Shorenstein Center receives $600,000 grant for antiracism project

The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at
Harvard Kennedy School has received a $600,000 grant from the W.K. Kellogg
Foundation in support of The Institutional
Antiracism and Accountability (IARA) Project.

The IARA Project’s goal is to use research, learning, and policy
to promote antiracism as an institutional norm in the public, non-profit, and
private sectors. Led by Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Professor of History, Race, and
Public Policy at the Kennedy School, IARA focuses on studying organizations
that conduct racial healing, racial equity, and antiracism interventions, and measuring
the effectiveness of these programs.

“This grant couldn’t come at a more propitious time,” says
Muhammad, the IARA Project faculty director, who is also the Suzanne Young
Murray Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies. “The United
States and countries across the globe are experiencing racial justice protests
not seen in half a century. The IARA Project is built to chart a new future of
antiracism in civil society by learning from the past. The opportunity to examine
racial healing or truth and reconciliation practices in other countries will
strengthen understanding of what can work.”

The funding from the Kellogg Foundation will support a new line of
research to assess global practices of racial healing from inception to
implementation, and to establish guidelines and learning for best practices.

“Recent events have shown just how vital the IARA Project’s
research on racial justice and racial healing is,” says Nancy Gibbs, the
Director of the Shorenstein Center and Visiting Edward R. Murrow Professor of
Practice of Press, Politics and Public Policy. “We are grateful to the Kellogg
Foundation for making this expansion of that work possible. This research will
allow all of us who are invested in racial justice and equity to learn from the
experiences of transformational racial healing initiatives around the world.”

To learn more about the IARA Project visit ShorensteinCenter.org/IARA.

Register for the 2020 Truth and Transformation Conference here.