The Centers and Center-like structures listed here are briefly described below with links for those who want more detail.
The Ida B, Wells Just Data Lab (Princeton)
Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America (Brown)
Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (Columbia)
Center for the Study of Ethnicity, Race and Immigration (Pennsylvania)
Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration (Yale)
Initiative for Institutional Anti-racism and Accountability (Harvard)
Consortium in the Studies of Race, Migration, and Sexuality (Dartmouth)
The Center for Race and Gender (UC Berkeley)
The Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (Stanford)
Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice (Rutgers)
Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture (Chicago)
Center for Antiracist Research (Boston University)
The Hopkins Center for Heath Disparities Solutions (Johns Hopkins)
Hard Histories at Hopkins (Johns Hopkins)
Race and Equity Center (University of Southern California)
Center for Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (Duke)
The Ida B, Wells Just Data Lab (Princeton)
The IDA B. WELLS Just Data Lab brings together students, educators, activists, and artists to develop a critical and creative approach to data conception, production, and circulation. Our aim is to rethink and retool data for justice.
Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America (Brown)
The Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University supports and generates rigorous and accessible research, performance, art and scholarship on a broad range of pressing issues related to race and ethnicity to help build greater understanding and a more just world. At CSREA we aim to: (a) build community among scholars and students working on race + ethnicity,(b) develop new and enhance existing research networks, (c) foster generative public conversations on pivotal issues, (d) enhance public knowledge about racial and ethnic discrimination, and (e) contribute to national and community efforts to create a more just society.
Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (Columbia)
CSER was created in response to a student strike in 1996. The students advocated for the creation of an academic unit dedicated to the study of ethnicity and race. Three years after the strike, the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race was founded under the direction of Professor Gary Okihiro. In 2006, Professor Claudio Lomnitz became CSER’s second director; Professor Frances Negrón-Muntaner began her tenure as director in 2009 and Professor Neferti Tadiar was named CSER director in 2016.
Initially, the Center housed two majors: Asian American Studies and Latino Studies. In 2004, CSER added a third major, Comparative Ethnic Studies. In 2010, CSER joined part of its undergraduate program with Barnard College’s Interdisciplinary Concentration on Race and Ethnicity (ICORE) and created a single major, Ethnicity and Race Studies. In addition, CSER became the home of Native American/Indigenous Studies as an area of specialization.
Center for the Study of Ethnicity, Race and Immigration (Pennsylvania)
The world is constantly in movement, with hundreds of millions of people moving voluntarily or involuntarily across borders, and with membership within borders contested, often around cleavages of race, ethnicity and legal status.
These issues are central to the work of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity, Race and Immigration (CSERI) at the University of Pennsylvania. Located within the School of Arts and Sciences, CSERI gathers together faculty, visiting researchers and students from across disciplines to address common interests in the study of race, ethnicity and immigration.
The Center’s goal is to support cutting edge research and encourage the formation of collaborative research networks at Penn and beyond. Among its activities, CSERI hosts post-doctoral fellows and visiting scholars, offers funding for graduate and undergraduate student research, and supports workshops led by the Center’s affiliates.
Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration (Yale)
The Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration (RITM) is a university-wide, interdisciplinary academic research center. The mission of RITM is to advance rigorous, innovative research and teaching on key topics of historical and contemporary importance. Building upon Yale’s longstanding strengths, RITM fosters intellectual exchanges that cross institutional, disciplinary, and geographic borders; enrich and challenge academic fields; and foreground perspectives often underrepresented in university and policy circles. Through research, teaching, and programming, the Center deepens and transforms scholarship, supports undergraduate and graduate education, and engages local and global audiences. RITM houses the undergraduate program in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration and the academic journal Social Text.
Initiative for Institutional Anti-racism and Accountability (Harvard)
The Initiative for Institutional Anti-racism and Accountability (IARA) is a newly formed initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Shorenstein Center. The goal of IARA is to use research and policy to help institutions adopt antiracism as a core value and norm throughout the US and globe. While diversity and inclusion work is an important step in the process of building equitable institutional practices, anti-racist change encompasses equitable shifts at every level of an institution in conjunction with the adoption of new norms, values, and practices.
Implicit bias training, for example, helps uncover the problem of racial prejudice and racist stereotypes among individuals but does not resolve the question of how to change institutional policies and practices rooted in racial exclusion and organizational cultures narrowly defined by the lived experiences of white people. Individual awareness of bias is one thing; institutional transformation based on that training is something else. IARA works at the intersection of community programs, academia, and policy to address intellectual and practical questions related to anti-racist institutional change. The objective of IARA is to promote anti-racism as a core value for organizations by critically evaluating structures and policies within institutions.
Consortium in the Studies of Race, Migration, and Sexuality (Dartmouth)
The Dartmouth Consortium in the Studies of Race, Migration, and Sexuality (RMS) is an interdisciplinary research and teaching initiative aimed at deepening social and cultural analyses of worlds and works shaped by the colonial and transnational forces of race, migration, and sexuality.
