Featured Articles

Toward Genuine Equality Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr. on his birthday, January 15, is timely in the context of the upheavals happening in the United States. Remembering this courageous and thoughtful man has allowed me to review his works. One of his speeches is pertinent today as it was in 1967, over 50 years ago.

Join Dr. Hasan Jeffries, Associate Professor of History and Kirwan Institute Faculty Affiliate as we revisit and analyze Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter From Birmingham Jail. Originally published in June of 1963, Dr. King’s words continue to be relevant amidst growing racial tensions in modern day America.

Focus on Underrepresented Racial and Ethnic Groups in Research Pilot Program Request for Applications for Projects AY 2021-2022   Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity

U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, The Ohio State University’s Kirwan Institute, and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center hosted a second event in the My Brother's Keeper Ohio (MBK Ohio) virtual leadership series. Josh Cribbs, the former Cleveland Browns wide receiver who was recently named to the Browns’ Legend Class of 2020,  also participated and provided opening remarks on the importance of mental health to overall success.

November 17 | 6:00 p.m.  Dean Amy Fairchild welcomes you to join the College of Public Health for a conversation with Dr. RaShall Brackney. Brackney, chief of police for Charlottesville, Virginia, will discuss the path forward in America, including a need to uproot policing as we know it and regrow American law enforcement in partnership with the communities police are meant to serve.

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Building on an idea developed and long championed by economists Darrick Hamilton and William “Sandy” Darity Jr., as well as 15 years of practice and research around children’s savings programs, A Birthright to Capital outlines the case for why the United States government should provide an account, with up to $60,000 held in public trust, to every one of the four million children born each year in the United States, and why this economic right to wealth, often referred to as a Baby Bond or a Baby Trust, should be calibrated to the economic position of a child’s family.

This is a joint publication between the Center for American Progress and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University, The column was co-authored with Darrick Hamilton of the Kirwan Institute. Author's Note: CAP uses "Black and African American" interchangeably throughout many of our products. We chose to capitalize "Black" in order to reflect that we are discussing a group of people and to be consistent with the capitalization of "African-American."

The deep and persistent racial wealth divide will not close without bold, structural reform. The racial wealth divide is greater today than it was nearly four decades ago, and trends point to its continued widening.

The US economy has been structured by rules that either privilege or exploit people based on their race. Our nation’s legacy of implicit and explicit racial exclusions continue to have a deep impact on who is able to meaningfully participate and profit in the current American economy and who is left behind.

The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), the federal agency for volunteering and service, has awarded the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race & Ethnicity a three-year grant of more than $450,000 for 10 AmeriCorps VISTA members to support the work of My Brother’s Keeper Ohio (MBK Ohio).

Kirwan’s own Lena Tenney was featured in the National Association of Financial Aid Administrators NASFAA Annual Impact Report. Click here to read the article, titled “did they really just say that?!”  

The Kirwan Institute would like to thank our partners, funders and collaborators for their support of our work over the last 15 years.

The opiate epidemic is creating a new conversation around drug policy and criminal reform efforts across the country. Opioid related overdose deaths have hit a critical point and have begun to reach traditionally unaffected communities. As communities wrestle with overburdened jails and prisons and insufficient mental health and drug treatment facilities, policymakers and the public are challenging the strategy of criminalization utilized during the last 40 years of the War on Drugs.

By Sahra Ahmed

By Jonathan Branfman PhD Candidate & Instructor in Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies

By Preshuslee Thompson Part 1

By Abel Koury

“Oooooo his hair is like mine,” I heard a wide-eyed, mahogany-skin faced little boy whisper to his friend as I passed them. His words eased some of my anxiety as I entered an unfamiliar school, in an unfamiliar state, with an unfamiliar task, that often felt unattainable. As a way to end the school-to-prison pipeline, I was to coordinate a mentoring research program for the “at-risk” Black male students at a low-income serving elementary school. I knew a major reason I had gotten the position was because I was a Black male, but I knew that would not be enough.