PLANNING IDEAS THAT MATTER:

BLACKNESS, INDIGENEITY, REDISTRIBUTION, AND REPARATIVE PRACTICE

By

K. Agbalajobi, T. Allen, B. Bridgers, M. Davis, S. Diby, M. Fall, S. Gulaid, E. Hall, M. Hill, R. Hoyle,

M. Isidor, R. James, A. Josiah-Faeduwor, S. Lakew, J. Martin, K. McLean, S. Rege, R. St. Hilaire,

M. Wahid, D. Williams

(aka Black DUSP Magic)

and

K. Manymules, in solidarity with Black DUSP Magic

Submitted to the Department of Urban Studies and Planning

on July 10, 2020 in critique of the

requirements for the Degrees of Doctorate, Master, and Bachelor of Science in

City Planning

“Should MIT continue to hold conferences on urban problems without substantial attendance of grass roots Black people- not just so-called leaders of the community? Should MIT continue research in the ghetto without having approval & active participation from the Black people living there?"

SOURCE: MIT Black History, 1968

ABSTRACT

We deserve a DUSP where teaching and research by faculty, staff, and students on topics of decolonization, whiteness, white supremacy, anti-blackness, structural violence, and liberation are funded and thoroughly integrated into all department areas of study. We deserve a DUSP where the student body intentionally represents a myriad of Black and Indigenous experiences, and where students can trust in a transparent and holistic admissions process that moves beyond white supremacist measures of achievement. We deserve programming at DUSP that elevates the work of Black and Indigenous planning scholars and practitioners, provides comprehensive career planning support, allocates funding towards spaces for community-building, and provides centralized information sources for Black and Indigenous students to thrive. We deserve a DUSP whose core curriculum ensures that students are deeply informed of the lineage and rich contributions Black and Indigenous scholar-activists have offered to the planning profession. That our contributions are celebrated as part and parcel of planning curriculum and not solely elective or recommended. We commit to building a reflective and reflexive curriculum that enables all planning students to knowledgeably contribute towards dismantling white supremacy in all of our work. We deserve a DUSP where faculty, staff, and students are held accountable to creating an environment where white supremacy, anti-blackness, and structural violence are not tolerated. We deserve an ethics and culture rooted in anti-racism and an active realignment of academic, research, and fundraising activities with these ethics.

We deserve a DUSP that doesn’t require continual free labor from its Black students in order to reflect and implement anti-racist practice. Despite unfair and uninvited pressure, we generated this document through a community developed process centering ourselves, our experiences, and our visions. This in no way encompasses all that can and should be done. DUSP was not designed with Black and Indigenous individual or communal well-being in mind and has missed many opportunities to change that; so why should Black and Indigenous students come to DUSP at all?

Thesis Supervisor: Our work builds on a lineage of wisdom, love, and labor from the Black students who came before us and who will come after.

TABLE OF CONTENTS        

Align DUSP’s Mouth and Money: Integrate, Fund, and Recognize Black and Indigenous-Led Research and Teaching        

Rectify the Process:  Increase Black and Indigenous Admissions and Create a Holistic and Transparent Admissions Process        

Create a Department That Black Students Don’t Have to Fix        

We LOVE Ananya but Y’all Can Do More: Implement an Anti-Racist Curriculum and Strengthen Anti-Racist Educators        

Racism Cannot Be Fixed by Those Who Refuse to Create Systems of Accountability        

Citations        

Align DUSP’s Mouth and Money: Integrate, Fund, and Recognize Black and Indigenous-Led Research and Teaching

VISION STATEMENT

We deserve a DUSP where teaching and research by faculty, staff, and students on topics of decolonization, whiteness, white supremacy, anti-blackness, structural violence, and liberation are funded and thoroughly integrated into all department areas of study.

KEY PRIORITIES AND IMMEDIATE ACTIONS

1. Create sustained lines of funding for Black and Indigenous MCPs and PhDs, including guaranteed scholarships for any students of the Wampanoag nation. (by 2021 Admissions)

2. Create need-based summer and 5-year lines of funding for PhD students. (by 2021 Admissions)

3. Create need-based funding for incoming graduate students’ summer move-in allowances that cover housing and food expenses for the summer. (by 2021 Admissions)

4. Prioritize Black and Indigenous wellbeing by provisioning health insurance without being contingent upon the granting of an assistantship position. (by Fall 2021)

5. Reform external fellowship policies to reduce assistantship requirements for students that obtain external funding. External fellowships can provide additional support and a sense of community, especially for Black, Indigenous and People of Color. (by Fall 2020)

