"Pandemic Politics: From Lockdown to Liberation” is a Detroit community-based course that welcomes participation by the general public, including college students from both U-M and Wayne State University. The class is hosted and developed by a partnership among: the General Baker Institute (a non-profit community-based organization located in NW Detroit) faculty in the U-M Semester in Detroit Program, and faculty from the Wayne State University Department of African-American Studies and the Damon Keith Center for Civil Rights. This class is made possible with generous support provided by the Michigan-Mellon Project on the Egalitarian Metropolis, College of LSA & A. Alfred Taubman College of. Architecture and Urban Planning.
The minicourse will explore contemporary and historical intersections between public health and structural racism - both in Detroit and throughout U.S. society more broadly. Each week, we will be joined by Detroit activist-scholars who will help everyone more deeply understand what is happening today in Detroit and in our country more broadly.

In addition to the class content described above, U-M students who register for the 1-credit mini-course will also have the opportunity to meet and to learn from some of the veteran Detroit activists who are building the General Baker Institute (GBI). The organization recently opened its new community center in NW Detroit to honor the legacy of General Gordon Baker Jr., one of the most important labor and community activists in modern Detroit history.

For more information about this public series, please contact Craig Regester, Semester in Detroit Associate Director, at 313-505-5185 or email: regester@umich.edu. Session themes are outlined below, and the speakers will be announced (as well as suggested reading materials) on this website closer to the session dates.