Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

As the largest college in the university, LSA celebrates its role in Michigan's deeply rooted commitment to diversity.

Black History Month Opening Event

A Conversation with Thought Leader and Change Maker LaTosha Brown

Monday, Feb. 1, 6:00-7:30 PM (virtual)
RSVP: https://myumi.ch/mnrdk

For Black History Month, MESA and sponsors are proud to present, "A Conversation with Thought Leader and Change Maker LaTosha Brown." 

Ms. Brown is a 2020-2021 Hauser Leader at the Center for Public Leadership and a 2020-2021 American Democracy Fellow at Harvard’s Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History. Throughout the 2020 U.S. election, Ms. Brown led the We Got the Power bus tour across the U.S. South to register people to vote and galvanize Black voter participation. 

She will share thoughts on her lecture, “The Death of Democracy: Voter Suppression in the 21st Century,” and she will discuss how storytelling and strategic messaging can build political power. The role of women, young voters, and people of color in American politics will be a key area of discussion as it relates to civic engagement protests and student activism.

Call for Contributions: Kamala Harris Syllabus

Submissions due Feb. 22
The Democracy & Debate Theme Semester, in partnership with the National Center for Institutional Diversity (NCID), is proud to issue this call for contributions to the Kamala Harris Syllabus, a project designed to assist in probing the significance of Kamala Harris and the Vice Presidency in this moment of change, challenge, and debate in American democracy and international affairs.

We invite scholars across all disciplines to submit suggestions for books, articles, podcasts, and other educational material that will be curated by our team of editors and featured on a public website. Among other things, this website will be a resource to scholars, students, and practitioners across the nation and world who witnessed and now seek to contextualize Harris’ inauguration. Submissions will be accepted through Monday, February 22. The curated syllabus will become publicly available in early March.

Please email kamalaharrissyllabus@umich.edu with any questions and/or to submit your materials. Please limit your submissions to up to three suggestions. We will notify you if your submission(s) is accepted. More information here.

Action-Oriented Books on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Through support from the Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and the University Library, the University of Michigan Press has put together a leaflet called Where do we go from here? Action-oriented Books on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. The leaflet is a reading list of books that are new resources to advance the understanding of the blight of racism and other kinds of discrimination. They also identify active paths to a more equitable and just society, in the USA and around the world. 

Not only are the books published by U-M's own press, but the ebooks of the 24 titles are all freely available to everyone on the Ann Arbor, Dearborn, and Flint campuses. The reading list also links to author interviews, audiobooks, and videos.

The leaflet was launched earlier this week at a "Books for Social Justice" event featured as part of the MLK Symposium. See https://www.publishing.umich.edu/features/books-for-social-justice.