Policy & Activism at the Intersections

Join the Ford School's Center for Racial Justice for a panelist discussion with our incoming Visiting Fellows cohort about the strategies, motivations, and lessons that shape the work of racial justice changemakers who work within and across various fields. Panelists will be in conversation with our Founding Director & Dean of the Ford School, Celeste Watkins-Hayes. A catered reception will follow the event in the Becky Blank Great Hall. 

This event is co-sponsored by the Trotter Multicultural Center and is free and open to the public. 

Accessibility

CART and sign language interpretation will be provided during the in-person event, and CART will be available for virtual participants. Presenters will use microphones. A recording will be available after the event. 

About the panelists and moderator

Dr. Amanda Alexander, the founding Executive Director of the Detroit Justice Center, is a racial justice lawyer and historian who works alongside community-based movements to end mass incarceration and build thriving and inclusive cities. Originally from Michigan, Amanda has worked at the intersection of racial justice and community development in Detroit, New York, and South Africa for more than 15 years.

Charlene Carruthers is a writer, filmmaker, community organizer, and Black Studies PhD Candidate at Northwestern University. A practitioner of telling more complete stories, her work interrogates historical conjunctures of Black freedom-making post-emancipation and decolonial revolution, Black/Native/Indigenous relationalities, Black governance, and Black feminist abolitionist geographies.   

Bianca D.M. Wilson, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Welfare at the Luskin School of Public Affairs and an affiliate faculty member of the California Center for Population Research at UCLA. Her research explores the relationships between culture, oppression, and health. Dr. Wilson examines LGBTQ economic instabilities and involvement with systems of care and criminalization, with a focus on the ways racialization, sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression play a role in creating disproportionality and disparities.   

Celeste Watkins-Hayes is the Joan and Sanford Weill Dean of Public Policy at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and founding director of the school's Center for Racial Justice. Watkins-Hayes is also the Jean E. Fairfax Collegiate Professor of Public Policy, University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor, professor of sociology, and an Anti-Racism Collaborative research and community impact fellow. She is an internationally-recognized scholar and expert widely credited for her research at the intersection of inequality, public policy, and human service institutions, with a special focus on HIV/AIDS; poverty; and race, class, and gender studies.

Faculty Expert

Celeste M. Watkins-Hayes

Joan and Sanford Weill Dean of Public Policy; Jean E. Fairfax Collegiate Professor of Public Policy; University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor; Professor of Sociology

Watkins-Hayes is an internationally-recognized scholar and expert widely credited for her research at the intersection of inequality, public policy, and human service institutions, with a special focus on HIV/AIDS; poverty; and race, class, and gender studies. Dr. Watkins-Hayes has published three books, numerous articles in journals and edited volumes, and pieces in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Chicago Magazine.

• Center for Racial Justice
• Center for Racial Justice Visiting Fellows
• diversity equity inclusion
• racial justice
• activism
• Celeste Watkins-Hayes