The Program in Racism, Immigration, and Citizenship (RIC) seeks up to six faculty researchers to conduct studies on racism in the making of methods and networks in the academic disciplines at Johns Hopkins University (JHU). As the birthplace of American doctoral education in history, political science, and several adjacent fields and subfields in the humanities and social sciences, Johns Hopkins University has played an integral role in the realization of pathbreaking original research. Over the last 150 years, the university has also helped address countless civic and social challenges through creative work in qualitative fields and basic sciences.
This history includes, too, a wide and braided history of discriminatory hiring practices, exclusionary research methods, segregationist land-grabbing, and intellectual and institutional defenses of white supremacy.
Racist professional habits, on the one hand, and the struggles against such habits, on the other, have shaped the institutional history of universities like JHU and much about higher education more generally. This conflict remains embedded in our shared intellectual history as well. JHU's RIC program now endeavors to document at least part of that story.
Over the next three years, RIC will host a research cluster exploring the legacies of academic racism at and outwards from Johns Hopkins University. The work includes excavating racism in the development academic disciplines and the building of JHU's departments over the last century. It also includes documenting the role of anti-racist social movements in the development and revision of scholarly research methods. And it draws from past institutional practices —progressive and regressive —to speculate creatively and rigorously on the potential for reparative justice in higher education. Supported by a "Just Futures" grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, RIC seeks researchers who, in sum, would work toward a broad anti-racist future through facing one university's racist past and present.
In scope, support, and timeline, this program is designed to remain compatible with faculty members' preexisting research commitments, beginning fall 2021. Year One will conclude with the completion of draft working papers. Year Two will include workshopping and supplemental research, culminating with public programming around the researchers' provisional findings. Year Three will include final reporting and steps toward publication and dissemination in a format to be determined.
Individual or two-person team applications are welcome. Scholars in all fields are encouraged to apply. Non-JHU faculty interested in researching JHU or related topics may also apply.
Selected participants will receive annual, per project salary supplements of up to $22.5k (or not more than 25% salary). No prior expertise in archival research methods is required. As needed, RIC and its institutional partners will offer methodological and personnel support in historical and other research methods.
Applicants should submit a single pdf that includes a letter of interest, CV(s), and a two-page proposal identifying the topic of study, methodological convention, and/or academic unit to be researched. Please send materials and queries to ricjhu@jhu.edu. Review of materials begins March 31, 2021.
