The Sawyer Seminar Presents "Racial Justice, Reparations, and the University" - Day 2
During the 2024-2025 academic year, the seminars will bring together scholars, students, and community organizers to reflect on four interconnected themes of disability justice, transitional justice, environmental justice, and racial justice with the aim of illuminating common histories and methodological frameworks that can inform generative responses to past and present social harms. Each area of focus reflects not only the scholarly interests of our faculty and students, but also the institutional commitments of Rutgers University – Newark as an anchor institution devoting its resources to serve our community.
Thursday, February 6, 2025:
10:00 AM – 11:30 AM: Introductory Remarks and Keynote
Dr. Mark Krasovic, Associate Professor of History, Co-Organizer, Rutgers University – Newark
Dr. Michael Conteh, Postdoctoral Associate in Public Policy and Administration, Co-Organizer, Rutgers University – Newark
Ambassador Dobrene O’Marde, Vice-Chair, Antigua and Barbuda Reparations Support Commission
11:30 AM – 1:00 PM: Panel Critical Conversations: The Movement for Reparations (Local and Global)
1:00 – 2:30 PM: Lunch
2:30 – 4:30 PM: Working Session: Towards a Statement of Strategic Need
Dr. Wendell Marsh, Assistant Professor of History, Co-Organizer, Rutgers University – Newark
Liz Ševčenko, Co-Director, Humanities Action Lab, Rutgers Newark, Moderator
Dr. Mark Krasovic, Associate Professor of History, Co-Organizer, Rutgers University – Newark
4:30 – 5:00 PM: Closing remarks
Cost: Free and open to the public.
Accommodations: Please submit accommodation requests to sawyerseminar@newark.rutgers.edu by Friday, April 18, 2025.
Overview: Recent conversations about reparations in the United States have drawn on both history and analyses of current economic, social, and political perspectives to propose reparative practices that range from monetary compensation to targeted policies that address racial disparities in wealth, housing discrimination, and education access, among others. At a wider scale, scholars like Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò have offered a constructivist view of reparations that proposes a historically informed project of distributive justice that serves a larger and broader world-making process. The project of reparations, therefore, has a forward-facing orientation that by necessity is anchored in the past.
