TRHT Campus Centers Vision Summaries

Vision Summaries

• Austin Community College

  Austin Community College (ACC) envisions a community where race, ethnicity, and other human differences are no longer predictors of success and well-being in any sector. The TRHT Campus Center will 1) be the community nexus for developing cross-racial relationship-building opportunities; 2) provide spaces for ongoing interactive learning experiences to promote the healing of wounds caused and exacerbated by racism; 3) promote healing through facilitated dialogues to excavate the history of racism and its current predictable impact on individuals and groups; 4) engage and convene communities to focus on assets, promote self-advocacy, and leverage partnerships to promote racial equity in systems; and 5) support institutional capacity-building through leadership development for accountability for racial equity.

  
  

• Brown University

  Brown University’s long and continuing commitment to visionary, effective work to build a just, racially diverse and equitable community is the focus of this intentional conversation project to be supported TRHT Center’s grant. Brown’s project will endeavor to engage all members of the University and community partners-- faculty, staff and students in all programs, in a process to create, to engage, and to assess shared work to create reconciliation and healing at the intersection of our many identities—especially those that emerge from religion, race, gender and intra-group dynamics. Brown University’s TRHT Campus Center will produce Conversations That Matter: Reconciliation Healing, Transformation: Race, Religion, Gender, and Beyond. Brown’s Center will engage students, staff, faculty from across the campus community in substantive conversations to create racial healing and transformation on campus and beyond; create an informed leadership cohort of students, faculty, staff and alumni/ae to increase awareness of religion and spirituality as critical factors in campus/societal work of reconciliation, racial healing and transformative justice; and enhance Brown University’s overall capacity to achieve the goals of The Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan, to broaden equity and to strengthen student thriving.

  
  

• Duke University

  The Duke University TRHT Campus Center envisions a community without racial hierarchies as one wherein human biological and cultural variation are valued and perceived as assets essential to the progress, survival, and flourishing of the human family. In such a community, polarizing race-based concepts such as “racially inferior/racially superior” and “marginalized/privileged” become obsolete and the structural barriers that promote and perpetuate inequalities are dismantled. Barriers are replaced with welcoming systems of equity, inclusiveness and belonging and the life outcomes of all are radically improved. Our goal is to strengthen Duke’s position as a catalyst for change in partnership with the City of Durham to eradicate deeply rooted beliefs in racial hierarchies and disrupt persistent structures and impacts of racism. Our objectives are to: 1) gather evidence to understand the histories, inequalities, and perspectives regarding race and racism in the Duke-Durham community; 2) engage the Duke-Durham community in conversations and dialogues to enhance and expand communications about race and racism; and 3) create key messages that will guide the development and implementation of public education efforts to foster accountability and produce truthful narratives on race and racism in the Duke-Durham community. An innovative aspect of our Center is its interdisciplinary guiding framework that encompasses biological and social sciences and the arts and humanities.

  
  

• Hamline University

  Hamline University’s vision for a Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Campus Center is to create inclusive spaces for convening that move beyond conversation into actionable recommendations for sustainable change and racial equity. Hamline’s TRHT Campus Center aims to reconcile competing historical and media narratives about race with the truths of individual, lived experiences. The work will investigate knowledge, behaviors, and attitudes across communities toward collapsing walls between individual and collective, campus and community, local and global contexts. Working with people, groups, and organizations in community, the center strives to build and sustain intersectional discovery, practice, and restoration.

  
  

• Millsaps College

  We envision a campus where students, faculty, and staff are aware of and thoughtful about our shared history, where this knowledge of the struggle for racial equality translates into a commitment to eradicate vestiges of racism in the status quo and prevent regressions toward racism in the future, and where members of our campus community and the broader local community lead the work in dismantling racial hierarchies and transforming existing racial narratives to reflect truth and promote healing.

  
  

• Rutgers University – Newark

  The TRHT Campus Center at Rutgers University – Newark (RU-N) will foster and strengthen the collective knowledge and wisdom of the diverse communities in and of the City of Newark. Drawing on the methodologies and strategies of the humanities and the arts, RU-N and our community partners will engage in an arc of interactive programming designed to change the narrative about race and race relations in Newark and beyond. The Center will also leverage and support new and existing RU-N and city-wide initiatives to effectively respond to economic and social disparities in our communities.

  
  

• Spelman College

  It is the vision of the Spelman College TRHT Center to establish Spelman College as a recognized site for advancing community dialogues that inform and challenge existing notions about hierarchies of human value based on race. We believe that our status as a historically black women's college uniquely positions us to create a safe space for community dialogues involving students, faculty, staff and the external community. We seek to leverage our history as a site for defying negative stereotypes about racial hierarchies and to work with others to create a more civil society that recognizes the common ideas, experiences and traditions that unite us across difference.

  
  

• The Citadel – The Military College of South Carolina

  The Citadel is currently involved in multiple activities relative to exposing students and the local community to experiences focused on appreciating diversity. Throughout The Citadel’s integrated history as a military college, there have been intermittent racial incidents that contributed to an uneasy relationship between The Citadel and members of the local black community. Despite these negative incidents, The Citadel has been a major force for racial reconciliation, and the representation of women and minorities is growing consistently among the Corps of Cadets. Further, following the murders at Emanuel AME Church, The Citadel engaged in creating a mural, symbolizing hope and determination for a more inclusive society. Finally, The Citadel has hosted several high-profile events devoted to advancing conversations about race. The campus envisions the TRHT Campus Center as a proactive vehicle, advancing these engagements and bringing faculty, staff, students, and alumni into existing campus conversations and listening sessions.

  
  

• University of Hawai’i at Mānoa

  The University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UHM) envisions a Hawai‘i in which each individual, family, and community can recognize their collective and interdependent kuleana – as privilege, right, and responsibility – to properly care for and manage the natural resources of our ‘āina¹. Kuleana does not recognize race. Rather, kuleana originates from the Native Hawaiian concept of mo‘okū‘auhau and invites us to celebrate and take guidance from the many genealogical lineages, stories, and experiences that shape us and remind us of the reciprocation and interdependence required for sustaining life. We build on Hawaiian knowledge and experience that recognizes ‘āina as source, ‘āina as people, and ‘āina as ongoing connection and care. Thus, we can transform to become fearless leaders in our aloha for ourselves, each other, and the embracing environment to ensure the vitality of Hawai‘i for generations yet to come.
  [1] ‘Āina: land, natural environment, that which feeds and sustains us.

• University of Maryland, Baltimore County

  The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) envisions a community where youth and their families, both on campus and in Baltimore, play an active role in transforming the very systems that have upheld racial hierarchies for too long. The TRHT Campus Center at UMBC will work to develop a framework of racial healing that includes training and reflection opportunities through UMBC’s Shriver Center. The center will also hold spaces for youth and minority voices by hosting events that cross campus and community divides, and strengthen campus and community partnerships. Finally, UMBC will develop a student/community leadership team to foster racial equity and transformation by guiding the direction of the TRHT Campus Center.