The School of Social Transformation

I spoke at Arizona State University on Tuesday and had the pleasure of being introduced to a new academic model that they are pioneering to not only institutionalize the importance of intersectional analysis, but also insert activism in an undeniable way. It’s call the School of Social Transformation. From their new website:

Four units comprise the new School of Social Transformation. Our school brings together four distinct interdisciplinary fields of inquiry with unique identities, histories, constituencies, affiliations, intellectual frameworks and topics of inquiry.

Those are: African and African American Studies, Asian Pacific American Studies, Justice and Social Inquiry, and of course, Women and Gender Studies. How cool is that? It will be fun to see if other schools pick up on this model of interdisciplinary, social justice-oriented, cross-curricular collaboration. It mirrors the real world of work and activism in very significant ways, not to mention being politically viable and intellectually honest. Congrats to the ASU folks for being so visionary.