Two proposals submitted in the second round of the university’s Anti-Racism Faculty Hiring Initiative have been approved for funding.
“Each of these faculty clusters will open important new areas of inquiry that will significantly deepen and broaden the university’s anti-racism research, teaching and engagement capabilities,” Provost Susan M. Collins said, in announcing the selection committee’s selections.
Three faculty members will be recruited to LSA as part of the Indigeneity, Race, and American Belonging cluster.
These scholars will pursue anti-racist work on the Indigenous experience that investigates legal status, historical disparities, heritage and belonging from strategically different perspectives, examining infrastructures that perpetuate the institutionalization of and struggle against racism in North America.
The second approved cluster, Advancing Anti-Racism through Art Based Social Work Practice, Arts Leadership, and Community Engagement, will recruit four faculty members, two in the School of Social Work and two in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance.
These faculty members will strengthen the schools’ capacity to research and teach how the arts can be robust platforms to address racism and advance justice.
The latest clusters join two others — Racial Justice in Healthcare: Informatics and Data-Driven Approaches, and Racial Justice and Technology — that were previously selected under the Anti-Racism Faculty Hiring Initiative, which is supported by the Office of the Provost.
Faculty hired through the initiative will participate in the interdisciplinary Anti-Racism Collaborative at the National Center for Institutional Diversity. Launched in March 2021, the collaborative supports both current and new faculty who are engaged in research on anti-racism, racial equity and racial justice.
Proposal submissions for the third and final round of the initiative will open March 11, 2022, and close April 1. Additional information about the process for the next round will be available on the Office of the Provost website by Jan. 5.
The Anti-Racism Faculty Hiring Initiative was launched in 2020 along with several other new anti-racism efforts and as the university expanded existing anti-racism efforts. Collins invited deans to create the cross-campus faculty hiring initiative that focuses on anti-racism, systemic racism and racial injustice.
The three-year initiative will bring to the Ann Arbor campus’ schools and colleges at least 20 new tenure-track faculty members with scholarly expertise in racial inequality and structural racism.
This article originally appeared in the December 15, 2021 edition of The University Record