A Call to Colleges and Universities: National Day of Racial Healing – Jan 21

Posted by American Association of Colleges and Universities on January 7, 2025

To mark the ninth annual National Day of Racial Healing (NDORH) on Tuesday, January 21, 2025, the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) calls on colleges and universities across the country to engage in activities, events, or strategies that promote healing, foster engagement around issues of racism, bias, inequity, and injustice, and build an equitable and just society where all individuals can thrive.

The National Day of Racial Healing was created by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation as part of its Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation™ (TRHT) effort to plan for and bring about transformational and sustainable change through a structured, community-based process. Held on the Tuesday following the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, the annual observance is an opportunity to engage in collective action to create a more just and equitable world.

AAC&U works with higher education institutions across the country to develop self-sustaining, community-integrated TRHT Campus Centers. Organized around the five pillars of the TRHT framework—narrative change, racial healing and relationship building, separation, law, and economy—the centers are preparing the next generation of leaders to address racism and dismantle the false belief in a hierarchy of human value.

As Gail Christopher, one of the nation’s leading advocates for racial healing, observes in Strengthening Campus Communities Through the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Framework, racial healing circles are an important part of the THRT framework that move individuals and institutions on “a journey from fractionalized to wholeness, from division and separateness to unity.”

“Amid increasing polarization, partisanship, and politicized attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion, Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Campus Centers are more critical than ever to furthering AAC&U’s mission of advancing the democratic purposes of higher education by promoting equity, innovation, and excellence in liberal education,” said AAC&U President Lynn Pasquerella. “We celebrate the invaluable contributions of the TRHT network and look forward to our continued collaboration aimed at jettisoning the belief in a hierarchy of human value and catalyzing narrative change to tell a fuller story of our shared history.

We encourage colleges and universities to plan and promote NDORH activities unique to their individual missions and contexts, such as:

• organizing racial healing activities in connection with already-scheduled Martin Luther King Jr. Day events;
• inviting and encouraging faculty members to connect course content to racial healing on that day or during that week;
• coordinating stand-alone or integrated events on campus that address racial healing; and
• sharing stories, event details, photos, and videos via social media using the hashtag #HowWeHeal.

Resources to help you plan and promote your NDORH events, including a set of action kits for students, educators, and others, are available here.

Click here to discover what some TRHT Campus Centers are doing to commemorate the NDORH on January 21.