Seed Grant Award: Anti-racism Workshops for Lamont and DEES Faculty

Maureen Raymo, Earth and Environmental Sciences

Maureen Raymo, Earth and Environmental Sciences

Anti-Racism workshops for Lamont and DEES faculty featured internal and/or guest presenters.  Designed for academic units that aim to expand existing understanding of systems of privilege and oppression. The expectation was that participants were challenged to apply their knowledge and analyze effective ways to disrupt racism as it manifests in their daily lives and within institutions.

The proposed workshops was interactive, with discussion components, aimed at broadening and deepening the Lamont faculty’s understanding of systemic racism, and provided concrete suggestions for incorporating anti-racism within our academic processes and institutions. The level of programming was intermediate (as opposed to introductory), as our faculty and scientists have already attended a number of racial bias awareness sessions over the past year. 

Following the completion of workshops, we expected to disseminate two documents. One, a report summarizing the workshop discussion and any actions/action plans identified; and two, a survey for all attendees requesting feedback on these workshops. We used that feedback to further develop and improve on the workshop series with the ultimate goal of making them available to other departments and schools at Columbia University.  

This project was funded through the Addressing Racism: A Call to Action for Higher Education initiative of the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement.