Book Discussion: Undermining Racial Justice: How One University Embraced Inclusion and Inequality (Matthew Johnson, Angela Dillard), October 6, 2020

In Undermining Racial Justice, Matthew Johnson (Texas Tech University) contends that over the last sixty years, administrators on college campuses nationwide have responded to black campus activists by making racial inclusion and inequality compatible.

Focusing on the University of Michigan, Johnson argues that U-M leaders incorporated black student dissent selectively into the institution's policies, practices, and values. This strategy was used to prevent activism from disrupting the institutional priorities that campus leaders deemed more important than racial justice. As Johnson illustrates, inclusion has always been a secondary priority, and, as a result, the policies of the late 1970s and 1980s ushered in a new and enduring era of racial retrenchment on campuses nationwide.

Join the author for a discussion of Undermining Racial Justice: How One University Embraced Inclusion and Inequality. Angela Dillard (University of Michigan) will serve as interlocutor.

Matthew Johnson is associate professor of history at Texas Tech University. He is currently an American Council of Learned Societies Fellow working on a book about the impact of urban campus police forces on Black communities and students.

Angela Dillard is the Richard A. Meisler Collegiate Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies, History, and in the Residential College. She specializes in American and African American intellectual history, particularly around issues of race, religion, and politics—on both the Left and the Right sides of the political spectrum—and maintains an active interest in urban studies.