Graduate and Undergraduate Certificate

What happens when faculty and students from different disciplines explore the contours of race and social justice? The "Race & Social Justice Interdisciplinary Certificate" is designed as an area of specialization for community members and students pursuing a humanities, social sciences, art, or professional degree at UNM

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April 26, 2023 - Consensus memo sign-on letter by Drs. Nancy Lopez, Yasmiyn Irizarry, Edward Vargas on why Office of Management and Budget (OMB) initial proposals to combine Race and Ethnicity into one question will nullify intersectional analysis and impede our ability to discern racialized inequities

UNM Race and Social Justice Graduate Certificate

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Available to Enrolled and Non-Enrolled UNM Students, Community, Staff, Faculty

Undergraduate Version of the Race and Social Certificate also now available

Association and Organizational Statements on Race

The Institute is curating statements from scholarly, community-oriented, and human rights-focused organizations on race and racial discrimination in our world. Take a look here and contact us if you have any suggestions to add. Non-English suggestions are always welcomed.

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Race and Social Justice News

Nancy Lopez Wins $110K grant for intersectionality research

January 11, 2024

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded $110,000 for a yearlong study on how universities employ intersectionality or the idea that race, gender and class must be recorded as simultaneous categories of experience in data collection to truly understand complex configurations of inequities in higher education and other policy arenas. Nancy López, professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology and director and co-founder of the Institute for the Study of "Race" & Social Justice. The project titled, "Climate for Latino Students: Employing Intersectionality for Understanding Latino Student Success in Higher Education,” will seek to establish a gold standard for how universities track and understand the complexities of student social statuses including details on race, gender, class and ethnicity all together. Another important element of the study is recognizing that Latino ethnicity is a cultural heritage and not a race, which is a social status and position in society that has a visual component. This is why it is important to have a both-and approach for measuring race that includes how you identify and how others see you, which could be measured as street race — the race others assume you belong to based on a conglomeration of physical characteristics, such as skin color, facial features and hair texture, which research shows is often the basis of racial discrimination. The research team includes co-principal investigators Dr. Nancy López, professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology and director and co-founder of the Institute for the Study of "Race" & Social Justice, Dr. Yasmiyn Irizarry, an associate professor at the University of Texas- Austin and lead primary investigator, and Dr. Edward Vargas, an associate professor at Arizona State University. The three have collaborated on several intersectionality research projects in the past few years, including a $1.5 million three-year Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant (2021-2025), where Dr. Nancy López is the lead primary investigator, to employ intersectionality in revising Office of Management and Budget (OMB) race and ethnicity federal guidelines, which impact all federal agencies in the country, including the U.S. Census. López and co-principal investigators submitted a consensus memo signed by over 100 people, mostly scholars of race, ethnicity and inequality, opposing OMB's initial proposals to ask about race and ethnicity in one question because regardless of intent, it will undermine our ability to illuminate racialized inequities with Hispanic communities and beyond; it also undermines civil rights monitoring, enforcement, and equity-minded policy development. ... [Read More]

Sign up for Intersectionality News

December 6, 2023

We’d like to take this time to invite you to the project mailing list for our newly funded National Science Foundation Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI) project - Intersectionality as Inquiry & Praxis: Race, Class, Gender & Ethnicity for Student Success in STEM, Award # 2310991. Our project is a partnership between The University of New Mexico (UNM), New Mexico State University (NMSU), Central New Mexico Community College (CNM), City College of New York (CUNY- CCNY) Lehman College (CUNY) and Hostos Community College (CUNY) to catalyze enduring transformational equity through adopting intersectionality as inquiry and praxis as a normative principle. Our objectives are to: Re-envision data and equity metrics for generating policies for action and impact Convene communities of practice among faculty and other stakeholder communities Transform equity narratives in our strategic communications and publications To join our listserv and learn more about our project and upcoming events please visit our project website at: hsistemintersectionality.com HSI STEM INTERSECTIONALITY & STUDENT SUCCESS DROP-IN VIRTUAL OFFICE HOURS - 2 HOURS - COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE - CAFECITO CONVIVENCIA Y COMUNIDAD (COFFEE FELLOWSHIP & COMMUNITY) – 9-11 am MT FIRST FRIDAY OF THE MONTH FOR SPRING 2024 Sign-up for reminders at: hsistemintersectionality.com. Please invite anyone who may be interested. Time: Feb 2, 2024 09:00 AM - 11:00 MT Mountain Time (US and Canada) - FIRST FRIDAY OF THE MONTH Feb 2, 2024 09:00 AM -11:00 AM MT Mar 1, 2024 09:00 AM - 11:00 AM MT Apr 5, 2024 09:00 AM - 11:00 AM MT May 3, 2024 09:00 AM - 11:00 AM MT Join Zoom Meeting https://unm.zoom.us/j/93666313808 ... [Read More]