The impact of race on foreign policy formulation and governance interventions in Haiti

Understanding how race intersects with public policy has never been more important. This requires examining the racial foundations of public policy in the United States—the focus of an inaugural series convened by the Center for Racial Justice (CRJ) this fall—and how race impacts policy choices and consequences at the global level. This winter, the CRJ is partnering with the International Policy Center and Weiser Diplomacy Center to host a series on race in international relations. The series will explore topics including America’s relationship with the colonial project, the role of race in the development of the International Relations discipline, and transnational advocacy and the global BLM movement.

Please join us on March 10 for a conversation on how race and racism have affected international governance interventions, including international policing, economic and humanitarian actions, and development initiatives. The conversation will focus in particular on Haiti, the world’s first independent Black republic and the site of numerous international interventions from the era of French colonial rule to the present. Our guests will be a pair of scholars with deep knowledge of Haiti and its international relations, as well as the role of race in international affairs more broadly: Robert Fatton and Millery Polyné. They will share thoughts with Ford School professors John Ciorciari and Susan D. Page on how race has contributed to the nature and frequency of U.S. and multilateral interventions in Haiti, as well as the effects of those interventions on Haiti’s own domestic development. 

From the speakers' bios

Robert Fatton Jr. is the Ambassador Henry J. Taylor and Mrs. Marion R. Taylor Professor of Politics in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. He also served as chair of the Department of Politics from 1997 to 2004; and associate dean of the Graduate School at the University of Virginia from 2010 to 2012.  He is the author of several books and a large number of scholarly articles.  His most recent book is The Guise of Exceptionalism: Unmasking the National Narratives of Haiti and the United States (2021). His other publications include: Black Consciousness in South Africa (1986); The Making of a Liberal Democracy: Senegal’s Passive Revolution, 1975-1985 (1987); Predatory Rule: State and Civil Society in Africa (1992); Haiti’s Predatory Republic: The Unending Transition to Democracy (2002); The Roots of Haitian Despotism (2007); and Haiti: Trapped in the Outer Periphery (2014). He is the recipient of the 2011 Award for Excellence of the Haitian Studies Association for his “commitment and contribution to the emerging field of Haitian Studies for close to a quarter of a century.”

Millery Polyné is associate professor and former associate dean for faculty at the Gallatin School, New York University. His teaching and research interests include the history of U.S. African-American and Afro-Caribbean intellectual thought; coloniality in the Americas; human rights and dictatorship; and race and sports. He has published articles in journals such as Small Axe, Caribbean Studies, and the Journal of Haitian Studies, and he is the author of From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti and Pan Americanism, 1870-1964 (University Press of Florida, 2010). Professor Polyné was the recipient of the 2012 National Endowment for the Humanities Schomburg Scholar-in-Residence Fellowship and a 2005 University of Rochester Post-Doctoral Fellowship. He edited The Idea of Haiti: Rethinking Crisis and Development (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) and co-edited The Haiti Reader (Duke University Press, 2020). He holds a PhD in history from the University of Michigan.

Faculty Expert

Celeste M. Watkins-Hayes

Joan and Sanford Weill Dean of Public Policy; Director, Center for Racial Justice; Jean E. Fairfax Collegiate Professor of Public Policy; University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor; Professor of Sociology; Research and Community Impact Fellow, Anti-Racism Collaborative

Watkins-Hayes is an internationally-recognized scholar and expert on HIV/AIDS; urban poverty; social policy; and racial, class, and gender inequality. Her work illuminates social problems of great interest to scholars, communities, and policymakers. She works at the intersection of sociology, African American Studies, and public policy. Her work analyzes the impact of the HIV epidemic on women and the growth of the HIV safety net.

Faculty Expert

Susan D. Page

Professor of Practice in International Diplomacy at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, and Professor from Practice at the University of Michigan's Law School. Director; Weiser Diplomacy Center

Page applies her vast foreign policy experience to the Weiser Diplomacy Center. She has served the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the United Nations, and non-governmental organizations in senior roles for decades, across East, Central, and Southern Africa, and in Haiti and Nepal. Page was the first U.S. ambassador to the Republic of South Sudan and served as Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations in Haiti.

• Center for Racial Justice
• Robert Fatton
• Millery Polyné
• Racial Foundations of Public Policy
• Global Racial Foundations of Public Policy
• Haiti