridge-building related courses, fellowships, or other programs (e.g., Intergroup Dialogue, DaD Fiat Lux or related coursework, Bruin Bridge Builders Fund grantee, “Speaking Across Conflict” Workshop attendee, or other dialogue-related training).
- Must be able to work effectively, both independently and with a team in a fast-paced environment.
- Must exhibit excellent communication skills (written and oral), and ability to communicate with many different populations effectively.
- Must be punctual, timely, and responsive in work communications.
- Must be detail-oriented and organized, able to work with online programs and data comfortably and efficiently.
- Must be creative and a self-starter with a willingness to propose and undertake new projects to engage students.
- Must demonstrate an ability to prioritize assignments to complete work in a timely manner.
- Must be open to learning and adapt well to change.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience planning public programming or events preferred.
- Experience with digital graphic design, video production/editing highly preferred.
- Familiarity with online systems such as: UCLA Box, Microsoft Office Suite, Google Drive, Notion, Canva, Canva, Constant Contact or similar.
- Enthusiasm to work on a diverse team and grapple with differences constructively.
To Apply
APPLICATION CLOSED
Don’t wait until the last minute! Applications will be reviewed as they are received.
Feel free to send any questions to kindness@ucla.edu.
Interviews will be held June 9-10, 2026.
