2024 Truth and Transformation Conference
Online Event
Virtual Event
2:00 pm – 5:00 pm EDT
Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project
If you don’t have multiracial democracy, you don’t have democracy. How can we truly achieve antiracist change?
The Institutional Antiracism and Accountability (IARA) Project conducts rigorous research to find what works — and doesn’t — to create antiracist change.
As institutions make commitments to racial equity, there’s a growing need for effective and implementable policies and practices. Research can play a crucial role in identifying field-tested solutions.
Practitioners in the field want to know: Which structures and strategies are proven to achieve more equitable outcomes for Black, Indigenous, and communities of color? And which are ineffective or even harmful? The IARA Project evaluates these efforts to move organizations from words to action to accountability.
What does this look like in practice?
IARA’s current work includes:
- Race, Research, and Policy Portal: A free online resource that features easily accessible research summaries on diversity, racial equity, and organizational change.
- Global Processes of Justice, Truth–Telling, and Healing: This three-year project surveys international examples of truth-telling and societal repair, learning directly from those involved in truth commissions across the world and locally in the U.S.
- Healthcare Institutions: This research focuses on the organizational practices and policy changes that effectively create institutional change and community health equity.
- Bias Education: This project aims to inspire parents, teachers, and school leaders to disrupt racism, sexism, xenophobia, and other harmful biases in early childhood education and curricula.
Upcoming Events
A Democracy Post-Mortem: What Exit Poll Data Reveals About Race in America Today
Online Event
Virtual Event
6:00 pm – 7:00 pm EST
The Latest News and Research
Feature
Five ways to use our antiracism resource database
Answer pressing questions, discover new strategies, and more with our Race Research and Policy Portal — a free database featuring easy-to-read summaries of peer-reviewed research.
Feature
Antiracism Summer Reading List
This summer’s recommended reads from the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project includes autobiographies, graphic novels, children’s books, and much more.
Media Release
Research Reveals Path to Effective Antiracist Change in American Healthcare
The Institutional Antiracism and Accountability (IARA) Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation released a new report that provides a comprehensive overview of racial equity in practice and details the critical mechanisms for evaluating antiracism interventions in healthcare institutions.
Video
Key Findings from Antiracist Change in Healthcare Organizations
As a greater number of American healthcare organizations have proclaimed their commitments to racial justice and equitable care, the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project (IARA) team at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation set out to answer the key question: What enables effective and sustained antiracist change in healthcare organizations?
Policy Brief
Antiracist Institutional Change in Healthcare
The IARA project investigates new and existing strategies for antiracist transformation in the healthcare sector.
Feature
As attacks on campus diversity programs grow, HKS researchers point to evidence that equity and inclusion programs strengthen higher ed outcomes
Diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts may have a political target on them, but the scholarly literature is clear that they help universities recruit, retain, and teach a more racially diverse pool of talented students and faculty, says the Kennedy School’s Khalil Gibran Muhammad.
Feature
What does it mean to have a strong multiracial democracy?
The Ash Center’s Khalil Gibran Muhammad and Archon Fung discuss how without a more robust commitment to upholding and protecting multiracial democracy, the United States won’t be able to solve its democratic backsliding.
Media Release
IARA Project Receives Grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
Feature
Representative Barbara Lee on the United States’ need for a “truth-telling moment” on race
As the IARA Truth and Transformation Conference keynote speaker, Lee asks if the U.S. is ready for a national racial reckoning?
Video
Welcome and Panel One: The Great Retreat (Truth and Transformation 2022)
At the 2022 Truth and Transformation conference, during the welcome, we heard from Professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad, head of the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project at Harvard Kennedy School, as well as Talia Landry, Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe.
Video
Panel Two: Facing the Past (Truth and Transformation 2022)
Memorialization efforts and museums are increasingly playing a role in racial reckoning. How are state officials, activists, and organizers using memorials to face the past? How do these efforts connect to the work of truth commissions? How do we mark sites of violence and re(make) them as sites of consciousness-building, truth-telling, and historical documentation?
Video
Midday Keynote with Alvin Warren (Truth and Transformation 2022)
Tune into a musical performance by Raye Zaragoza followed by a keynote by Alvin Warren (Santa Clara Pueblo), former Santa Clara Pueblo lieutenant governor, about the deeper implications of the Land Back movement and how allies can take meaningful action to support Tribal Nations and Indigenous Peoples in these efforts.
Video
Panel Three: Paying It Forward (Truth and Transformation 2022)
Globally, reparations movements are gaining ground. These movements focus on a broad spectrum of ways to return resources, achieve economic security and close the racial wealth gap, including cash payments, repatriating cultural artifacts, land givebacks, health access, and philanthropic investments. What can we learn from these latest efforts in the US and elsewhere? Looking into the future how can we make reparations work?
Feature
It’s not a moment of racial justice backlash—it’s an era—and a crisis of democracy
Speaking in the JFK Jr. Forum, civil rights leader Maya Wiley underscored the entwined fate of democracy and racial justice
Q+A
Acknowledging and Reckoning with History
Historical reckoning, truth-telling, and new traditions of memorialization acknowledging the legacy of slavery are all critical to moving towards restorative and reparative change says Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project Director Khalil Gibran Muhammad.
