As universities founded before the Civil War grapple with their historical ties to slavery, Penn GSE associate professor Amalia Daché is leading efforts to study reparations and higher education through students’ eyes. Daché is a co-leader of Project SHARPE, a research initiative probing slavery history and reparations in post-secondary education through qualitative and quantitative work.
Short for “Slavery Histories and Reparations in Postsecondary Education,” the project is part of Daché’s work researching educational geographies of opportunity, the impact of slavery, and social activism. Daché and her project co-leader, Juan Carlos Garibay, founded Project SHARPE to “look at work of reparations and what campuses founded before the Civil War are doing to repair,” Daché explains. The initiative has received funding from the Spencer Foundation and the Russell Family Foundation.
Project SHARPE is currently surveying students of African descent from 11 universities over four years about their experiences on campus. The team, which includes graduate and doctoral students, has also built a database of institutions nationwide documenting schools’ work on reparations based on published institutional website content.
Typically, reparations are a means to make amends for past wrongdoings and frequently involve financial payments. In the context of higher education, Daché says reparations are focused on creating and expanding knowledge, and sharing information on cultural, economic, and social ways a school is attempting to repair its past with intentional campus initiatives.
In 2024, Project SHARPE researchers will revisit five campuses and conduct focus groups for more detailed accounts. Daché expects accounts to vary widely based on a school’s location, the institutions’ efforts, and students’ African diasporic migratory backgrounds.
After surveying over a thousand students, Daché says that “our goal is to speak with 100 students across five campuses this fall that can represent a strong model, weaker, intermediate of engaging in reparations and showing how students are doing.”
To personalize the stories and lend a multimedia element, Project SHARPE researchers plan to reconnect in four years with 20 participants who joined as first-year students. The students will share their experiences with reparations at their schools and what—if anything—had changed during their tenure.
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