Two Ford School professors have joined the Framing and Design Committee of the Inclusive History Project, a project centered on documenting the university’s history with respect to diversity, equity and inclusion.
Earl Lewis, the Thomas C. Holt Distinguished University Professor of History, Afroamerican and African Studies, and Public Policy, and Morela Hernandez, the Ligia Ramirez de Reynolds Collegiate Professor of Public Policy, will work with 20 other University of Michigan members over the course of the 2022-2023 academic year to execute the project. The Committee will map the phases of the project while working in close partnership with the Bentley Historical Library to commission the necessary historical and benchmarking analyses. The group seeks broad community outreach and engagement to develop a fuller understanding of the university’s past and the contemporary effects of the university’s history.
“I believe strongly in the Inclusive History Project and what it can tell us about our university and ourselves,” President Santa J. Ono said. “This presidential initiative aims to create a more accurate narrative about the university, with an initial focus on race and racism.”
“This is a dynamic group that consists of U-M faculty, staff and students,” said Lewis. “I’m confident the group’s broad range of perspectives and expertise will help move the project forward.”
Some of the main possible outcomes of the project could include:
- Developing new scholarship, research, and courses.
- New expressions of a more inclusive and accurate institutional narrative, such as exhibits, campus tours, websites, updated ceremonies and other forms of institutional storytelling.
- New institutional programs and policies that address the contemporary effects of historical and systemic racism and other forms of discrimination and exclusion on the U-M community, including but not limited to actions as permitted by law in areas such as admissions, financial aid, and faculty and staff hiring, promotion and compensation.
Read the entirety of Lauren Love’s article on “Work begins on U-M’s Inclusive History Project” published in The University Record.
