The power of the HERE project is in the networking, sharing, and learning that we all do collectively. We encourage you, as you are working on a reparations project connected to higher education, to share your work with the HERE. We will post it on the HERE website and add it to the resource list and forthcoming map of projects.
Example of a Completed Project Template:
SITE: Crafting Democratic Futures
PROJECT: Housed within the Center for Social Solutions at the University of Michigan, the Crafting Democratic Futures (CDF) project is a national network of humanities scholars located at nine geographically and organizationally diverse colleges and universities to develop research-informed, community-based reparations plans for each location. The project teams at each institution will work with community fellows and community-based organizations to research local histories, identify issues in need of repair, and produce tangible suggestions for community-led racial reparations solutions.
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a $5M grant to the Center for Social Solutions (CSS) and nine institutional partners as part of the Foundation’s ‘Just Futures’ initiative. Crafting Democratic Futures: Situating Colleges and Universities in Community-based Reparations Solutions, emerges from the Center’s focus on slavery and its aftermath and is informed by three generations of humanistic scholarship and what that scholarship suggests for all seeking just futures.
The Crafting Democratic Futures (CDF) Project is a three-year initiative that brings together colleges and universities around the country with communities to develop suggestions for racial reparations solutions. The Center will undertake the ambitious and timely project in concert with eleven additional partners.
CDF Teams span across the Central North region of the country, across the Midwest, and down the Eastern seaboard. Specifically, CDF teams comprise partners from Carnegie Mellon, Emory, and Rutgers (Newark) universities; Concordia (Moorhead, MN), Connecticut, Spelman, Wesleyan (Macon, GA), and Wofford (Spartanburg, SC) colleges; and the University of Michigan campuses. Pittsburgh’s public media flagship, WQED [Multimedia], is also a key partner, charged with developing a public documentary about reparations and race in the US.
PRODUCT: Our partners will produce a range of tangible suggestions for local reparations solutions, including: engaging in research and restorative action for Indigenous people, focused on forced Indian Boarding Schools and language learning as a historical trauma due a form of reparations; exploring racial disparities in education, health, housing, criminal justice, entrepreneurship, wealth, and environmental justice; conducting narrative research and co-creation of local histories around redlining and public monuments; probing histories of school and residential segregation; addressing legal land redress; and amplifying descendant voices. Lastly, with our public broadcast media partner, we will produce a documentary designed to hold a national conversation around reparations and capture the efforts and outcomes of this nationwide project.
CONTACT: democraticfutures@umich.edu
SOURCE: https://craftingdemocraticfutures.org/
Example of a Completed Course Template
Course Title and Level: I 419 – Redemption’s Call: Race, Reparations and the Church
Name of College or University: McCormick Theological Seminary
Name of Academic Department: N/A
Name of Instructional Faculty: Iva E. Carruthers, PhD
Instructor’s Email: godiva@orita.org
Course website: https://www.mccormick.edu/blog-4/redemptionscall
Course Syllabus: https://projecthere.givepulse.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/7dc48-erev.12491.pdf PDF Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/12SsooCAUCRHidX7FGZt8Tk2sXqO-XTn5/view?usp=sharing
Project H.E.R.E. (Higher Education Reparations Engagement) 