Rutgers wants to take a leading role in policy reform tied to the racial upheaval in the US, and it has gotten a $15 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to do it.
The school will create the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice. One area it will work on is policy reform in education. University President Jonathan Holloway says this is a hot topic right now.
“Having a more expansive notion of what constitutes let’s say, American history,” he said, “or what constitutes the really incredibly beautiful patchwork of experiences that make up this nation, that’s part of the kind of work, so there are social policy implications.”
The Institute will also support the work of researchers studying policy reform in social justice and incarceration, among other areas. “We have scholars who are working on the quality and state of incarcerated experience,” he said, “individuals who are incarcerated, and want to do work that will help rehabilitate them to join society.”
Holloway said the Institute should give the school’s research a more prominent place at the table. “By putting these kinds of resources behind these scholars we’ll be able to help amplify their voices in these national debates about who belongs in this country,” he said, “what does it mean to be a citizen, and what does the curriculum look like that is raising the next generation.”