VOICE Awardees

Is Laughter the Last Free Speech? In a time when conversations feel like landmines, comment sections are battlegrounds, and students are more anxious and disconnected than ever, one tool still cuts through the noise: comedy.

Comic Relief is a UC Merced initiative that explores stand-up comedy as one of the last truly free and joyful forms of expression. This program isn’t just about cracking jokes. It’s about using humor to speak truth, question power, and reconnect in a world that too often feels divided and numb.

Through a semester-long course (WRI 122: “Stand-Up Comedy? Seriously!”) and a culminating community showcase, students will be trained in the craft of stand-up as a form of civic storytelling, transforming their lived experiences into laughter that sparks reflection, healing, and resistance.

Comedy has always existed at the edge of what society is willing to hear. From ancient satire to modern comics dismantling injustice, stand-up is where free speech, vulnerability, and critique collide with a mic and humor.

At a moment when students face record levels of anxiety, depression, and isolation, this project offers something radical: joy. Not empty escapism, but joy as a political act. Joy as a bridge. Joy as a reminder that we’re still here, still human, and still capable of laughing at the chaos around us. Because not every act of free speech comes with a picket line —some come with a punchline.

The Democracy Workshop series is a student-led initiative at UCLA that creates accessible, engaging spaces for students to learn about civic issues, democratic processes, and their role in public life. Since 2023, the program has offered interactive events on topics like media literacy, ballot navigation, political dialogue, and combating misinformation. In 2025-2026, the series will shift to one large-scale workshop each quarter, designed to draw a wide campus audience through high-profile speakers, participatory activities, and partnerships across academic disciplines. By expanding into topics at the intersection of science, technology, and policy, the program aims to reach students from all fields of study and inspire them to see themselves as active contributors to a more informed and engaged democracy.

This research project will examine how UC-based teacher preparation programs shape future educators as they navigate tensions between pedagogical freedom, democratic education, and political backlash in the “anti-woke” era. Drawing on analysis from both 1. program-level curricula/formal training requirements and 2. in-depth interviews with teacher candidates, the project will investigate how the UC system can more effectively prepare educators to foster civic responsibility and social justice in California’s public schools.

Digital Self-Defense is a student-centered initiative to strengthen digital safety, literacy, and free expression at UC Santa Cruz. Through two workshop series and co-design sessions, we will create an open-source Digital Self-Defense Toolkit with practical how-tos and checklists. The project will help students protect privacy, navigate platforms more safely, counter harassment and misinformation.

The Gaucho Think Tank empowers students from diverse skill sets (STEM, public policy, the arts, etc.) to engage civically and learn to address systemic problems through interdisciplinary approaches. While traditional think tanks focus on policy research and proposals to create change, this project involves students of differing skill sets to translate that research into tangible improvements, such as through engineering and art.

Mapping the Moment: LA Neighborhoods and the Road to 2028 is a 10-week civic learning workshop series that uses the visibility and excitement surrounding the upcoming Los Angeles 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games as an entry point for deeper civic reflection and engagement. The Olympics provide a unique opportunity to examine how cities narrate themselves to the world—what is highlighted, what is hidden, and how those choices affect local communities. This program encourages participants to critically explore those narratives while celebrating the complexity, resilience, and vibrancy of Los Angeles. Over the course of 10 weeks, ten participants will engage in a carefully designed blend of synchronous and asynchronous learning, including in-person workshops, virtual discussions, neighborhood excursions, and self-paced activities. Each session will center on a civic learning theme—such as deliberative dialogue, media literacy, and power analysis.

The Immigrant Health, Healing, and Advocacy Series is a quarterly seminar hosted by medical students at the University of California, Los Angeles and University of California, San Francisco. The series aims to create a space for health professional trainees to engage in reflection, education, and advocacy training in support of immigrant health. Interactive workshops will offer students an opportunity to participate in narrative reflection, learn about the immigrant health policy and resource landscape in California, and develop civic engagement and advocacy skills. The goal of this series is to prepare students to better serve immigrant communities affected by the current socio-political climate and to equip them with the tools necessary to advocate for a more just society.

In this project, students of STS 110 “Computing, Data, & Law in the United States” will develop a survey to collect data about UC Davis students’ knowledge about and attitudes towards the content moderation practices of social media platforms, their legal foundations, and their impact on freedom of speech. This process will allow students to put the theoretical knowledge that they have gained through the course readings into practice and to share their insights with the greater student community. While campus debates around free speech often focus on in-person expression, much of students’ discourse now happens online — on the many social media platforms that shape not only how students communicate, but also what they feel comfortable to publicly express. By investigating how students engage with free speech and platform moderation in online spaces, we aim to better understand the evolving culture of speech among younger generations. Our research and initiatives will highlight patterns in digital discourse, identify barriers to open dialogue, and create opportunities to support a more thoughtful and democratic online communication.

