This course is a two-part sequence in which students take two 6-week modules selected out of four options according to their interests and academic and professional priorities. It covers a range of topics related to the history of racial issues as well as policies and practices in contemporary society. First year MPP students can select two among the following four options.
Section A: Zoe Marks. International and Intersectional Approaches to Race and Racism. This module examines power and oppression in global contexts. Students will confront colonial legacies and explore key frameworks, from caste to global antiblackness, for understanding and redressing how racism shapes our lives and our world. Each student will build a personal toolkit of intersectional policy analysis skills and concepts – grappling with how racism interacts with sexism, classism, nationalism and other sources of inequality; together, we will work toward concrete policy and advocacy solutions to systemic racism and group-based injustice.
Sections B: Cornell William Brooks. Justice, Advocacy, and You: Race and Crime as a Case Study. Grounded in theory and practice, this module seeks to equip students with advocacy strategies to end systemic racism. Using the criminal legal system as a case study (solitary confinement, death penalty, school to prison pipeline, etc.), students study successful movements and case studies, economic and moral arguments, legislative/legal advocacy strategies and campaigns, data and storytelling, as well as history to develop their own campaigns to address today’s injustices. These strategies are useful in the public and private sector as well as in a wide variety of social justice contexts.
Section C: Sandra Susan Smith. Exploring Institutions and Modes of Racial Domination. This module examines how institutions across national contexts create, sustain, and sometimes challenge systems of racial domination. Drawing on theories of racial formation, racial capitalism, and colonial governance, we investigate how the logics of exclusion, punishment, violence, extraction, and erasure operate within core domains of social life. Using empirical research from the United States, Brazil, South Africa, Israel, and India, the course highlights how state policies and everyday practices distribute resources, rights, and recognition unequally across racial, ethnic, and caste lines. We also examine efforts to resist and transform these systems, including policies that disrupt structural inequality, movements that reimagine justice, and institutional innovations that advance equity. By the end of the course, students will be able to identify the mechanisms through which racial domination is institutionalized, trace how they vary across contexts, and assess the potential of policy interventions to dismantle systems of domination and promote racial equity and inclusion.
Section D: Desmond Ang. Racial Inequality in the U.S.: An Empirical Perspective. This module seeks to provide a broad empirical understanding of the causes and consequences of racial inequality in America across a range of domains - from housing and education to criminal justice and labor markets. Students will learn about the state of racial inequality today and historically and will gain the analytical skills necessary to unpack the drivers of those trends. Throughout the course, students will engage with and critically evaluate leading quantitative research examining the real-world impacts of a range of public policies relevant to racial inequality.
This course is required of all MPP1 students. Plea