Research & Policy Teams

Our 2020 interdisciplinary Research & Policy Teams were formed and funded based on COVID-19. Read more about them here.

Our 2021 cohort of interdisciplinary Research & Policy Teams have been formed and funded. Read more about them here.

Our 2022 cohort of interdisciplinary Research & Policy Teams have been formed and funded. Please read about them here.

Our 2023 cohort of interdisciplinary Research & Policy Teams have been formed and funded. Please read about them here.

We are forming annual Research and Policy teams to develop evidence-based policy correctives to the racial problems of our time.

As a university-based research center, we transcend narrow disciplinary thinking by bringing together scholars, policymakers, journalists, artists, and advocates to research how best to dismantle racist structures, practices, and institutions that reproduce racial inequities. We confront a variety of issues such as education, economy, environment, health, politics, and justice reform to research how best to dismantle racist structures, practices, and institutions that reproduce racial inequities.

Policy Change

Policy change has been the key to antiracist change. And yet, instituting policies that reduce racial inequity has been difficult, time consuming, costly, and inefficient. Not merely because the issue of race in America is politically charged but also because rigid racial ideologies and organizational strategies woefully encourage the recycling of failed solutions.

We have not learned from historical failure and success. The center connects those people who have been involved in antiracist change and systematizes the process that has led to successful antiracist policy change.

Team Structure

Philanthropy + Scholars + Policy Experts + Journalists + Advocates + Policymakers

Historically, the principal agents of antiracist change have been disconnected, working in isolation: scholars in universities, policy experts in think tanks and government offices, journalists in media organizations, and advocates in advocacy groups. They have indirectly and informally handed their work off to one another. Policy experts create policy based on scholarly research. Journalists report on the new policies and studies. Advocates push to implement policies while wielding the research and reporting. They have rarely worked in concert, connected to philanthropists and policymakers. But what if they worked together from the beginning?

The BU Center for Antiracist Research aspires to build research and policy teams of scholars, policy experts, journalists, and advocates who will be residential fellows at Boston University. Fellows will teach project-based courses with their students assisting, allowing the center to provide a new model for student learning through the interplay of teaching, scholarship, and impact.