As a private research institution situated at this crossroads, the University of Miami has a special opportunity and responsibility to collaborate with our neighbors to solve pressing problems that currently pose urgent threats to the survival of the most marginal. Currently, the University of Miami is in an excellent position to optimize its geographic location, and its exceptionally transnational student body, faculty, and staff. Black Studies faculty at the University of Miami boast wide and productive transnational ties, including award-winning and joint-publishing, collaborative and consortia research, guest teaching, mentorship of graduate students; as well as language proficiency, personal ties, and cultural competencies spanning Africa, Europe, and especially throughout the Caribbean and Greater Americas.

The University of Miami Program in Africana Studies offers undergraduates the opportunity to explore both distinctive Black intellectual and social-cultural traditions that Africans (on the continent and in Diaspora) have created, and the political-economic and historical structures they face. Through the centralized support of the University of Miami Center for Global Black Studies, we collaborate with the Program to not only encourage more leading-edge and intensively research-based courses for students who have identified an interest Black Studies, but also, for all UM students.

The first example of this in our “incubation” stage is the new “Black Miami Studies” Africana Studies course. Designed by Dr. Francis and co-taught with Dr. Allen, the Fall 2021 course introduced undergraduate students to race as a key analytical category in every field while also introducing them to UM faculty and their related research and scholarship on Black Miami. Distinguished local journalist and oral historian Nadege Green, who is the Center’s inaugural Community-Scholar-in-Residence, and many professors across a range of disciplines across many UM campuses generously gave their time to this course that we intend to offer each year