Contemporary Black Women\u27s Voting Rights Activism: Some Historical Perspective

As the United States arrived at the brink of the 2020 election, three interdisciplinary scholars engaged in a panel discussion about why and how Black women of all classes have been at the forefront of movements for civil rights and economic justice. Based on their expertise on race, gender, and class, and scholarly backgrounds in history, labor studies, and political science, this paper presents perspectives on the critical role of Black women in simultaneously fighting for the right to vote, while protesting the disenfranchisement of all African Americans from the Reconstruction Era to the present. The paper discusses why and how previously marginalized groups have struggled to gain inclusion in the American political system, and how the efforts of Black women have shaped and prodded efforts to build a more democratic nation

Making the Diversity Investment: Building Inclusive Research Environments in STEM

This presentation will provide an overview of a two-hour workshop on diversity and inclusion in STEM fields. Moving beyond diversity as an outcome of institutional goodwill or responsibility, this presentation will encourage meaningful investment in diversity at the departmental level through the adoption of practices that create Inclusive Research Environments. We suggest that IREs can foster a positive return on an institution’s diversity investment and also discuss the limits of this approach as a mechanism for institutional change

Contemporary Black Women\u27s Voting Rights Activism: Some Historical Perspective

As the United States arrived at the brink of the 2020 election, three interdisciplinary scholars engaged in a panel discussion about why and how Black women of all classes have been at the forefront of movements for civil rights and economic justice. Based on their expertise on race, gender, and class, and scholarly backgrounds in history, labor studies, and political science, this paper presents perspectives on the critical role of Black women in simultaneously fighting for the right to vote, while protesting the disenfranchisement of all African Americans from the Reconstruction Era to the present. The paper discusses why and how previously marginalized groups have struggled to gain inclusion in the American political system, and how the efforts of Black women have shaped and prodded efforts to build a more democratic nation

Drive-By Solidarity

This article offers a theoretical and empirical exploration of a form of solidarity in which one group spontaneously mobilizes in support of another, unrelated group. It is a fleeting solidarity based not on shared identity but on temporarily aligned goals, one aimed less at persistence and more at short-term impact. We call this drive-by solidarity because of its spontaneous, unilateral, and unsolicited nature. We argue that it is a “thinner” form of solidarity in comparison to “thicker” forms usually conceptualized in the social movement literature. We examine the case of Anonymous’s “Operation KKK” (#OpKKK), an online hacktivist campaign to expose Ku Klux Klan members carried out in support of #BlackLivesMatter protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, in November 2014, and we use social media data to show that, while BLM and Anonymous networks temporarily coordinated during the protests, there is no subsequent evidence of long-term coordination.</jats:p