In the spring of 2005, Martin Jay (History) and Judith Butler (Rhetoric and Comparative Literature), received a strategic initiatives grant from the Townsend Center for the Humanities to develop a curricular plan to implement a Critical Theory program at UC Berkeley.
Together Jay and Butler welcomed a number of faculty from across the divisions of Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences to participate in a faculty working group committee in order to recommend an implementation process. The task of the group was to develop a designated emphasis in Critical Theory at the graduate level and to formulate a proposal for a Critical Theory institute that would become the focus of international scholarly research. Their success in launching both can be seen in the current Critical Theory program and the International Consortium for Critical Theory.
Since its inception, Critical Theory has graduated nearly 100 students and grown into the largest DE at UC Berkeley.