Stories

The Child Studies Program welcomed Nikole Hannah-Jones a 2017 MacArthur Genius Grant Fellow, as their  2018 Compassion in Action for Children Symposium distinguished speaker. Hannah-Jones covers racial injustice for The New York Times Magazine and has spent years chronicling the way official policy has created—and maintains—racial segregation in housing and schools. She is recognized for significantly impacting national conversations around education reform and for her reporting on racial re-segregation in our schools. In her campus address Hannah-Jones fearlessly called out of the racial injustices plaguing our education system decades after the passage of Brown v. Board of Education and the 1968 Fair Housing Act. Citing national and local achievement data, as well as personal stories, she emphasized the consequences of individual actions and passive in actions when it comes to ensuring that all children have access to a quality public education. National and local achievement data, as well as personal stories, drove home her message. The audience was moved by the presentation and invigorated by the Q&A session that followed.