Challenging the Status Quo

Manisha Desai Brings a Lifetime of Social Advocacy to Stony Brook

By Rob Emproto

Professor Desai is looking forward to driving change through the growth of the Center.

In the 1970s, India experienced war, economic challenges, political strife and protests. Historians have only recently begun to explore the long-term effects on modern-day India, which resulted from this period of multiple crises. For Manisha Desai, who grew up in India during that time, what she saw ignited a passion for helping marginalized populations that has underpinned her academic career as a sociologist. As executive director of the Center for Changing Systems of Power in the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS), Desai continues the important work of creating more fair and equitable social structures.

Her path to seeking social reform started while she was beginning her studies in a lab in India, in the city then known as Bombay, now Mumbai.

“I had just joined a PhD program in molecular and cell biology, but I was also becoming much more aware of injustices and there were a lot of social movements,” said Desai, who is also the Empowerment Charitable Trust Endowed Professor in Global Citizenship in the Department of Sociology. “At the time, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had declared a state of emergency and had imprisoned opposition leaders, and a lot of people that we knew had gone underground.

“It was a really radical time,” she added. “Bombay was a big center of textile mills, and they were all closing. It’s similar to what was happening here in the United States in terms of deindustrialization.” 

She said it was at that time that she became much more politically active and understood that what was needed was a different kind of society.  “It’s the structures of society, whether they’re economic or political, that drop half the population into poverty in India,” she said. “We also had caste, and religion was a very big fault line between the majority Hindu population and the Muslim population. Those were very formative experiences for me and drew me into social work.” 

Though Desai’s father was disappointed that she left her PhD program, he encouraged her in her new goal to pursue a master’s degree in social work. “He believed in getting as much education as you could, but he also understood the importance of doing work that was meaningful,” she said.

After Desai earned her master’s degree, she received a fellowship to pursue a PhD in social work at Washington University in St. Louis, but soon realized the nature of social work in America — very different from the social work in India — didn’t sync with her interests. But an internship at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development in Geneva, Switzerland, would provide a glimpse of her future path. 

“I went to Geneva and met amazing sociologists and political scientists from Latin America and Africa who were working on social movements as the drivers of social change,” she said. “That’s when I realized that the area I really wanted to work in was sociology.” 

After stints in several universities, she was hired as an associate professor of women’s studies at the University of Connecticut (UConn) in 2007. At UConn, Desai’s research on gender and intersectionality using a transnational feminist approach has been a significant contributor to the scholarly conversations on global feminisms. Her work focused on feminisms and social movements, and she showed how the most marginalized people have continued to challenge structures of injustice. 

Expanding Her Vision
The work Desai was doing at UConn was also at the heart of the mission of Stony Brook’s Center for Changing Systems of Power, which was created in 2019 to further epistemic, aesthetic and social justice locally and globally through collaborative research, teaching, advocacy and activism.

In 2023, when SBU was looking for a new director, a colleague alerted Desai to the position, knowing she would be the ideal person to fulfill that role.  

“My values and work have never changed, but I’ve always looked at ways in which I can expand it and bring it to fruition,” she said. “The center was really appealing, and to be called Center for Changing Systems of Power directly highlights what needs to change in our society if you want social justice and equality. It was an exciting opportunity to shape the vision of such a radical center.”

A little more than a year into her tenure, Desai said she is thankful for the opportunity to bring her vision to fruition, and for colleagues who have helped further that vision.

“My colleagues have been amazing,” she said. “The center is primarily research focused, so it’s a lot of interdisciplinary faculties, not just in the CAS, but across campus…social welfare, public health, business school. So, the affiliates of my center come from all across the university, and that has been so amazing.” 

“Manisha represents a really wonderful intersection between the work of the Center for Changing Systems of Power and her own scholarship,” added David Wrobel, CAS dean. “It’s rare even in academia to find this kind of perfect match where somebody’s lifelong scholarly focus and their particular center director focus are in such incredible alignment. She cares deeply, she thinks deeply, and she acts constructively to ensure that the long-term goals of social justice, women’s rights, climate justice, land rights for vulnerable populations and systemic racism are addressed over the long term.”  

“In her short time here, Professor Desai has established the Center for Changing Systems of Power as a vital force for advancing racial, gender, social and environmental justice on campus and beyond,” said Liz Montegary, associate professor and chair in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. “Her commitment to decolonial and transnational feminist praxis informs every aspect of her work as the center’s director and as a scholar, teacher and activist. She is an extremely generous colleague and mentor who approaches the work of knowledge production, field formation and social change as a collective, community-based process. Collaborating with Manisha — and, when the timing works, commuting with her on the LIRR — has become one of my truly favorite parts of working at Stony Brook.”

Desai said she finds hope in the spirit, passion and inspiration of her students at Stony Brook.

For graduate assistant Galia Cozzi Berrondo, what stands out to her about working with Desai is her deep commitment to building connections and networks for social justice. “More than anything, working with Manisha has taught me the importance of creating community — of fostering equitable relationships that need to be nurtured and cared for,” she said. “She is a mentor who truly understands the value of care and mutual understanding, and she knows that social change starts by weaving strong, immediate relationships.” 

Looking ahead, Desai said what always gives her hope are people on the ground and being involved in social movements, even now in the United States. She cited the Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Rights Movement of the ’60s as historical examples of the power of social engagement. 

“Throughout history, you see waves,” said Desai. “Even before the internet, there were ways in which people were communicating and inspiring each other. And I think we see that now, and that gives me hope. We’ve been here before. This country has a very long history of injustice and inequality, and people have come together collectively and worked to challenge that, sometimes successfully, and other times not so much. But you have to be an optimist if you want to do anything meaningful, otherwise you might as well pack your bags and go home.”