U. institute launches archives on racial justice discussions, initiatives

Earlier this month, the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice (ISGRJ) launched the Justice Archives, a new online resource to document the institute's events and initiatives encouraging discussions on global racial justice.

The Justice Archives are the third and final resource of the ISGRJ's pilot digital humanities initiative to bring the institute's work to the public and continue the ISGRJ's mission to create an "intellectual corridor" for scholars and students on social and racial issues, according to the institute's fall newsletter.

The digital initiative and its resources were designed over the past two years by Director of Marketing and Communications Tania Bentley and graduate student researchers who saw an opportunity to strengthen the ISGRJ's digital resources, according to Bentley.

"We realized that as soon as events passed, they just kind of dropped off … and so there (was) no way for those things to be preserved and seen again," Bentley said from there, the idea to archive the ISGRJ's work expanded to include research and scholarships as well. "We really wanted to provide this comprehensive platform that would connect all of these things together."

Through the Justice Archives, users can find summaries on events like the student-led 2024 Racial Justice Summit, where students and faculty from all three campuses met to discuss activism and racial justice on a community level or research like the award-winning "Black Bodies, Black Health" research project of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that examines the disparities of structural racism in medical fields.

Earlier this year, the initiative launched the Rutgers Researchers on Race (R3) Database, a directory of University race researchers, and Just Takes, a place for social scholars to share short op-eds on topics in racial justice, according to the newsletter.

Launched in January, R3 provides users with profiles for faculty, graduate students and undergraduate students involved with the ISGRJ's many fellowships, such as the Racial Justice Fellowship. Profiles include publications, research, speaking events and briefs on how they incorporate topics of racial justice into their work.

In April, the ISGRJ launched the Just Takes initiative, where scholars and students can submit short op-eds on social and racial justice issues to be featured on the Just Takes webpage and draw attention to their work in those fields, according to its webpage.

Just Takes page currently has many op-eds on various social justice topics, such as "Water as Witness: The Significance of Water in our Shared Histories" by Associate Artist Cherita Harrell of the ISGRJ, which explains the transcultural unifying power of the Quilting Water Public Arts Project. The webpage also features Hugo Bujon, a postdoctoral associate in Africana Studies at Rutgers—Camden, who criticizes efforts to limit discussion of social justice issues in education for political ends in the name of protecting children in "Kids Have Become a Battleground."

Bentley said the Justice Archive's extensive search functionalities are the first of their kind for academic institution archives, and she hopes the innovation and these resources' ever-changing nature will continue to support ISGRJ's work.

"We looked at it as a launching pad, and what we really hope is that Rutgers researchers can continue to add information on their own related projects, events and initiatives in the years to come to again continue our mission of materializing this intellectual corridor and cementing it," Bentley said.