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Holding Foundations Accountable for Equity Commitments
Introduction In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and a surge of attention to pervasive racial injustice in the United States, many areas of philanthropy made public commitments to promote racial equity and social justice. Many foundations, both large and small, committed publicly to shifting the foundation-nonprofit relationship to be more trust-based and reciprocal. Additionally,…
Read MoreTeaching Race at Historically White Colleges and Universities: Identifying and Dismantling the Walls of Whiteness
Introduction Many white students enter postsecondary education fortified by “walls of whiteness,” or manifestations of racial privilege that shield white students from challenges to white supremacist assumptions about racial disparities and inequality. Those assumptions are reinforced in historically white colleges and universities that are predominately staffed by white male faculty and primarily attended by middle-…
Read MoreThe Bias of ‘Professionalism’ Standards
Introduction In the midst of widescale evidence of natural-hair discrimination in the workplace and in schools, some states, in 2019, began to outlaw this form of discrimination. There is the story of the Black student who was told to cut his hair or he would not be allowed to graduate, and another of a Black woman who had her…
Read MoreBuilding the Anti-racist University, action and new agendas
Introduction Dr. Ian Law, founding director of the Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies (CERS) at the University of Leeds, reviews twenty years of scholarship and initiatives by the Centre related to racism and higher education in the UK. Founded in 1998, CERS produces policy-relevant research that seeks to dismantle racism. In the 1990s, the…
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