Introducing the Miami Institute: An Overview

Oct 15

Written By Miami Institute for the Social Sciences .

Note: In this first series of posts, Maribel Morey introduces the Miami Institute’s mission, goals, deliverables, funding plans, and reasons for its geographic location in Miami. This first essay describes how the Miami Institute— established as a nonprofit organization in Florida this summer of 2020— has been inspired by the institutional structure of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and by Global Majority scholars’ lived experiences studying, researching, and teaching in the Global North.

I am not unaware of the fact that I have sketched an educational Utopia. I have deliberately hitched the Institute to a star; it would be wrong to begin with any other ambition or aspiration.
— Abraham Flexner, Founding Director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, USA.

Describing the vast intellectual ambition and purpose of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, Founding Director Abraham Flexner elaborated that it would be a space where scholars could “devote themselves to the task of pushing beyond the present limits of human knowledge and to training those who may ‘carry on’ in this sense.”

Like the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Miami Institute for the Social Sciences in Miami, Florida, will be an independent research institute, unaffiliated with a university. Though similarly committed to engaging with scholars’ production of knowledge in the academe, the Miami Institute plans for its global community of scholars to be rooted both within and outside the academe. Even more, and like IAS, the Miami Institute plans to become a physical community of scholars. That said, and compared to IAS, the Miami Institute expects to achieve growth as a physical community of scholars at a slower pace, in sync with its plans to depend first and primarily—rather than on lump sums from elite philanthropists and philanthropies in the Global North, as IAS early on did—on grassroots funding within Global Majority populations.

And compared to IAS which generally has framed this utopia as “‘an intellectual hotel’—a refuge to which scholars could repair for any length of time and have their worldly needs taken care of by others”—the Miami Institute will have the immediate mandate of being a haven for scholars intent on addressing discrimination and bias against the Global Majority in the construction of knowledge in the social sciences, as means for improving research quality in these fields and for building more inclusive national and global political economies. More broadly, the Miami Institute’s aim is to enable the scientific output of the Global Majority to play its proper role in the social transformation and development of our shared world as well as the theoretical advancement of the social sciences. In this vein, the Miami Institute purposefully will be a meeting place for Global Majority scholars around the world, based in a city at the geographic crossroads of the Global South and North.

This is all to say that the Miami Institute is being established for many of us Global Majority scholars who have wanted to discover what it would mean to produce scholarship on the Global Majority in the social sciences beyond the white gaze of a dominating Global North academe and philanthropic circles. It is being established for all of us Global Majority scholars in the social sciences who intuitively have felt—but have not had the intellectual space or encouragement to investigate exactly—how knowledge production in the social sciences in the Global North academe discriminates against the Global Majority, even as it touts itself as the supreme judge and supplier of authoritative and objective knowledge on human beings all around the world.

Even more, it is being created for all of us scholars in the social sciences who have felt that these fields are (or at the very least, should be) public goods serving the public— and not just the most powerful public, but the holistic public. And that the social sciences, as public goods, have an ethical obligation to investigate any and all ways that knowledge production in these fields might be discriminating against a significant segment of national and international publics: the Global Majority. Because mapping ways to discover, define, and produce knowledge in the social sciences free of discrimination and bias against the Global Majority not only cultivates greater intellectual rigor and integrity within these scholarly fields, but helps reshape the narratives about human sameness and difference that we fellow human beings tell ourselves and each other in order to justify unity or disunity among ourselves at the national and international levels.

It is also being founded for those of us Global Majority scholars who feel that there is absolute value in the existence of authoritative knowledge on humanity, or rather scientific knowledge on humanity; and because of that, that there is absolute value in debating the contours of what it means to produce authoritative knowledge in our fields, and that authoritative knowledge in these fields requires a reckoning with their discrimination and bias against the Global Majority.

Of course, the immediate focus of the Miami Institute on improving the rigor and integrity of the social sciences by analyzing and disrupting discrimination and bias against the Global Majority in these fields is a critical and daunting end itself. That said, and acknowledging the critical importance of authoritative knowledge production in the social sciences for human beings’ sense of perceived difference and sameness among ourselves, the Miami Institute hopes that this work also will serve as critical means for creating greater human unity at the national and global levels—unity that is vital for us all to construct and sustain national and global communities shaped by genuine political, economic, population, and climate stability.

