Three years ago, a handful of colleges opened centers devoted to combating systemic racism. As their newly tapped directors were still getting their bearings, the centers’ founding principles quickly came under attack.
College leaders announced these centers as part of their institutional response to the outrage that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Their missions and methods varied, but generally they aimed to confront racism and repair the harm it causes. Typically they were branded as “antiracism centers,” following the model of the bestselling book How to Be an Antiracist by the historian Ibram X. Kendi.
At the same time, right-wing leaders in states such as Ohio, Florida, and Texas began working to strike down mandatory diversity training and restrict instruction about critical race theory and African American history. Some conservative legislators claimed that teaching about how race connects to privilege and oppression was a form of indoctrination that pitted people of color against white people.
Even as some centers came together, one institution, Pennsylvania State University, decided not to move forward with a planned racial-justice center; the university’s new president questioned whether it was the best use of resources.
Then this fall, the public turned a critical eye toward antiracism centers after Kendi, director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, laid off half his staff in a bid to restructure the center. Many heaped blame on Kendi, but others decried antiracist work itself, claiming that the center’s stumble proved that the practice is an unfruitful cash grab.
Amid these challenges, the scholars who lead these centers are trying to defend their work.
The Chronicle spoke with half a dozen antiracism-center directors to get a sense of what the centers actually do and how effective they are. Their efforts fall under three main themes: interdisciplinary research, community partnerships, and public engagement.
According to its practitioners, antiracism entails acknowledging and fighting against racism and the ways it seeps into individual biases and institutional practices. For academe, this can take the form of acknowledging a college’s historic relationship with slavery and racism, supporting research that examines racial inequity, and analyzing what material and voices make it into curricula.
“Racism is America’s original sin; it’s America’s longest-standing social problem,” said Shaun R. Harper, a professor in the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education and executive director of the Race and Equity Center. Who better to confront it, he added, than the nation’s scholars?
Wide-Ranging Research
Antiracism centers housed within a college provide an opportunity for researchers across disciplines and departments to collaborate on projects examining racial equity. Many of the centers also provide financial support to faculty members who may otherwise have a hard time finding the right grant for a multidisciplinary project, the directors said.
For example, the Antiracist Research & Policy Center at American University has four main research areas: incarceration, reproductive health, education, and environmental policy. The center hosts workshops, panels, and talks to bring together researchers from different fields.
“We see ourselves as conveners and catalysts,” said Sara C. Kaplan, executive director of the center.
The center also funds yearlong fellowships for graduate students and faculty members. Their projects have ranged from a research guide about how slavery influenced the university’s development to studies of how policies to fight terrorism following the September 11, 2001, attacks influenced higher education in the United States and Pakistan.
It’s about bringing people together using a common purpose.
The Center for Antiracist Scholarship, Advocacy, and Action at Arcadia University provides yearlong “microgrants” to faculty working on antiracism research and projects. Some recent projects include a training program for nongovernmental organizations, a study of how air pollution affects communities of color in Philadelphia, and research interviews with Black women about their Covid-19 vaccination experiences. Faculty also redesigned the university’s first-year writing course.
This type of multidisciplinary research is the sole focus of the Center for Liberation, Anti-Racism, & Belonging at the University of California at Irvine. The center, which opened last fall, aims to create a “research-justice university,” said the center’s director, Judy Tzu-Chun Wu.
The center is still in its infancy, but Wu offered examples of what research justice could look like: involving community members who are the subject of research in the design process, coming up with more accessible ways to share results — rather than relying on academic journals and books — and crafting interview questions that don’t alienate people.
The center has one “research cluster” so far, which plans to study climate change through partnerships with Indigenous communities, Wu said.
“One of the powers of creating centers as opposed to just engaging in individual research projects is about creating community. It’s about bringing people together using a common purpose,” Wu said. “Typically, fields and centers are focused on just one set of social issues. And I think it really helps — especially since we tend to be a more fragmented society — to think about how these issues intersect with one another.”
Community Partnerships
One of the most meaningful things a college’s antiracism center can do is partner with community groups that are already active, the directors said.
“We understand the relationship between community organizers and scholars to be integral to producing substantive and lasting change,” Kaplan said. “Without those relationships, it doesn’t matter how great your research is, how amazing your analysis is, how good your PR is. You have to really build the relationships to sustain that work out of the academy and into the broader community.”
This year, American University’s center collaborated with several organizations on a project called “Pointing the Farm Bill Toward Racial Justice.” The farm bill is a package of legislation that dictates things such as crop insurance, farm loans, farmer training, and healthy-food access for low-income families. The bill was last enacted in 2018 and expires this year.
The university hosted a summit this spring that brought together agricultural groups and farmers from across the country. The attendees came up with a set of recommended changes for the farm bill, including suggestions for retooling how the government handles farming loans. Participants then shared their recommendations with congressional representatives. The center has also been working on a documentary and tool kits for people in the agricultural industry.
In October, Arcadia’s center jointly hosted a cultural heritage symposium with the Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania. “For us the center is not just about challenging systems of racism and oppression in the world directly. It’s also about cultural preservation,” said Christopher A. Varlack, director of the center. The symposium included drumming circles, presentations about the Lenape’s diet and culture, and an art display.
Communities have to be part of the conversations that we’re having. Otherwise, we’re tackling racism at an intellectual level, rather than the real-world level.
One of the main projects at the Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation at the University of Cincinnati is hosting an annual racial-healing workshop in partnership with a local nonprofit. The 2023 workshop included a panel on a guaranteed-income program in Cincinnati; storytelling sessions from Black women about their experiences with racism in health care; small-group discussions designed to break down assumptions about racial hierarchy; and a keynote from the political activist and author Angela Y. Davis about her view on the current state of equality.
Ashraf Esmail, director of the Center for Racial Justice at Dillard University, a historically Black college, said he wants it to be a “racial-justice hub” in the broader New Orleans community. This year the center hosted a Louisiana gubernatorial debate focused on health equity and organized a public-safety summit with the mayor’s office.
Shaping Conversations
At their best, the directors said, college antiracism centers are well-positioned to mold public perception of racial issues and provide the historical and research-supported context needed for productive conversations.
“By changing the terrain on which we discuss race and racism — through public engagement, resource guides, and events — we also have the capacity to really produce social transformation,” Kaplan said.
In this vein, the American University center ran a social-media campaign focused on colleges’ consideration of race as one factor in admissions decisions. Kaplan and her colleagues put together infographics, resource guides, and interviews that argued in support of the policy, and then, after the Supreme Court ruled against it, they discussed what college admissions could look like in the future.
As part of its “microgrant” program, the Arcadia center organizes talks from grant recipients so they can share the outcomes of their projects with the community. “Communities have to be part of the conversations that we’re having. Otherwise, we’re tackling racism at an intellectual level, rather than the real-world level,” Varlack said.
The Dillard center recently launched a podcast that features in-depth interviews with speakers who participated in its events. Esmail said he hopes it will bring more visibility to the center’s projects and increase student engagement.
We need members of our community to understand that this is a journey for the long haul, not for just the immediate present.
Other projects focus on shaping conversations within the classroom. Last year, Arcadia received a grant that, among other things, supports a program to help faculty improve their teaching and ensure students from all backgrounds can learn effectively.
What’s Next?
As they look toward the future, the directors described what they see as a key misconception that can hinder their progress: the idea that racism can be stamped out in only a few months or years. “I think it’s hard for us to shift our mind-set from ‘This is a problem or an obstacle to be overcome, a history to transcend,’ to ‘This is a part of human dynamics and life,’” said William P. Umphres, director of the University of Cincinnati center.
It took hundreds of years to build the country’s systems and institutions, and it will take a long time to address the racism that was baked into them, the directors said. Racial inequities in education, wealth, and home ownership have snowballed over the course of many generations, influencing the success of students today. And since individual people also carry racial biases, it’s possible for racism to affect the new systems and programs they build, too.
This misconception can lead to unrealistic expectations about what a center can accomplish, or the length of time a center should exist. “We need members of our community to understand that this is a journey for the long haul, not for just the immediate present,” Arcadia’s Varlack said.
Understanding the more permanent nature of antiracism work, as well as approaching it with honesty and understanding, is key to keeping it sustainable, Umphres said. “This is an ongoing process that needs to be built into the fabric of our organizations and of our lives and our institutions.”
The work antiracism centers do is only effective if it permeates throughout the larger culture of the institution.
Sustainability was front of mind for Varlack when the news broke about Kendi’s center. “For me, the moment with Kendi’s restructuring was about thinking through our own systems, and how we could improve them in order to continue to evolve,” Varlack said. For example, he realized that Arcadia’s center had not been collecting feedback from participants after their events, so they were missing out on key insights.
And to help ensure an institution stays invested, Harper, at USC, recommends sharing a center’s outcomes directly with the president, provost, or other campus leaders. It’s “not a safe assumption” to think people at your own institution will be privy to external marketing efforts or media coverage, he said.
Varlack suggests aligning the work of an antiracism center with the larger goals of the college as much as possible. “If their work is an extension of ongoing work at the institution, then there’s all the more reason to continue funding those initiatives.”
But perhaps the most important contributor to long-term success is investment from members of the college community, Varlack added. If people want to see institutions transform, then the faculty and staff need to engage with the programs and initiatives in place. This can include attending lectures and panels put on by the center and incorporating its research into class syllabi and strategic plans.
“The work antiracism centers do is only effective if it permeates throughout the larger culture of the institution,” Varlack said.