Our Consortium encourages and emphasizes a range of practices anchored in the intellectual study of race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, class and embodiment, and citizenship and migration across a broad spectrum of interlocking experiences, histories, and practices.
The Center for Race and Gender (UC Berkeley)
The Center for Race & Gender (CRG) is an interdisciplinary research center that creates knowledge on critical intersections between race, gender, and social justice.
Launched as a result of the 1999 Ethnic Studies student movement, the CRG enables faculty, researchers, students, organizers, and artists to explore and collaborate on vital issues locally and globally through developing rigorous, creative, and community-engaged intellectual projects.
The CRG advances pioneering scholarship through research initiatives, original publications, a multimedia platform, symposia, and other events. The CRG supports student research and intellectual advancement by providing research project grants, sponsoring research working groups, and organizing forums to spotlight developing work.
The Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (Stanford)
Since our founding in 1996, the Center has served as Stanford’s place to debate, discuss and develop research about racial justice, inequality, racialization, equity and difference. Interdisciplinarity and intersectionality are at the core of our mission. We understand that the complex dynamics of race and racism require both quantatitve and qualitative attention. At CCSRE we believe that race and ethnicity affect virtually every aspect of our lived experience: from questions of citizenship, sexuality, health, technology, law, literature, policing, economics, social media, the arts, housing and more. The Center works to foster meaningful dialogue about the myriad ways that race and ethnicity shape our theoretical ideas and our institutions. Students in our undergraduate IDP and our new Ph.D. minor work with our many affiliated faculty and partners across the entire University–in departments, community centers, as well as local and international entities. We invite everyone to join us for our many exciting classes, lectures, workshops and events that focus on race and ethnicity and mobilizing knowledge in the creation of a more just and equitable world. Our mission to foster evidence-based research is an urgent one in our era of competing global ethnic nationalisms, growing white supremacy, rapid technological change, mass incarceration, unprecedented population shifts due to climate change and other aspects that compel immigration as well as increasing economic disparities. In the face of these many transformations, we foster multiracial colloboration and educate our students and publics in Chicano/a/x -Latino/a/x studies, Native American Studies, Asian American Studies, Jewish Studies and Comparative Studies including Black Studies, Arab Studies and more.
Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice (Rutgers)
The establishment of the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice marks a new direction among higher education institutions by using humanistic theories, methods and approaches to study global issues of race and social justice.
Aligning with the Mellon Foundation’s humanistic orientation, the institute will support and amplify the scholarship of researchers who are based in the humanities or lean on humanistic methods and whose work has consequences in areas such as policy reform, K-12 education, social justice work and the carceral state.
The institute will provide opportunities for Rutgers faculty whose work addresses racism and social inequality to work in coordinated ways that lead to meaningful action. “It will bring together scholars from all disciplines so that the product of their work can help to inform real-world decisions about solutions to the problems that have, at long last, been thrust into sharp focus in this country and around the globe,” Holloway added.
Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture (Chicago)
The Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture was established by Michael C. Dawson, with a founding conference taking place in June of 1996 entitled, “Race and Voice: Challenges for the 21st Century.” From its inception, CSRPC faculty affiliates, students, and staff have been committed to establishing a new type of research institute devoted to the study of race and ethnicity, one that seeks to expand the study of race beyond the black/white paradigm while exploring social and identity cleavages within racialized communities. Scholars affiliated with the Center have also endeavored to make race and ethnicity central topics of intellectual investigation at the University of Chicago by fostering interdisciplinary research, teaching, and public debate. Fundamentally, the Center is committed to contributing intellectually challenging and innovative scholarship that can help people transform their thinking and their lives. Towards those goals, the Center provides funding and other types of support for projects initiated by faculty affiliates, graduate students, undergraduates, artists-in-residence and visiting fellows. After extensive renovations in 2013, our building now features seminar rooms to host classes and workshops, space for our events and community activities and other resources.
The Center supports and sponsors a number of public programs geared towards promoting an investigation of the ties between race, ethnicity and culture. These events are often co-sponsored with University of Chicago Registered Student Organizations (RSOs), other campus centers and academic units, as well as community-based institutions.
Center for Antiracist Research (Boston University)
The United States was built upon white supremacy and the subordination of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other people of color. Racism has been employed in the United States through a variety of mechanisms, such as slavery, lynchings, Jim Crow laws, forced removal, genocide, and overt racial discrimination. Modernly, racism is upheld predominately through seemingly race-neutral policies. These policies work in tandem to maintain a racial order where white people—particularly those with means—remain in power and have greater access to social goods (such as education, healthcare, housing, and a safe environment), as well as greater economic and spatial mobility (such as freedom of movement without state restraint in the form of policing or incarceration) than people of color.
The Policy Pillar is critical to the Center, as the overarching goal of the Center’s work is to change policy, which we define broadly as any measure, written or unwritten, formal or informal, legal or illegal, that governs people. Specifically, the Center’s mission is to transform a society governed by racist policies into a society governed by antiracist policies. We define a “racist policy” broadly as any measure that leads to, or maintains, racial inequity or injustice. We render a policy as racist if it has a disparate racial impact. By contrast, we define an “antiracist policy” as any measure that leads to, or maintains, racial equity or justice.
The mission of the Policy Pillar is to identify racist policies and to ascertain, craft, and elevate evidence-based antiracist policies that can be embraced by communities, advanced by advocates, and implemented by policymakers and courts to create a more racially just and equitable society.
The Narrative pillar aims to transform and build an antiracist, equitable society through leading and shifting the narrative around racial injustice and to cultivate the BU Center for Antiracist Research as the undisputed global leader in the production, translation, and dissemination of influential antiracist research. This pillar is critical to facilitating the overarching mission of the Center to transform society through shifting the narrative that racial injustice is rooted in bad policy and not bad people; amplifying antiracist research through public engagement; ensuring scholars and experts are at the center of racial debates; and translating evidence-based policy correctives into a manner that policymakers and the general public can understand and support, ultimately cultivating the Center as the premier leader in the production of influential antiracist research.
Strategic initiatives include the dissemination of leading antiracist research through media, outreach, and public scholarship initiatives; antiracism training and education for the BU community and external partners; and organizing public events and convenings to showcase the Center’s research and work of antiracist scholars.
The Hopkins Center for Heath Disparities Solutions (Johns Hopkins)
The Hopkins Center for Health Disparities Solutions (HCHDS) brings together the health research and program development resources of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutes (schools of Public Health, Medicine, and Nursing) to demonstrate the efficacy of public health, social science and medical science in mitigating health disparities. We do this through efforts in research, training and community outreach. The Center has a national focus, but much of our work takes place in the local Baltimore community.
The mission of the Hopkins Center for Health Disparities Solutions is to generate and disseminate knowledge to reduce racial/ethnic and social class disparities in health status and health care through research, training, community partnerships and advocacy. In accomplishing our mission, we are guided by the values of Collaboration, Innovation, and Solutions. These values are the foundation for the mission of the Center and the principles that inform all of our activities.
Hard Histories at Hopkins (Johns Hopkins)
Launched in fall 2020, the Hard Histories at Hopkins Project examines the role that racism and discrimination have played at Johns Hopkins. Blending research, teaching, public engagement and the creative arts, Hard Histories aims to engage our broadest communities—at Johns Hopkins and in Baltimore—in a frank and informed exploration of how racism has been produced and permitted to persist as part of our structure and our practice.
Expect from us new insights into lesser-known chapters in the history of Johns Hopkins. Also look out for opportunities to study and discuss the implications of our past for our present and future. Student researchers will help lead Hard Histories through research in our history lab, working through the archival record. Our partners will come from across our university and across the city of Baltimore.
Our solutions will emerge out of new understandings and new relationships. We welcome you as a researcher partner, for a conversation, as a voice on our blog, as a collaborator, and as a critic.
Race and Equity Center (University of Southern California)
The University of Southern California is home to a dynamic research and organizational improvement center that works with professionals in educational institutions, corporations, and other contexts. We help our partners strategically develop and achieve equity goals, better understand and correct climate problems, avoid and recover from racial crises, and cultivate sustainable cultures of inclusion and respect. Evidence, as well as scalable and adaptable models of success, inform our rigorous approach.
We acknowledge that our center is on the traditional land of the Tongva People. We also recognize the Chumash, Tataviam, Serrano, Cahuilla, Juaneno, and Luiseno People for the land that USC occupies around Southern California. We pay respects to their past and present.
Our mission is to illuminate, disrupt, and dismantle racism in all its forms. We do this through rigorous interdisciplinary research, high-quality professional learning experiences, the production and wide dissemination of useful tools, trustworthy consultations and strategy advising, and substantive partnerships. While race and ethnicity are at the epicenter of our work, we also value their intersectionality with other identities, and therefore aim to advance equity for all persons experiencing marginalization.
Center for Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (Duke)
Duke University was selected by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) as one of 10 inaugural Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) Campus Centers. These centers are part of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s TRHT movement – a comprehensive, national and community-based process to address the historic and contemporary sources of racism and bring about transformational and sustainable change.
The Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation at Duke University (TRHT Center) is in an aggressive start-up phase, working towards becoming a formidable and influential vehicle for facilitating transformation at Duke and in Durham. Critical to the success and sustainability of this university-wide effort is the visible and participatory commitment of campus and community leaders. To that end, one of our first tasks has been to establish and engage a steering committee of senior leadership at Duke. In addition, we are developing a comprehensive Racial Healing Circles program based on the Kellogg Foundation’s strategy, and extensive conversations are underway on campus, in Durham, and with Duke Alumni to plan for the future.
The goal of the Center is to dismantle deeply rooted beliefs in racial hierarchies and disrupt persistent structures and impacts of racism at Duke, in Durham, and beyond:
Truth: Uncover, produce, and share accurate and complete narratives about race, racial hierarchies, and racism.
Racial Healing: Cultivate relationships that celebrate our common humanity, embrace our diversity, and expand the circles of individuals willing to work towards transformation.
Transformation: Foster lasting change wherein every life has equal value and the consequences of a false belief in a racial hierarchy no longer shape our individual and collective experiences or outcomes.