To outline, these are five central premises shaping the Miami Institute’s mission:

That discrimination and bias against the Global Majority exists in the construction of knowledge in the social sciences.
That further centering the scientific output of Global Majority scholars in the social sciences will help decrease discrimination and bias against the Global Majority in these fields.
That decreasing discrimination and bias against the Global Majority in the construction of knowledge in the social sciences will improve the rigor and integrity of these scholarly fields of study, and relatedly, help them better approximate their role as public goods.
That existing discrimination and bias against the Global Majority in the construction of knowledge in the social sciences encourages disunity among racially and ethnically diverse populations at the national and international levels.
That less disunity and more unity (and greater equality and dignified treatment) among members of the national and global communities will lead to more equitable national and international political economies— to greater and more sustainable unity, stability, and peace at the national and international levels.

By centering the work of Global Majority scholars in the social sciences, the Miami Institute thus aims to address inequities in the construction of knowledge on the Global Majority in the social sciences, and by doing so, strengthen the integrity and rigor of these fields and help build more equitable national and international political economies.

It is worth pausing to further underscore that the Miami Institute is being founded in times of crises at U.S. universities and philanthropies, with universities and philanthropies confronting the public health and financial challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and calls from Black Lives Matter protests and #BlackInTheIvory to address white supremacy and anti-Black discrimination in these institutions. Narrowing their budgets during the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, many universities already have halted new hiring for the coming year. Some have gone further by terminating contracts among tenure-track and tenured faculty members. In line with general priorities in the U.S. academe, Global Majority scholars—specifically scholars in Black and Ethnic Studies departments—are particularly vulnerable to these budget cuts. At the same time, universities are publicly proclaiming allegiance to Black Lives Matter protests, though their actual corrective actions to addressing white supremacy in the academe (from hiring practices, institutional cultures, and metrics of excellence) remain opaque, with several universities preferring to hire new diversity administrators or general scholars of race rather than to support and expand the work of existing Black Studies Departments. If we built the Miami Institute within a U.S. university today, what would it mean to compete for university administrators’ attention and financial support? Assuming we secured funding, which compromises in our institutional mission would we need to make, and who among our colleagues would fail to receive funding in the process? For these reasons, and leaning on the organizational model of the IAS, the Miami Institute is being formed as a nonprofit organization independent from a university.

As far as leading philanthropies, for example, the Ford, MacArthur, Kellogg, Mellon, and Doris Duke Charitable foundations announced this past summer plans to increase spending—rather than contract spending as other philanthropies were planning to do in order to maintain their endowments during the current COVID-19 pandemic crisis—and that they would do so by borrowing funds. Ford Foundation President Darren Walker explained that the organization would borrow money by issuing a combination of 30- and 50-year bonds. In this way, these foundations announced how they were preparing to respond to calls from their grantees and the general public to continue and even increase funding to non-profits addressing the financial and public health crises of the COVID-19 pandemic and structural racism underscored by Black Lives Matter protests around the world. And yet, just days after this announcement, on June 16, 2020, Ford President Walker also announced on Twitter: “Social justice is synonymous with economic opportunity: Thrilled and humbled to be working with [Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of Twitter and of Square] on the board of Square.” And a few days later on Juneteenth, Walker rang the opening bell on the New York Stock Exchange. Both moments signal just how undisruptive to the status quo elite philanthropies in the Global North intend to be in their responses to increased economic inequalities during the COVID-19 pandemic, and relatedly, to long-standing systemic racism around the world.

