# @ucberkeleyofficial on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DYQQ6XEEvJC
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/65348853-ucberkeleyofficial-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/2cd43e2063.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-05-12T21:43:47.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** UC Berkeley (@ucberkeleyofficial) — https://gondola.cc/ucberkeleyofficial

## Caption

For his honors thesis, Charles Long wanted to know about power and prisons: “What happens when people are placed in supportive roles instead of positions of power and domination?” 

Drawing on both his own and others’ experiences, he concluded that empathy is a skill that must be practiced. 

“Like any other muscle, if you don’t use it, it atrophies.”

Long, 43, has overcome many obstacles that “could have soured him,” as one of his professors explained.

He graduated from Milpitas High School, but an arrest right before he was supposed to leave for the Navy to study nuclear engineering changed the course of his life.

Though he maintains his innocence, this triggered a multi-year cycle in and out of jail. Once his parole ended, Long wanted to start anew.

He was “surviving,” he said. But after his daughter was born, he wanted to do more. This led him to Berkeley. 

“Every day is a new opportunity. Every minute is a new opportunity. Every second is an opportunity,” Long said. 

Inspired by his parents’ perseverance and motivated by the example he wanted to set for his daughter, Long sought to use his experience to improve the lives of others. He returned to the Bay Area and embraced Berkeley.

Sociology and social welfare put into words many of the things Long had observed in his life. He came to see social systems in a new light — as well as the ways to change them.

“Through academia, I’ve learned to make sense of both the systems around me and the experiences that shaped me,” he said. “But more importantly, I’ve learned to affect them.”

Today, Long works with Underground Scholars, a campus program supporting formerly incarcerated and system-impacted students. He also joined the Teach in Prison program, tutoring incarcerated men at San Quentin, and became a leader in Incarceration to College, mentoring justice-involved youth in Bay Area juvenile halls.

“It just makes me feel like I’m fulfilling my purpose,” Long said.

See his full story at the link in bio: https://bit.ly/42zrd2j 

#UCBerkeley #CalGrad

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ucberkeley, calgrad

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