Public Engagement



Speaker 1:Welcome to the Michigan Minds podcast, a quick and informative analysis of today's top issues from University of Michigan faculty.Earl Lewis:My name is Earl Lewis and I serve as the Thomas C. Holt Distinguished University Professor of History, Afro-American and African Studies, and public policy. And I also am the director of the Center for Social Solutions.So the Center for Social Solutions was created at the University of Michigan in 2018. At that time, I had decided to step down from being president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in New York City and I was contemplating where I wanted to go next. And I knew what I wanted to do next, which was to create this center. I have been on the faculty at the University of Michigan for 15 years, from 1989 until 2004. And then I left in 2004 to be the provost at Emory University in Atlanta and spent about nine years there before going on to the Mellon Foundation. So I was away for about 14 years, and I came back with the idea, we'll create this center and it will work on four different issues for the next decade.The first was diversity and democracy. The second was slavery and its aftermath. The third was water and water security. And the fourth was the dignity of labor in an automated world. And so I came back and someone said to me, "Only four?" And I jokingly said, "Yeah, one, I would get bored, so I needed at least four things to occupy me for the next decade," at which point I plan to go off payroll.So over the course of the spring into the early summer, Luke Shaefer and I, Luke who directs the Poverty Solutions activities at the University of Michigan and I, started having conversations. The both of us were looking at what was happening around the country and the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd and the shooting of Breonna Taylor. We were reminded of the deepened depth of continuing racial hostility, if not outright racism, in American life.And realizing that as research enterprises, we have something to offer. And it was not just the work that we could produce, but the works that others could produce. And so here we decided that perhaps one of the best things we could do is serve as an engine to invite others to come and use their own brain power, thought power, and other resources to actually begin to tackle really what is an interlaced and complex problem that faces all of humankind, particularly in the United States.And so we did two things. We pooled some of our resources, and then we went, hat in hand, to others across the university to ask if they would contribute. And with that, we were able to create a pool of dollars that then we went out to the community and said, "We invite our colleagues to submit grant applications for up to $50,000 to help for a research agenda related to combating racism."Well, basically we were hoping that these would be faculty who were not just going to study the problem, but who actually had some forms of solutions to the problems, and so that they were actually somewhat action-oriented, where research and action came together in a ways to try to improve the world. Ultimately, that's what we thought. And fortunately for us, we had 21 takers, that is 21 collections of individuals across the Ann Arbor campus. 11 of the schools and colleges have representatives. And then also from the University of Michigan-Flint.So in the end, we wish we could have funded more. We had enough resources to fund six of the 21 proposals from the outset. And they represented faculty from essentially three units. Overly represented, some may say, was LS and A, the College of Literature, Sciences and The Arts. But we also had faculty recipients from the School of Education and from University of Michigan at Flint.And they range the [inaudible] gamut. There was a proposal here, the one dealing with anti-Asian racism and the ways in which the whole COVID situation invited people to begin to label it and create a narrative around what it meant to be Asian and to be the carriers of disease. And so our colleagues here wanted to begin to sort of probe both the creation of that narrative, how it attached itself to historical narratives, and the ways in which one can interrupt it to began to really wrestle with the whole question of what it means to be anti-racist, and not just promoting a certain kind of stereotype. So that was one example.Another one had to do more with what you may say math, that is, the algorithms that went into creating districts for polling purposes and for election purposes. And so how do we begin to look at the science around redistricting and what it means to actually use and mobilize math and science to create advantage and disadvantage in the political space. And that's an interesting way to begin to think about how to tackle anti-racism.When we put out the call, you always put out a call and hope people will respond. And so part of what we're able to tap was both an energy and a desire to make a difference. And so when we realized that our colleagues not only heard but responded, that was encouraging. Two, there were areas that we wish we could have funded, particularly on the pedagogical side. And so we will look at some future date to actually support our colleagues who want to change the ways in which we teach at both the undergrad to graduate and a professional level across our various institutions. So that was key.The third thing I would say is that in looking at these grants and thinking about the response from our colleagues, we're reminded that there are good ideas resident across this big complex institution called the University of Michigan. And sometimes what you'd need to do is open a door and give people the freedom and the latitude to come out and say, "I have a solution. I have a way of actually working on something." And I think what was heartening was to see the variety. I mean, one of my favorite ones is one about the Detroit River, and the stories and narratives about [inaudible] stories about the river and whether it becomes along the river, scenes and sites of danger, or sites of beauty and opportunity. Those particular narratives actually are overlaid with histories about slavery in Detroit, about migration to Detroit, about racial violence in Detroit, et cetera.They all become attached, how we actually liberate those stories. Then it's tied to the work, in this case, one particular project, but it laces through all the projects. They all believe that we can actually develop new solutions that really stem from the work done by colleagues in variety of fields.As I mentioned in my introduction, at one point in my life, I was the president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. And what these array of projects reminds me, is the fact that solutions to really key, what I will refer to as gnarly problems, can't be sequestered in a domain of any one area of expertise. This is not a scientist or an engineer or an information specialist's way of answering a question, or a humanist or a social scientist. And what we see here from just this small set of six, a variety of ways of trying to approach the question of how do you begin to address and combat racism in our lives? There's a project on mathematics, for instance, and the ways in which black families responded to COVID and the ways in which the teaching and reteaching of mathematics both enabled them to ensure the students are educated, but then the hurdles and impediments there.That's quite different than a story about the narratives about Detroit. And it's even different from a story about Genesee County and where, in and around the University of Michigan-Flint, racism has been declared a public health hazard, and that the institutions, all of them, need to begin to address it as a public health hazard. This multi-pronged approach, I think, leads us down a path where we will come up with not one solution, but multiple solutions to a condition we created hundreds of years ago.The Center for Social Solutions has a webpage and I invite anyone listening to go and visit it and spend a little bit of time perusing it. We are working in a variety of areas. We have a book series with Princeton University Press on the value of diversity for prosperous democracy called Our Compelling Interests. And so you'll see you can gain some insight into that book series and what we've already produced and what we plan to produce.We are working with others around the world on a topic we call the third slavery. When we talk about slavery and its aftermath, most Americans think about the institution of chattel slavery that so dominated America and American history for 250 years, and not realizing that some 27 to 40 million people worldwide today are in some form of involuntary servitude, not only in other parts of the world, but in our very backyard. And so we have labeled that system of involuntary servitude today, the third slavery. And so the third slavery is a way for us to begin to pull together a range of things.When we talk about water and water security and how we begin to think not only about the Flint problem, but the threat of flooding around the world. And how do we begin to think about, is it possible, for instance, to move water from flood-prone areas to drought-stricken areas? We live in this hyper world where we have too much of both. In some places, too much water, in other places, too little water.And then if you want to think about an issue that really should captivate all of us, it's the dignity of labor in an automated world. McKinsey has issued a series of reports that suggest that by 2030, some 400 million people worldwide would have lost their jobs due to automation. And they estimate somewhere between 39 and 54 million in the United States. If that's not a issue that should captivate all of us and force us to ask, so what's on the other side of that possibility, and then you're not paying attention to what's critical.So I invite all of your listeners to just take a peek at what we're trying to suggest and the questions that we are proposing, solutions that we've begun to tentatively offer, and invite them to partner with us as we look to the future.Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Michigan Minds podcast, a production of the University of Michigan. Join the conversation on social media with #UMichImpact. ................
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