REIMAGINING
THE UNIVERSITY
FREEDOM AND THE 21st CENTURY UNIVERSITY
In 2023, CSRPC adopted new mission and vision statements. We put these powerful words to work with a “Reimagining the University” initiative, funded by a 2021 four-year, $4 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The Mellon Grant created the Centering Race Consortium, which brought university race centers together at Stanford, Yale, Brown, and UChicago to collaborate across campuses.
CSRPC’s work to reimagine the university has led to a social media campaign, a conference at UChicago, and grants for scholarship, art, and activism by professors, students, staff, and community members.
Convening the Centering Race Consortium
In October 2023, CSRPC hosted a conference at the University of Chicago to examine the intersections of race, white supremacy, social justice, and freedoms as they are practiced and censured within and beyond the context of the 21st century university.
Students, faculty, artists, community members and colleagues from the Mellon-funded Centering Race Consortium partners at Brown, Stanford, and Yale were in attendance.
What Does It Mean to Practice Freedom?
The reimagining the university initiative kicked off by the Mellon Grant, focuses on these key questions:
What is the role of “race" and other social statuses/structures in determining whose knowledge, expertise, experiences, and access to freedom counts?
What is the relationship between white supremacy culture and the practice/protection of freedoms?
How does campus culture, policy and climate engage, uplift, protect, suppress, patrol, or censure knowledge, experience, and knowers, particularly from marginalized and oppressed communities and positionalities?
