New Fellowship Program Aims to Bring Antiracism into BU Curricula

CAS research assistant professor Melisa Osborne, one of 13 inaugural Designing Antiracism Curricula fellows, teaches an Institutional Racism in Health and Science course she cocreated in 2021.
New Fellowship Program Aims to Bring Antiracism into BU Curricula
Initiative seeks to draw faculty from all disciplines
Music classes that examine the non-Western canon. Gastronomy courses that bring the flavors of the African diaspora into the kitchen. Bioinformatics lessons that seek to interrogate racial bias in medical algorithms.
Those are a sample of the curricula Boston University faculty members are developing through the Designing Antiracism Curricula Fellowship Program, a new collaboration among the Center for Antiracist Research, BU Diversity & Inclusion (BU D&I), and the Center for Teaching & Learning (CTL).
The program, which launched in the fall of 2022, allows fellows to develop or redesign courses within their disciplines that incorporate antiracist frameworks and/or highlight diverse perspectives. Each of the fellows receives a stipend for the academic year. The program is open to all BU faculty who create and teach undergraduate or graduate courses; previous experience designing antiracist curricula is not required to apply. The deadline for applications for the 2023–2024 academic year is Friday, March 17. (Find more information and apply here.)

The fellowship program also marks one of the first University-wide collaborations for the Center for Antiracist Research. When designing the parameters, the center “really tried to be intentional about not having fellows be the usual suspects” in terms of subject matter, says Phillipe Copeland, the center’s assistant director of narrative and a School of Social Work clinical associate professor who pioneered the program.
“One of the things we talked a lot about is that there’s a narrative that antiracist education is for certain kinds of disciplines—which isn’t true. Everybody has to be a part of the solution. We need all disciplines, all fields. I want people to know that the program really is for all instructors at the University.”
In addition to Copeland, the program organizers are Deb Breen, CTL director, Jean Otsuki, CTL associate director, Megan Segoshi, BU D&I manager of faculty diversity initiatives, and Priya Garg, associate dean for medical education at the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and assistant professor of pediatrics.
The inaugural class comprises 13 fellows. Faculty members hail from the College of Arts & Sciences, Metropolitan College, the School of Social Work, the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, the College of Fine Arts, the School of Public Health, College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences: Sargent College, Wheelock College of Education & Human Development, and the College of General Studies. Curricula in the works range from a Spanish language course centered on Indigenous Latin American perspectives to a social work research course focused on conducting research without reinforcing historical structural biases.
Fellow Melisa Osborne, a CAS research assistant professor of biology and bioinformatics, was drawn to the program after the 2020 murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor left her wondering how she could mitigate the effects of racism in her personal sphere. As a fellow, she’s redesigning Biochemistry and Molecular Biology for Bioinformatics, a core class for bioinformatics graduate and doctoral students, to unpack the historical association of race and biology in the fields of genetics and genomics.
“Having antiracist science curricula is very important because of the way science has been used to justify racism and unethical experiments and medical practices throughout history, and even today,” says Osborne, who also cocreated an Institutional Racism in Health and Science course for undergraduates. “We are entering a new era of genomics, algorithms, and artificial intelligence, and it is crucial to know this history—especially of the harm done by the combination of race and science in the eugenics era—in order to avoid repeating it.
“In learning the technical skills of science, we must emphasize that scientific ideas are only as objective as the scientists who came up with them, and that the potential for harm must always be weighed in the practice of scientific research.”
Fellow Corinne DaCosta (MET’18), a lecturer in MET’s Gastronomy program, teaches the Culture and Cuisine of the African Diaspora course. Being a fellow allows her to dive further into familiarizing culinary students with non-Western perspectives, she says.
“The legacy of both the food industry and academia are intertwined with white supremacy, so it is important work to combat, repair, and rectify those injustices with scholarship and activism,” DaCosta says. “Designing antiracist curriculum at its core is incorporating more inclusion and perspectives, while acknowledging those whom history hasn’t traditionally credited, as well as encouraging students to think this way in their lives and work.”
The program’s organizers hope its breadth inspires more faculty to get involved with antiracist education. By supporting fellows, both students and faculty have the opportunity to engage with material critical to dismantling inequity in all fields.
“I think that being in the room with other people who care deeply about antiracism is highly motivating and transformative for everybody involved,” Copeland says. “It’s really powerful.”
The deadline for the 2023–2024 class of Designing Antiracism Curricula fellows is Friday, March 17. Find more information and apply here.
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