In order to create societies that are more safe, free, just,

and sustainably prosperous, policymakers and public leaders around the world

must better understand and work to dismantle systemic racism and discrimination

based on ethnicity, caste, and indigenous status.  

Harvard Kennedy School has gathered recent scholarship from

our faculty members and other experts on the topics of

race, justice, protest, and policing.

Here are a few highlights from faculty members and experts

at HKS. View

more on the HKS website.

Jobs and Jail:  Sandra Susan Smith

studies work and incarceration in an unequal, atomized America

Sandra Susan Smith, Daniel & Florence Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice, HKS; Professor of Sociology, FAS; Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor, Radcliffe. Photograph by Jim Harrison.

“In the 1970s and ’80s, America’s cities were engulfed in

crisis. It’s a familiar story: factories were closed, urban centers hollowed

out, and fragile working-class communities ruined. Often, it’s told as a white

working-class story, but sociologist Sandra Susan Smith, Guggenheim professor

of criminal justice, remembers how deindustrialization devastated her mostly

black and Latino hometown of Hartford, Connecticut.” Read

more in Harvard Magazine >>

Racial wealth gap may be a key to other inequities

Khalil Muhammad, Ford Foundation Professor of History, Race, and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Photo by Martha Stewart.

“If we want to undo the cultural infrastructure that is hand

in glove with the economic and political racism and domination of people, we

have to start very young,” said Muhammad. “Anti-bias education is a social

vaccine to vaccinate our children against the disease of racism. Imagine what

the world would look like in a generation.” Read

more in The Harvard Gazette >>

Q&A with Professor Cornell William Brooks: Spotlight on the William

Monroe Trotter Collaborative for Social Justice

Cornell William Brooks, Hauser Professor of the Practice of Nonprofit Organizations; Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership and Social Justice

Professor Cornell William Brooks leads the Harvard Kennedy

School’s William Monroe Trotter Collaborative for Social Justice, which he

calls a think-and-do tank for Harvard students committed to social justice

advocacy and rigorous applied research. Read

the Q&A >>

Want to hear more from Professor Brooks? Listed to the recent HKS PolicyCast episode, “The United States pays reparations every day—just not to Black America.”