The Samuel DuBois Cook Center is a scholarly collaborative that studies the causes and consequences of inequality and develops remedies for these disparities and their adverse effects.
The Historic Durham Armory, the hopping location downtown that once featured acts from Duke Ellington to Ella Fitzgerald and was the inspiration for Ernie Barnes’ The Sugar Shack, hosted another lively event this week: A celebration of the 10th cohort of Young Scholars from the Hank and Billye Suber Aaron Young Scholars Summer Research Institute. …
Sandra Santillan first encountered the Hank and Billye Suber Aaron Young Scholars Summer Research Institute as a high school student at Hillside High School, encouraged by a teacher who recognized her strong writing skills. “I thought I was in trouble,” she says, recalling how her teacher pulled her aside. Instead, the teacher introduced her to…
Sashir Moore-Sloan teaches American History, World History, Women’s Studies, and AP U.S. History at Charles E. Jordan High School, and has taught in Durham schools for more than twenty years. She is also as an adjunct professor in the History Department at North Carolina Central University (NCCU). This summer, she will be an instructor in…
Founding Director William Darity Jr. co-authored a new literature review in The BMJ that directly addresses one of the most persistent critiques of reparations: the claim that no feasible plan exists. The proposal outlines direct monetary payments as the clearest economic measure of the cumulative and intergenerational effects of white supremacy. The article argues that…
Cook Center Director William A. Darity Jr. will be among the featured speakers at an upcoming public hearing hosted by the New York State Community Commission on Reparations Remedies (NYSCCRR) on Saturday, March 21st, 2026, in Staten Island, New York. The hearing, titled “Economic Development: Quantifying Harms,” is part of the Commission’s statewide effort to…
New research co-authored by Faculty Affiliate Sarah Gaither, Associate Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience at Duke University, explores how something as routine as demographic forms can influence feelings of inclusion and identity among marginalized communities. Published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, the study—“Enumeration or Exclusion? Demographic Forms and Latine Identity”—investigates how demographic questions may…
