How can we bring together change-makers in the US and South Africa to end racism?

Slavery and segregation legacies loom large in the US, and racial discrimination, even if unlawful, remains systemic and omnipresent. In South Africa as well, despite two decades of post-apartheid racial equity programs, black South Africans continue to experience greater poverty, inadequate education, and health disparities.

The Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity is a ten-year, $60 million program with Columbia and the Atlantic Philanthropies Foundation that takes anti-blackness to task. The program supports new leaders dedicated to ending anti-black racism in the US and South Africa, bringing activists, authors, and artists, among others, together to share understandings of the issue, strategic capacities, individual skills, and networks to organize racial equity movements in their home countries and around the world.

“Universities have an essential role to play in addressing the enduring challenges of race and racism in our society,” said Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger. "We have made the commitment to building a diverse, inclusive and just society a core value at Columbia. So we are especially proud to join with The Atlantic Philanthropies and an impressive group of partner organizations in this innovative effort to train a generation of future leaders for a new and necessary civil rights movement." Learn more.