The Center for Anti-Racism was envisioned in 2020 as a response to the murder of George Floyd and the national calls for social justice and racial equity.
In September of 2021, Temple announced it would invest more than $1 million in anti-racism education and programming, part of which was used to open the center as well as expand the university’s Department of Africology and African American Studies and develop a bridge program for young people in North Philadelphia.
My hope is that we create novel scholarship, that we help people who have been uniquely harmed by racist systems and structures and that we bring hope to a new generation to live in a place without these racial hierarchies.”
Molefi Kete Asante, renowned professor, prolific author, and former chair of the Department of Africology and African American Studies, worked with colleagues to create the center. In October of 2021, Timothy Welbeck, attorney, professor, scholar and hip-hop artist, was chosen to direct the center based on his extensive professional experience of advocating for the rights of marginalized people. The center aims to
The center’s vision includes being an ally to other marginalized groups and fighting antisemitism, the anti-LGBTQ faction and attacks on Black women specifically.
In August of 2022, the Center for Anti-Racism moved from the College of Liberal Arts to Temple’s office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, Advocacy and Leadership (IDEAL) to leverage the natural affinity between the two university units. Here, the center’s work can benefit from greater visibility while helping to support the office’s commitment to diversity.
On Nov. 14, 2022, the Center for Anti-Racism celebrated its opening with more than 200 community members, elected officials, faculty and staff. Watch the video.
The center will engage in various forms of scholarship around racial hierarchy and systemic racism and its impact both on individuals and people collectively, both in the past and present.
One way will be through guided studies using participatory action research with people living in North Philadelphia looking at how they might be impacted by systemic racism. This type of research gives agency to the people being studied, and also encourages their participation and collaboration.
The ultimate goal is to address some of the personal impact that they are facing and to have an informed basis for public advocacy around combating systemic racism at the local, regional and national level.
There is a temptation within academia to talk about ideas in the abstract. It’s a center goal to be about doing the work of traditional scholarship which is studying and interrogating phenomena, but also working directly with people to remedy the direct and unique harm they face as a result of systemic racism.
One way that the center may do this is to partner with legal clinics to service people within the neighborhood and in the process study the work’s effectiveness.
The center will publish papers in academic journals and possibly choose one to become the official journal for the center.
We are also looking for ways to make the work digestible for social media and other forms of public consumption to ensure the information is accessible.
Although the center is under the leadership of the Department of Africology and African American Studies, the center will be a universitywide space. It will be open to students and faculty across all disciplines and for staff and alumni as well.
One way that the community can access the center is through educational enrichment workshops, for example, with students in North Philadelphia so that they can not only feel as if they are part of the work, but also that they are welcome on campus.
The work we are doing is about equity and part of equity is giving people access to the information and institutions that in the past were restricted or exclusive.
People can connect with us on social media and attend our events and programs which are open to all. In the future, we may also have a way for people to make a donation to directly help advance the center’s work.
