NAACP, University of Kentucky partner to fight education disparities, discrimination
The University of Kentucky and the country’s largest civil rights organization announced Thursday an agreement to develop a first-of-its-kind initiative that will combine UK’s research abilities, the expertise of civil rights leaders and the needs of communities to combat educational disparities.
The university’s College of Education will house the partnership with the NAACP. Derrick Johnson, the organization’s president and CEO, said in a press release that this will be the first time the NAACP has partnered with university researchers in the education field.
“These scholars will partner with students, educators, and communities to document the experiences of those facing educational disparities and use research to shape public policy,” Johnson said. “To see change, we must focus on discipline policies, school funding structures, college and career readiness initiatives, and our own great teachers in underserved communities.”
The research program will be one of a kind in the way that it connects the larger community with academia, said UK College of Education Dean Julian Vasquez Heilig. Higher education research programs and think tanks are commonly influential in high-level public policy discussions, he said, but UK’s initiative will be different. It directly connects researchers with civil rights leaders to make peer-reviewed work that is highly accessible to community members. On the flip side, the program will be inspired by the communities that they will be working in.
“How can communities inspire the high-level research that we do?” Vasquez Heilig said. “That’s the different paradigm that this center allows for. It’s going to be community-based and community-engaged.”
Kentucky and other states have documented sustained and large achievement gaps between white students and students of color, and according to the release, the initiative will particularly focus on students from underserved communities in Kentucky.
The initiative has been more than a year in the works, Vasquez Heilig said. It was made possible after the national NAACP passed a resolution “calling for a new education and civil rights research center.” As a NAACP volunteer for at least a decade in Texas and California, Vasquez Heilig knew of the resolution and wanted to bring that research center to UK.
Over the past year, Vasquez Heilig and others have spent time working through meetings and hiring the faculty that will fill out the center at its inception. Acclaimed civil rights attorney, former college president and now-UK professor Gregory Vincent will direct the program.
“Civil rights are for everyone and they enable us to bring our full selves to not just education, but also the workplace and beyond,” Vincent said in the release. “Equitable access to education is a foundational need, and yet is still met with barriers. I am honored to be at the University of Kentucky, working with the NAACP, to ensure every student can access quality education without repression.”
The idea for the center wasn’t born out of this summer’s national reckoning for greater civil rights for people of color, Vasquez Heilig said, but the fact that the center is opening now is a blessing.
“The timing couldn’t be more perfect,” Vasquez Heilig said.
The initiative will look to increase and protect educational access and resources for minority students from preschool through higher education.
The project will include rapidly released research to respond to education issues, community listening sessions, summits for educators and K-12 students, internships for undergraduates, research assistantships for graduate students and workshops for teachers on topics like developing more anti-racist Black History month activities and better civil rights curricula.
Additionally, through the center, Vasquez Heilig hopes to create a national network of Black scholars.
The announcement comes a day after the university announced a $10 million research sponsorship into issues surrounding people of color, as well as a $250,000 investment into building up the university’s Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies.
This story was originally published August 6, 2020 at 2:59 PM.