Schedule
Friday, April 10, 2026
8:30 – 9:00 AM | Breakfast
9:00 – 9:15 AM | Introductions
9:15 – 10:45 AM | Session 1: Theory
Panelists: Regina Baker, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill;
Deadric T. Williams, University of Tennessee
Recent work across disciplines has attempted to align empirical research on racism with theoretical constructivist notions of race. This literature increasingly critiques approaches that simply treat “race as a variable.” A notable response to such critiques has been to develop novel measures of “racism” as a variable. Such a response attempts to more directly get at how racism makes race possible; however, extant questions remain. In this session, we will grapple with how to think about racism in theoretical terms and what that might mean for how we go about studying racism.
10:45 – 11:00 AM | Break
11:00 AM – 12:30 PM | Session 2: Empirics
Panelists: Tyson H. Brown, Duke University;
Tukufu Zuberi, University of Pennsylvania;
Nick Graetz, University of Minnesota
What gets measured gets managed. A growing research literature focuses on empirical refinement in how we measure structural racism. In this session, we will discuss the state of the art of measurement with an eye towards cohering best practices on studying, measuring, and even interpreting findings on structural racism in empirical research. Our conversation will invite panelists to offer thoughts on how to interpret variation or think about variation in racism, whether that is across institutional domains, time, or places.
12:30 – 1:30 PM | Lunch
1:30 – 3:00 PM | Session 3: Narrative
Panelists: Victor Ray, University of Iowa;
Elizabeth Korver-Glenn, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Core to the history of studying racism in the U.S. has been pushing back against dominant narratives and interpretations of historical events and statistics. A classic example in this regard is Black Reconstruction by W.E.B. Du Bios. Just as Du Bois sought to push back against the “propaganda of history,” in this session, we will think about how to effectively communicate research on structural racism to larger public(s) by drawing on panelists’ experiences.