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…
Faculty Affiliate Carliss Chatman, Professor at SMU Dedman School of Law, was quoted in a story by Marketplace examining how companies are quietly rebranding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. The article explores how some corporations are scaling back or reframing public-facing DEI language amid political scrutiny. And, that the broader landscape is more nuanced…
Founding Director William A. Darity Jr. provided comments in a new article from Quartz examines President Donald Trump’s proposal to create investment accounts for children born during his second term, and the plan could ultimately widen the wealth gap. While the policy would provide every eligible child with a government-seeded account, it also allows families,…
Faculty Affiliate Keisha Bentley-Edwards, Associate Professor of Medicine at Duke University, will deliver the Richard Payne Lecture in Faith, Justice, and Health Care this Friday. The event is hosted by the Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative at Duke Divinity School. Her lecture, titled Black Women’s Religion and Their Health: When Individual and Institutional Factors Intersect, represents…
Faculty Affiliate Nancy MacLean’s research has been featured in a blog post by Richard Murphy on the Finding the Future Blog. He writes, “Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains is one of the most powerful books of our time. It is not a conspiracy theory but a history of how the American right turned James Buchanan’s…
Founding Director William A. Darity Jr.’s work on reparations was highlighted in Capital B story about the possibility of mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani to successfully purse reparations in New York City. Dr. Darity’s says that closing the racial wealth gap is the best measure for reparations. He estimates that New York would have to pay…
Faculty Affiliate Fenaba Addo, Associate Professor of Public Policy at UNC-Chapel Hill, participated in a webinar hosted by the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty. Dr. Addo, along with two other experts, contributed insight on the impact of college loan debt across racial lines. I want to underscore that student debt is not just…
Faculty Affiliate Quran Karriem’s faculty appointment as an Assistant Professor at Syracuse University was recently featured in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education! Dr. Karriem is a media theorist, electronic musician, and installation artist whose work explores the intertwined histories and futures of automation, race, and cultural production. Read more here: New Faculty…
Yesterday, William A. (“Sandy”) Darity Jr., Founding Director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center, spoke at the Bob Moses Conference in Boston, where he outlined the staggering economic toll of slavery and mass incarceration. He noted that the wealth extracted from enslaved labor totals an estimated $18.6 trillion at a 3% interest rate, and could…
Faculty Affiliate Kisha Daniels, Associate Professor of the Practice in Education at Duke University, and Duke undergraduate Selena Collins were recently featured on the Duke Trinity podcast, Duets, for their collaborative service-learning course, Critical Pedagogy of Hip Hop. The course connects Duke students with middle and high schoolers across Durham Public Schools to explore education,…