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The City University of New York system has received $5 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to launch the state’s first graduate degree program in Black, Race and Ethnic Studies, according to a press release from the system.
“Amid a nationwide effort to undermine the very concept of diversity and inclusion, the new graduate program in Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies (BRES) will provide a much-needed resource to drive social change, open new avenues of opportunity for our students, and sustain CUNY’s mission to uplift New York’s most underserved communities,” CUNY system chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez said in a press release.
CUNY is one of 95 grantees awarded funding from the foundation to support race, ethnic, gender and sexuality studies. According to the press release, $2.3 million of the $5 million grant will go toward incoming doctoral students and the remainder will be used to hire new professors. Students will fulfill the curriculum requirements for a humanities or social science discipline of their choice while taking Black, Race and Ethnic Studies seminars. The CUNY Graduate Center, which is running the program, will also offer a master’s degree program in Black, Race and Ethnic Studies.
The new programs were born out of CUNY’s Black, Race and Ethnic Studies Initiative launched in 2020, in which 126 faculty and staff member applicants received funding from the Mellon Foundation for projects to advance research and coursework on race and ethnicity and improve campus climate. The BRES Hub was founded in spring 2023 to convene professors and graduate students interested in relevant interdisciplinary work.
