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The Frederick Douglass Institute at KU organizes and facilitates discussions, research, conferences, forums, and exhibits centered on racial equity, social equality, and anti-racism.
Specifically, FDI programming advances Black intellectual traditions through interdisciplinary scholarship and activism in disciplines including literature, philosophy, history, STEM, criminal justice, the arts, and journalism. Douglass wrote (1857): If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. The new FDI is a space of dynamic knowledge production, in the shared struggle towards self-actualization among Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) in our campus community and the world. In this space, we dig in and do the work.
This year, we will continue our service-learning initiative that brings KU students to local, urban public schools to support the literacy learning of K-12 students. Funding would help offset the cost of training, transportation to and from the site, and small stipends for KU servant-leaders. The outcomes of this work align with Strategic Goals #2 Student Success and Goal #3 Community and Civic Engagement. $2000 will go a long way towards this goal.
In addition, FDI continues to engage students in place-based learning. This year, we seek to 10 take students on a tour of Civil Rights and Black history museums in the United States. Funding for their transportation, room & board, and museum fees, when applicable. In past years, I have taken students to the Smithsonian Museum of African American History in Washington, D.C., and the African Burial Ground and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City with significant success. $5000 would help FDI offset costs for this field experience.