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.
In 2015 the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reported that only 6 percent of full-time faculty are Black and 5 percent are Latino, and these numbers are lower in economics. Similarly, a 1994 study found that there were eleven Black economists teaching at the nation’s twenty-five highest-ranked universities; a 2006 study identified thirteen such…
Last year Founding director, William A. “Sandy” Darity, Jr., was named a 2024 Distinguished Fellow by the American Economic Association (AEA). On January 5th, 2025 he received the award at the ASSA Annual Meeting. Darity, the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics at Duke University, is one of…
Associate professor in the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience at Duke University and Cook Center Faculty Affiliate Dr. Sarah Gaither contributed to a paper recently published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. The study employed a collaborative multi-site approach, and measured 4- to 6-year-old children’s minimal group attitudes and preference for real-world racial/ethnic ingroups…
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…
