Prof who advocated $12T for reparations launches 'inequality studies' minor
Duke University has created a “Minor in Inequality Studies” undergraduate program.
A professor who advocated for $12 trillion in Black reparations will help oversee the degree program.
Duke University has announced the creation of a new “Minor in Inequality Studies,” which will be overseen by a professor who recently called for $12 trillion in reparations for African-Americans.
William Darity, director of Duke’s Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity, announced the program in a guest letter in the Duke Chronicle, with Malachi Hacohen; a professor of history, and Adam Hollowell; an adjunct instructor of education.
“Like so many elements of our daily routines during this pandemic, the prevalence of inequality threatens to become a sort of wallpaper: both terrifyingly ubiquitous and painfully mundane,” wrote the group. “Studying it — that is, acknowledging it, confronting it, and persistently striving to recognize and address it — is one way of facing its effects and moving forward with hope.”
The group explained that “inequality overlaps with our social and economic institutions, reinforcing racism, sexism, colorism and other forms of discrimination. To understand inequality and the social and political forces that sustain it requires understanding how businesses are organized or ruined, how families are maintained or split, how laws are passed or tabled, how wealth is accumulated and lost. To understand inequality is to understand the modern world and the conditions that created it.”
Darity said he hopes that the minor will help undergraduates “acquire a rigorous and analytical understanding of social inequality” that they can carry into their careers.
Earlier this year, Campus Reform reported that Darity co-authored a report calling for $12 trillion in slavery reparations, equating to $800,000 for each eligible Black household.
[RELATED: Duke prof proposes $12 trillion in reparations....$800k per eligible Black household]
Darity pinpointed the United States federal government as the “culpable” party in allowing the continuation of slavery, therefore demanding that it “pay the debt” owed to Black Americans.
When Campus Reform asked Darity how the government would be able to pay for the reparations without raising taxes on those who have never owned slaves, he asserted that “nowhere [in the report] do we say the reparations plan must be financed by raising anyone’s taxes.”
He then pointed Campus Reform toward a book written by former Bernie Sanders economics adviser Stephanie Kelton, The Deficit Myth, which advocates for freely printing money to “finance a massive spending agenda, with no concern about debt and deficits,” according to John Cochrane of the Wall Street Journal.
A spokesperson at the National Association of Scholars told Campus Reform that “the university has clearly thought of the non-existent job prospects for students graduating with a degree in ‘Inequality Studies.’”
Campus Reform reached out to Darity for comment; this article will be updated accordingly.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @BenZeisloft