Social Media Storytellers: On Academic Freedom will create a cohort of undergraduate student storytellers to research, analyze, and explore academic freedom through multimedia content. The media series will be conceptualized and produced by undergrads to speak directly to their peers on this pressing campus issue. Part of a research communications fellowship, students will spend one quarter learning about academic freedom before creating social media stories on the topic. We recognize that engaging through stories is a powerful creative vehicle for addressing complicated issues. By creating a fellowship that utilizes social media as its primary platform, we strive to inspire younger generations to understand what academic freedom is, its history, and why it matters to them as students and citizens.

The Open Dissent seeks to challenge ideological echo chambers by prioritizing civil disagreement, real-time fact checking, and inclusive participation. The Open Dissent offers a space between academic discourse and everyday conversation. Unlike traditional media, ideas can be challenged and expanded, not just reinforced. Podcast topics are derived from data collected on our website where users are encouraged to anonymously share their beliefs regarding any social, political, or cultural issue. At the end of the week, the leading topic will be featured for an in-person discussion on The Open Dissent podcast. Each episode will feature two users from the website who contributed to the discussion. Participants are selected for their diverse viewpoints, and conversations are structured as roundtable dialogue with active moderation and real-time fact checking. Ultimately, The Open Dissent is not just about talking across differences, it’s about strengthening the skills and values that sustain a democratic society.

In Samuel Beckett’s groundbreaking play, Waiting for Godot (1953), Lucky, enslaved by Pozzo, remains silent throughout the narrative. But with one exception: when allowed by his master, Lucky utters a long, incoherent monologue that sheds light on his experience with unfreedom. Lucky is no exception in the history of playwriting and theater: Monologues have been used across history to give voice to the unheard and remain one of the most common genres for expressing challenges to free expression. In the United States, there has been a long tradition of organizing festivals for ten-minute monologues that gather actors, directors, and playwrights from across the country each year. This project will organize the first festival of this kind in the University of California system. Three monologues will be selected to be staged at UC Irvine in May 2026.

The “(Re)Writing Migration Stories Project” at UC Irvine seeks to create a democratic educational space for exploring U.S. immigration policy and its impact on undocumented and mixed-status communities. Our previous work culminated in an art exhibit at UC Irvine, which will now be expanded to additional UC campuses. Each exhibit will feature public discussions, art-making workshops, and a pedagogical toolkit to promote nuanced discourse on immigration. Together we draw on our own lived experiences to produce a nuanced depiction of the impact of restrictive immigration policies on Latinx communities. Our physical and virtual exhibit and accompanying curriculum will engage others in thoughtful reflection with the intention of restoring trust in the ability to have caring and nuanced conversations about immigration within today’s society.

The 3rd edition of the Decolonial Praxis Conference is not only an academic space, but an open and safe space for activists, community organizers and scholars to discuss decolonial theories, pedagogies, research methods and praxis, especially BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color), from the local community and from other regions and countries, to strengthen an international decolonial network, and increase the impact of the projects and research of participants, and join efforts to build projects together. This 3rd edition of the Conference will have panels where scholars, activists, and community organizers come together and dialogue about their projects and experience, allowing discussions to transcend academia, and be transdisciplinary. Moreover, panels will have English-Spanish interpretation, allowing participants from México and latinx populations in the US to be included in the discussion, people that are normally left out due to western-centrism and coloniality of knowledge. We always practice language justice. Finally, we plan to work on a publication with the discussions and papers of the Conference.

The Berkeley Forum is a nonpartisan organization run by passionate undergraduates at UC Berkeley. Our mission is to inspire students through moderated events featuring notable individuals. In addition to hosting free, accessible, and non-partisan events, the Forum sponsors the student-taught class (DeCal) “History of Free Speech at Berkeley” and is developing a podcast series that interviews veterans of the Free Speech Movement. This October marks the 60th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, a pivotal moment in campus history that showcased the power of student activism. To celebrate this milestone and inspire a new generation of students, the Forum will host an anniversary panel featuring Free Speech Movement veterans Bettina Aptheker, Lynne Hollander Savio, and Jack Radey. The event will include a panel discussion, an audience Q&A, and a reception, providing attendees with an opportunity to engage directly with these remarkable speakers.

The Civic Engagement Scholars Program at UC Santa Barbara fosters ideals of active citizenship among undergraduate and graduate students, engaging the next generation of leaders on issues that are of import to our campus and to the surrounding communities of Isla Vista, Goleta, and Santa Barbara. In this three-quarter-long course, students will study the theoretical framework and historical background of civic engagement in the American university. While doing so, students will engage in leadership development, learn skills for deliberative discourse, and design workshops incorporating these issues and skills. The fall quarter will be focused on learning history and skills and in the winter and spring quarters, students will deliver their designed workshops to the campus and Isla Vista community.

This program represents a joint effort by four entities at UC Santa Barbara: the Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life; the Dean of Students Office; Civic and Community Engagement, and the Office of Student Engagement and Leadership (SEAL).