Blog Posts

People have been asking me how I make sense of the fact that all five of the Memphis police officers who beat Tyre Nichols to death in that heinous attack were Black. Does that mean the attack was not racist? Does it negate race as a factor in the...

Today, we're thrilled to share an extraordinary new work from our Global Senior Fellow Bayo Akomolafe. In many ways, Bayo's piece defies any simple description or summary, but at its most basic, this two-part essay seeks to explore the limits of the...

Where I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, much of our drinking water comes from the Chattahoochee River. The river, whose name comes from the Creek/Muscogee words chato ("rock") and huchi ("painted"), marks the current Alabama-Georgia border and the...

On August 16, 2022, US President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law. The IRA is the largest explicit investment for mitigating climate change in federal history, and a concerted effort to mitigate the pronounced economic pressures faced by Americans...

Most Americans probably encountered the insidious notion of "replacement theory" for the first time in the wake of the horrific mass murder of 10 African Americans in Buffalo, New York in May. The shooter targeted a Black neighborhood for reasons...

Note: This blog is being published on the occasion of California law AB 1466, which is related to this topic, going into effect. The last few years have brought much greater awareness of the degree to which racism is embedded in our society. Although...

In Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization an illegitimate, radical, rightwing court overturned half a century of settled law established by Roe v. Wade to advance a political agenda. But why do I refer to the current US Supreme Court as...

Where we live shouldn’t determine the length or the quality of our lives. We all belong in communities whose conditions allow us to live the healthiest lives possible. These conditions include stable housing, access to quality healthcare, jobs with...

What would it take to collectively own our data? How could we regulate the environmental impact of resource-intensive technologies? These are just some of the big questions about technology facing us on a global scale. In our 2021 landscape scan on...

An ordinance recently passed in Richmond, California, shows a new pathway to ensure that major economic development projects in low-income communities of color are designed for more equitable benefits by delivering local jobs, inclusive hiring, and...

Today we launched the “ Structural Racism Remedies Project ,” a vast repository of scholarship, advocacy, and policy ideas for interventions to dismantle structural and systemic racism. The policies contained in this repository take many forms and...

Nearly a century ago, the state of Tennessee prosecuted a high school teacher for instructing students on the theory of evolution in violation of a state law. The state law was based on a fear that teaching evolution would undermine religious...

As we begin to settle into 2022, my heart and mind are weighed down by the losses we suffered at the end of 2021 and the beginning of this year. With the normal flow of life and death I know there are always those passing on and those joining us...

Many Americans across the political spectrum would readily admit that political polarization and extreme partisanship have become major problems in our society. Partisanship and polarization are not the same thing (you can have one without the other)...

Othering and belonging seem to me to be the critical issues for our species at this point in our history. I am recently retired. For the past 30 years, I worked in food banking. In that time, I have had a chance to observe and appreciate the way our...