In these times, fighting for racial justice through
disparate, isolated efforts is an inefficient luxury.
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Civil Rights Summer Fellows
"Study, work, and learn for social justice"
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When we began The Civil Rights Project, we noted a
dangerous separation between the academic and advocacy communities.
A major goal of the Project has been to encourage our collaborating
scholars to interact with advocacy groups in order to better understand
how their research can be used within the context of legal battles,
lobbying efforts, and the larger national debates. At the same time,
we believe that such collaborations help inform the agendas and
strategies adopted by advocates.
Research products win marginal media attention if
they are not tied to related findings elsewhere, and to policy controversies
that can claim the attention of decisionmakers and the public. Litigators
who construct and file suits without benefit of current research
stand reduced chances of success. Civil rights advocates unaware
of studies that could strengthen their public appeals are too easily
marginalized, or may advocate policies already debunked by sound
research. If one thing has become clear to us in five years, it
is that widespread policy changes will occur only through more effective
coordination between advocates, lawyers and researchers.
Civil rights groups not only wish to win victories,
but to be sure that they are fighting for remedies that will actually
work. Researchers need to know that the problems they are working
on are the real issues before society, not simply a current fashion
in a given discipline. We have been very pleased to learn that the
researchers we identified continue to interact with advocacy groups,
much to their mutual benefit.
New polls show that the current
generation of college students are more idealistic and service oriented
than any since the 1960's. If we can work collaboratively with like-minded
organizations to effectively harness such positive energy, we could
help to unleash a new civil rights movement as powerful and far-reaching
as the one that occurred almost a half century ago.
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