Anti-Racist Community Engagement: Principles and Practices

Anti-racist Community Engagement: Principles and Practices centers anti-racist community-engaged traditions that BIPOC academics and community members have created through more than a century of collaboration across university and community. It demonstrates both the progress and the work that still needs to be done.

The book is organized around a set of Anti-racist Community Engagement Principles developed by the editors as part of their shared work and dialogue with colleagues regionally and across the country. The significant number of diverse voices that have informed the creation of the principles reveal the groundswell of work underway to center anti-racist values and to pivot away from the traditional, higher education-centric, and “white savior” ways of doing community engagement teaching, research, and practice.

The chapters in this book are organized into four sections, each focused on one of the four Anti-racist Community Engagement Principles. The first section explores the various ways in which reframing our institutional and pedagogical practices can help counteract the persistence and impact of racism on our campuses and in our community engagement work. In the second section, authors share practices that promote critical reflection on individual and systemic/structural racism through examinations of positionality, bias, and historical roots of systemic racism. The third section examines intentional learning and course design through anti-racist learning goals, course content, policies, and assessment. Finally, the fourth section shows how authors have developed compassionate and reflective classrooms by creating a sense of belonging that acknowledges student cultural assets and contributions and meets students where they are to co-create a supportive anti-racist learning environment.

Each chapter in the book introduces a specific example of anti-racist community engagement, with authors providing unique, situated insights into the nature and complexity of the factors at play. This is followed by a “Practice” section where authors reflect on their engagement, and the lessons learned through it, thus leaving readers with detailed insights and roadmaps for adapting or replicating the work. Finally, a “Connections” section places the case and its practices into broader contexts of pedagogical, curricular, institutional, and community change.

There is an open access digital companion to the volume, where authors have shared materials that will help shed further light on their compelling practices, including syllabi, agendas, handouts, worksheets, and additional resources.

Christina Santana is an Associate Professor English (writing) at Worcester State University. She enjoys working collaboratively – especially across different experience and expertise – and on projects that enable/empower others to contribute to the common good.

Aldo Garcia-Guevara is professor of History at Worcester State University. He has spent his academic career developing and creating community-engaged courses and experiences for students, locally and internationally, applying anti-racist principles to these efforts. His publications include articles for The Journal of World History and World History Connected.

Joseph Krupczynski is a professor of Architecture and the Director of Civic Engagement & Service-Learning at UMass Amherst. A first-generation college student from a Puerto Rican and Polish family, his scholarship and creative practice is founded on cross-cultural investigations that catalyze transformative engagement, liberatory learning and spatial justice.

Cynthia Lynch is the Executive Director of the Center for Civic Engagement at Salem State University. Her research and praxis focus on the intersection of civic engagement, equity, and student and community success. Her publications include articles for AAC&U’s Diversity and Democracy and the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning.

John Reiff has worked with civic engagement and service-learning in higher education since 1980―teaching, directing service-learning/civic engagement offices, then since 2015 working through the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education where he helps Massachusetts’s 29 public colleges and universities rethink civic learning through a lens of racial equity.