Confronting Racism: March 2021 Update

Impacts Committee Launches Resources on Equity-Centered Policy

The McCourt School’s Confronting Racism Impacts Committee, chaired by professors Michael Bailey and Nada Eissa, began their work last summer by surveying McCourt School faculty, researchers, and alumni to better understand research, training and program activities within our community that touch on diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

Not only did the committee want to catalogue and support this work, but they also wanted to identify potential collaboration opportunities. 

Using these responses, today the McCourt School launched a resource page that highlights research and activities that advance equity-centered policies. 

The page, which has also been embedded as a new category of work in our “featured publications” page, showcases work by McCourt School academic and research faculty, and alumni, including:

• Police Use of Force Interactions: Is Race Relevant or Gender Germane? by McCourt School assistant professor Andrea Headley
• The Reducing Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Juvenile Justice Certificate Program, offered by McCourt’s Center for Juvenile Justice Reform
• Disrupting Generational Poverty through Equity Audits, featuring McCourt School alumnus Omolara Fatiregun (MPP ’02)

Not designed to be exhaustive, this page is a starting point to share and encourage ongoing sharing of resources. The McCourt School welcomes additions to this resources page from members of our community.  

The Impacts Committee continues to identify research and opportunities for collaboration within McCourt, and is considering how to provide support for future collaborations.

Committees Take Steps to Expand Access, Equity-Centered Curricula, and Pipeline-Building Partnerships

Our Confronting Racism committees continued to take measured but important steps to address diversity, equity, and inclusion in the McCourt community.

The Committee on Creating Diverse & Inclusive Environments broke down barriers to applying to the McCourt School. This admissions season, the committee provided clearer language and guidance to prospective students about how they can obtain a waiver of the McCourt School application fee. 

The McCourt School offers a number of classes for students to engage with equity-centered policymaking. The Teaching & Learning Committee catalogue these course offerings, and highlighted some key examples on the curriculum pages of our program webpages, to surface these opportunities for current and prospective students. 

Building on the success of the McCourt Foundations experiential program, the committee is exploring ways to expand and strengthen other DEI-related programming, and developing a list of curriculum-related recommendations for faculty to consider, including new courses, syllabi development, and other training and opportunities. 

The Confronting Racism Partnerships Committee completed an audit of current McCourt School partnerships, and met with the leads of existing partnerships to learn how they function, how they can be supported, identify gaps, and search for potential connections. The committee will soon explore potential partnerships to strengthen the diversity of the pipeline of prospective students into McCourt, and with Georgetown’s Racial Justice Initiative.