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…
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…
February 20, 2026 — A new first-of-its-kind study of nearly 3,000 adults in New York City finds significant inequities in wealth and health outcomes across the 11 most common racial and ethnic groups, showing that Black and Latino New Yorkers have less wealth and unfairly worse health outcomes compared to others. Conducted in June 2024 by…
Faculty Affiliate Omer Ali is an Assistant Professor of economics at the University of Pittsburgh, and previous postdoctoral fellow a the Cook Center. Ali is the lead researcher on a new article published in Regional Science and Urban Economics this month examining the relationship between race and home values in Durham, North Carolina. The study…
