A virtual information session will be held Wednesday, Jan. 18, to offer information and a forum for questions for researchers wanting to submit proposals for presentations at the inaugural MetLife Foundation-Lender Center for Social Justice Symposium.

The information session will be held online from 4 to 5 p.m. Details will be provided about the types of research presentations being sought, the presenter selection process and timeline and submission requirements.

Proposals are due by Friday, Jan. 27, according to Kira Reed, associate professor of management in the Whitman School and co-lead for the University’s Social Differences, Social Justice research cluster.

Those interested can sign up to attend via this registration link.

Symposium March 30-31

The inaugural MetLife Foundation-Lender Center for Social Justice Symposium is being held on campus March 30-31. It is among several initiatives the Lender Center for Social Justice is leading to examine the racial wealth gap in America. The MetLife Foundation awarded Syracuse University and the Lender Center $2.7 million in the fall to promote new research that can help dismantle the root causes of racial wealth disparity.

Reed says the issue is an important one to address, understand and bring to wider public awareness. “The wealth gap is a continuous issue that undermines progress and opportunities that can be pursued by members of underserved and underrepresented communities. This symposium seeks to share research projects and exchange ideas among faculty, graduate students and leaders across the academy, industry and government on how to understand and respond to this crisis,” she says.

Presentation Topics

Faculty, postdoctoral fellows and doctoral students are invited to submit proposals for presentations on their collaborative and/or interdisciplinary projects and those based on humanistic, theoretical, empirical, case study or applied research. Reed says symposium organizers are looking for research presentations aligned to three tracks:

• Structural and systemic factors positively or negatively impacting the building of generational wealth (i.e., slavery, settler colonialism and historic legacies of racialized violence, racial capitalism, mass incarceration, inheritance laws)
• Policies and practices that generate or minimize racial wealth disparities (i.e., redlining, urban renewal schemes, tax policy, predatory financing, health care burdens, racially disparate housing appraisals)
• Individual and organizational-level factors that influence educational attainment, skills acquisition and career development (i.e., educational inequities, hiring queues, corporate programs)

More information about submissions and topics of interest is available on the Lender Center website.

Gretchen Purser, interim director of the Lender Center for Social Justice and associate professor of sociology in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, says she welcomes the opportunities this grant provides to center attention on the problem of ever-expanding inequality.

In addition to the symposium, the MetLife Foundation grant provides for the University’s coordination of discussions among social justice leaders to gain insights on the wealth gap issue, the hiring of postdoctoral researchers at the University, and conducting of new data-collection and evidence-gathering activities to pinpoint impacts of the wealth gap.