Forging Pathways to a Just Future.
We support and sustain a community of scholars, students, and engaged partners who generate and act upon visions of just futures, where all people can thrive.
We bring together people, knowledge, and action to forge paths to a transformed future.
We have three core strategies for achieving our mission
Cultivate communities of learning
Support innovative research, performance, and art
Catalyze action
Cultivate communities of learning
We create transformative educational opportunities that foster dialogue and deepen connections between faculty, students, postdocs, and community members working in the area of racial justice.
Support innovative research, performance, and art
Support innovative research, performance, and art across disciplines to develop knowledge and produce ideas about race, racism, and reinforcing dimensions of inequality.
Catalyze action
Catalyze action that carries impact beyond Cornell and is responsive to the challenges and opportunities identified through research, practice, and community partnership.
Who We Are
We focus on learning, knowing, and doing. Researchers at the center conduct research and deploy what we learn to create change in communities. We work collaboratively, guided by a grounded and strategic vision of how social change is achieved.
Our Programs
The Center for Racial Justice and Equitable Futures bridges research and action to advance positive change. We bring together researchers, organizations, and communities to co-develop knowledge that equips ordinary people to forge paths toward a more just world.
Collaborating with partners allows for tangible community impact.
Futures We Support
In order to build a durable foundation for the work of advancing racial justice, strategic collaboration is a must. We foster partnerships between researchers and social change organizations that seed ideas, co-produce research, and apply knowledge in rigorous and meaningful ways. Our programs and partnerships emphasize interdependence and organizing as paths toward narrative shifts, powerbuilding, and social change.
Our work has, by design, tangible impact beyond Cornell, responding to the challenges identified through research and in partnerships.
News
Grant will fund first-of-its-kind National Youth Purpose Survey
Anthony Burrow, RJEF advisory group member, has received a major grant that will fund a National Youth Purpose Survey to understand how young people develop and experience a sense of purpose.
Podcast: Power and Its Impact on Medicaid w/ Jamila Michener
In the wake of Medicare and Medicaid's 60th anniversary, Health Affairs' Jeff Byers speaks with Jamila Michener of Cornell University to discuss her recent Forefront article on organized power and its impact on the future of Medicaid.
The Future Of Medicaid And The Imperative Of Organized Power
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB) passed in July 2025 could reduce Medicaid enrollment by nearly eight million in less than a decade. This is is the most significant retrenchment in Medicaid’s 60-year history, but it did not emerge spontaneously or surreptitiously.
Beyond fear of backlash: Effects of messages about structural drivers of COVID-19 disparities among large samples of Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White Americans
Although U.S. health disparities are well-documented, the very communities that bear the brunt of those disparities are, ironically, underrepresented in scientific efforts to understand and address them. By prioritizing the perspectives of White Americans, studies of pandemic disparities likely missed important insights.
Discrimination in daily life: effects on sense of purpose and derailment
A new study investigates the numerous harms of discrimination, which “may leave individuals feeling derailed or disconnected from one’s past self.” Researchers show how daily discrimination, even in periods as short as two weeks, can impact one’s sense of purpose and lead to overall poorer health.
Housing insecurity and U.S. economic policies: Lessons from tenant organizing
Jamila Michener demonstrates how the growing movement of tenant organizing “illuminates a path toward U.S. economic policies that are responsive to the needs of people and communities, nourishing to democracy, and an antidote to the worse excesses of populism.”
Events
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Your action makes a difference!
The research, learning, and action we undertake at RJEF require significant resources. Supporting RJEF is one way you can help to advance our mission.