Welcome New ISSI Graduate Fellows!

This fall, a new cohort of seven graduate students will participate in ISSI’s Graduate Fellows Program: Xavier Durham, Irene Farah Rivadeneyra, Daryl Mangosing, Martha Ortega Mendoza, Catherine Park, Valentín Sierra, and Rashad Arman Timmons. The Graduate Fellows Program provides two years of training and mentorship to an interdisciplinary mix of advanced graduate students who are in the midst of dissertation research and writing about social change. The new Fellows come from a range of fields: African Diaspora Studies, Education, City and Regional Planning, Public Health, Social Welfare, and Sociology. Their projects tackle a variety of pressing issues related to race and class in the US, including policing, drug use, undocumented graduate students, and Indigenous culture-based mental health care. The new cohort of Fellows will join seven returning Fellows. Read more about the Fellows here.

Reparations for Imperialism

Smalltalk features a series of essays by Stephen Small, Director of ISSI. Small makes the case for reparations for imperialism, with a particular focus on Liverpool and West Africa. Each essay has a different focus, including sexism, politics, higher education, anti-imperial Black voices, and more.

Reparations for African Americans in California

The Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans issued its interim report to the California Legislature. Jovan Scott Lewis, ISSI Advisory Board Member, serves on the committee. The interim report surveys the ongoing and compounding harms experienced by African Americans as a result of slavery and its lingering effects on American society today, presenting the national context and California-specific harms in a variety of areas including housing, health, employment, and education. The interim report also includes preliminary recommendations for policies that the California Legislature could adopt to remedy those harms. A final report will be issued next year.