Mellon Foundation Awards More Than $18 Million to Public Colleges and Universities for Race, Ethnic, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Newly Created 'Affirming Multivocal Humanities' Initiative Will Support 95 Curricular Programs Across the Nation

NEW YORK, March 26, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The Mellon Foundation announced today that as part of an ongoing commitment to supporting humanities-based learning, the foundation has awarded more than $18 million to 95 public college and university programs—across 66 institutions—that boldly advance the study of race, ethnicity, gender or sexuality through its new 'Affirming Multivocal Humanities' initiative. Funding will support both established and novel curricular programs and co-curricular activities ranging from undergraduate research projects and guest speaker series, microgrants for community organizations and external programs to promote clear understandings of the fields to the public.

As the nation's largest funder of the arts, culture, and humanities, Mellon has long supported the exploration of multivocality within the academic space. Through the Affirming Multivocal Humanities initiative, the foundation further addresses the continuing need for nuanced scholarship on the breadth of the human experience through race, ethnic, gender, and sexuality studies. In this pivotal moment in the history of the United States, research and teaching in these fields epitomize the essential exercise of academic freedom within the US higher education system.

"The study of race, gender, and sexuality has become ever more central to work in the humanities over the last thirty years or so," said Mellon Foundation Director of Higher Learning Phillip Brian Harper, "and it is important that inquiry in these areas—which is of perennial interest to students—continues to enjoy robust support."

"Affirming Multivocal Humanities is an initiative that champions the insightful scholarship and teaching taking place in these disciplines – those that are too often undervalued and even undermined in American society today," said Mellon Foundation President Elizabeth Alexander. "We are proud to support colleges and universities in the United States that are advancing deep research and curricular engagement with the stories and histories of our country's vast diversity and the modes of inquiry that race, gender, and ethnic studies explore and expand."

As part of Affirming Multivocal Humanities, Mellon offered grants of $100,000 to public colleges and universities that awarded at least ten bachelor's degrees in women's/gender and sexuality studies or in any individual US ethnic studies field in 2021. An additional set of larger grants was made to support special initiatives at five public universities. Those five grantee institutions are named below.

SELECT AFFIRMING MULTIVOCAL HUMANITIES GRANTEES: 

• City University of New York (New York, NY) - $5,000,000: In 2020, as part of a $10 million subvention from Mellon, CUNY launched its Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies Initiative (BRESI) to more effectively drive social change and improve the lives of New York State residents and beyond. This new grant is an expansion of that project, through the creation of a University-wide multidisciplinary graduate program in Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies (BRES). The first of its kind in the New York Metropolitan Area, the graduate program will offer a Doctor of Philosophy and a Master of Arts degree in BRES.
  
  
• California State University (Long Beach, CA) - $1,500,000: This grant will grow new and existing Ethnic Studies programs in the California State University system and intersectional pathways with community colleges through expansion of undergraduate and graduate degrees, certificate programs, minors, and associate degrees for transfer. The expansion will focus on programs that link Ethnic Studies concepts to Gender and Sexuality Studies to embed intersectionality into the course content and program frameworks.
  
  
• University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (Honolulu, HI) - $1,250,000: This three-year initiative will launch an interdisciplinary thematic cluster on Asian-American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) environmental humanities and environmental justice, focused on the role of the humanities in addressing critical questions about environmental justice for AAPI communities in Hawai'i, at UHM, and across the US, Asia, and Oceania. The primary goal of the grant is to advance environmental humanities towards environmental justice and educational equity for AAPI students with long-term local, regional, and national impact.
  
  
• University of Kansas (Lawrence, KS) - $1,000,000: With the Trans Studies at the Commons project, KU aims to establish a cohort model for scholar-activists nationwide to gather and collaborate, with KU as a physical and virtual hub for the transdisciplinary network. Main grant activities are the Trans Oral History Project and a Virtual Fellows program. The program aims to catalyze growth in Trans Studies at KU and beyond and to create a more trans-liberatory local and regional landscape through public-facing programs, events, and collaboration with community partners.
  
  
• University of Montana (Missoula, MT) - $1,000,000: This grant takes a novel approach to institutionalizing Indigenous epistemologies in higher education through an innovative 1–2-week Indigenous Scholar-In-Residence program that brings Indigenous Knowledge Holders into higher education settings. The grant also includes support for faculty members using Indigenous research or teaching methods, the creation of a new tenure-track faculty position in Native American Humanities and expanded educational resources for the state's Indigenous Education for All program.

For more information about this initiative and for a complete listing of institutions and their curricular projects, please click here.

About The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation 
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation's largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more at mellon.org.

SOURCE The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation