Race on Campus

Welcome to Race on Campus. It’s been more than a year since George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer and protests against racial discrimination and police violence toward Black Americans swept the nation.

The movement spurred renewed calls for racial justice on college campuses. Under pressure from students, alumni, and employees, many presidents released statements expressing solidarity with protesters or against systemic racism. Some leaders outlined specific changes, like removing Confederate statues, changing building names that honored people who held racist views, or increasing funding for equity and inclusion work.

Now that a full academic year has passed, we’re wondering: Have administrators stuck to their promises? What changes were made? And in a few years, will these institutions look different?

The reporters who write the Race on Campus newsletter, including me, set out to answer these questions and others. Every week this month, our newsletter will report on a different institution’s racial-equity pledges from 2020 and gauge what’s been accomplished. Checking in not only satisfies our curiosity, it holds colleges accountable.

If you want us to follow up on an institution’s or program’s specific promises, let us know. Write us: fernanda@chronicle.com.

Stay tuned for the first installment next week.

Thanks for reading.
—Fernanda