Granted, since this past summer, some U.S. philanthropists and philanthropic organizations have leaned toward funding “with no strings attached,” heeding the warnings of scholars that funders easily can limit the imagination of grantees, whose work towards racial justice, and relatedly, in addressing democratic failures in the U.S. is particularly critical. As far as this heightened sensibility among some leading philanthropists and their organizations, we welcome them— along with everyone else— to donate to the Miami Institute via a donation link that we soon will establish on this site. Though, at least for the first two years, we will refrain from engaging directly with foundation program officers. Because we need time and space to establish our own institutional voice. Because we want an opportunity to ask ourselves— Global Majority scholars in the social sciences around the world— what we would imagine as our ideal space for re-imagining our fields as the public goods that they should be.

This is all to say that dynamics and developments within leading Global North philanthropies and universities underscore the importance of establishing the Miami Institute, a space developed by and for Global Majority scholars within and outside the academe to discuss, debate, and shape— with some geographic, institutional, and financial independence from elite foundations and universities in the Global North— the future of knowledge production on the Global Majority in the social sciences.

Ultimately, the Miami Institute aims to become a bricks and mortar meeting place akin in organizational structure to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, with the necessary funding to support visitors and permanent faculty members. Though most immediately during its first two years of existence, the Miami Institute plans to bring scholars together through virtual means on this open-access website (miamisocialsciences.org). As subsequent posts explain, this decision reflects both the physical distancing recommendations during this COVID-19 pandemic and our goal to rely on grassroots funding for these first two years.

As Founding Executive Director, I will be nurturing this virtual platform; and in doing so, I will be relating my experience building a virtual community of scholars. In 2015, I co-founded and continue to edit an open-access website on the history of philanthropy, HistPhil. HistPhil now includes over 200 contributors, over 700 email subscribers, and approximately 1,000 visitors per week.

The Miami Institute is being launched with a Founding Board of Directors that includes Drs. Caroline Shenaz Hossein (York University), Alden Young (UCLA), Yan Long (UC Berkeley), Aziz Rana (Cornell Law School), Inderjeet Parmar (City, University of London), Leah Wright Rigueur (Harvard Kennedy School), and Evelynn Hammonds (Harvard University).

Please join us as we begin to build our vision for an educational utopia created by and for Global Majority scholars in the social sciences.

-Maribel Morey, Founder and Founding Executive Director, Miami Institute for the Social Sciences.

List of Sources:

Linda G. Arntzenius, Images of America: Institute for Advanced Study (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2011).

“Charleston to Serve as Harvard’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer,” Harvard Crimson (June 20, 2020); “Point University Names Phillips Chief Diversity Officer,” Valley Times-News (June 25, 2020); “Why Columbus State is Hiring a Chief Diversity Officer,” Columbus Business First (June 26, 2020).

Chronicle Staff, “As Covid-19 Pummels Budgets, Colleges are Resorting to Layoffs and Furloughs. Here’s the Latest,” Chronicle of Higher Education (May 13, 2020).

“Darren Walker Rings the Bell at NYSE on Juneteenth,” June 19, 2020, Ford Foundation Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/FordFoundation/videos/darren-walker-rings-the-bell-at-nyse-on-juneteenth/290010205715120/?__so__=permalink&__rv__=related_videos

IAS website, “Mission statement of the Institute for Advanced Study by founding Director Abraham Flexner, Organization Meeting, October 10, 1930,” https://www.ias.edu/about/mission-history

Marissa Michaels, “U. freezes salaries, still weighs policies for tenure-track faculty,” Daily Princetonian (April 9, 2020); Colleen Flaherty, “Fozen Searches,” Inside Higher Ed (April 2, 2020).

“Ohio University Begins Layoffs with 140 Union Workers, Furloughs Likely,” WOUB Public Media (May 2, 2020): https://woub.org/2020/05/02/ohio-university-begins-layoffs-with-140-union-workers-furloughs-likely/.

Ed Regis, Who Got Einstein’s Office?: Electricity and Genius at the Institute for Advanced Study (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Perseus Publishing, 1987).

James B. Stewart and Nicholas Kulish, “Leading Foundations Pledge to Give More, Hoping to Upend Philanthropy,” The New York Times (June 10, 2020): https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/10/business/ford-foundation-bonds-coronavirus.html

Darren Walker, Twitter, June 16, 2020: https://twitter.com/darrenwalker/status/1273000240589819905