6. Fund and center the work of CoLab.

1. Provide dedicated funding in the department’s annual budget beginning with the next budget cycle. 

2. Include Participatory Action Research (PAR) as part of the core curriculum for all degree programs. (by Fall 2020)

3. Support courses with at least one TA position funded by the department. (by Fall 2021)

7. Allocate funding for Black and Indigenous-led research and programming. (Immediate)

8. Allocate funding for research that centers decolonization, whiteness, white supremacy, anti-blackness, structural violence, and liberation in staff-led projects and UROP/Thesis/Dissertation work. (Immediate)

9. Create new professorships in Black Urbanism and Black Planning and Indigenous Urbanism and Indigenous Planning. (by Fall 2023)

10. Recognize and reward (through course releases, summer salary, awards, and at tenure review and prizes) faculty involved in anti-racism (including community facing) efforts. (Immediate)

11. Subsidize rent and maintenance fees for the “SCC House.” Students should not be experiencing rent increases from an MIT owned property.  (Fall 2020)

OUTSTANDING QUESTIONS

1. There are no planning subjects that are removed from the centrality of race. How will the department and SA&P stop using whiteness as a default?

2. How will the department routinely assess how it funds anti-racist work?

Rectify the Process: Increase Black and Indigenous Admissions and Create a Holistic and Transparent Admissions Process

VISION STATEMENT 

We deserve a DUSP where the student body intentionally represents a myriad of Black and Indigenous experiences, and where students can trust in a transparent and holistic admissions process that moves beyond white supremacist measures of achievement.

KEY PRIORITIES AND IMMEDIATE ACTIONS

1. Increase class and alumni populations of Black and Indigenous applicants at all levels of the department to at minimum represent the populations in the United States, currently 13.4%. This increase must not only reflect the diversity, equity, and inclusion aims of the present but redress the exclusion of Black students in the past. (by Fall 2021) 

2. Redesign the admissions process and commit to implementing holistic admissions practices:

1. Include a focus on Black students from the U.S. South, immigrant backgrounds, low-income students, and graduates of community colleges, state schools, and those with non-traditional work experience. (by 2021 Admissions)

2. Arrange active recruitment processes from local tribal nations on whose land MIT currently occupies. (by 2021 Admissions)

3. Build partnerships with historically Black colleges and universities and public universities in underrepresented regions such as the U.S. South. (by Fall 2021)

4. Eliminate the GRE requirement and do not accept GRE scores for any graduate programs. (by 2021 Admissions)

5. Make fee waivers transparent, easy to use, and well-advertised. (by 2021 Admissions)

6. Require all faculty, staff, and students who serve on admissions committees to collectively undergo training on holistic admissions and anti-racism. (by 2021 Admissions)

7. Implement an evaluation of admissions processes and criteria on an annual basis. (Immediate)

8. Share annual application, admission and yield demographics with SCC at the conclusion of each admissions cycle. (Immediate)

9. Work with SCC to reform the PASS program accordingly and ensure these efforts are fully compensated. (by 2021 Admissions)

3. Commit to Institute-wide processes and efforts, such as the ICEO plan and BGSA/BSU recommendations.

1. Release a public statement affirming commitment to implementing BGSA/BSU recommendations and inviting other departments to join in this commitment, especially departments that DUSP works closely with, including Architecture and Computer Science. (by Fall 2020 orientation week)

OUTSTANDING QUESTIONS 

1. What are current policies around demographics in admissions, and how will the department ensure the transparency of these admissions processes?

2. How does the current system of program group-based admissions limit the admissions of Black and Indigenous students?

3. Why should Black and Indigenous students even apply to DUSP?

4. Why and how does the Center for Real Estate only have 1 Black student and no Black faculty?

Create a Department That Black Students Don’t Have to Fix

VISION STATEMENT 

We deserve programming at DUSP that elevates the work of Black and Indigenous planning scholars and practitioners, provides comprehensive career planning support, allocates funding towards spaces for community-building, and provides centralized information sources for Black and Indigenous students to thrive.

KEY PRIORITIES AND IMMEDIATE ACTIONS

1. Create comprehensive human-centered career support that sufficiently addresses the needs of Black students:

1. Produce a comprehensive and transparent annual jobs report with DUSP graduate and alumni performance statistics on employment, industry, earnings, race, gender, and etc.  (Immediate)

2. Develop a career placement program for Black and Indigenous graduates and curate positions within organizations, municipalities, and firms. (Immediate)

3. Develop a centralized location for job postings that is not PLAZA. (Immediate)

4. Provide for-credit career support courses throughout the program taught by career coaching professions. (Immediate)

5. Compile thesis topic ideas from industry contacts for MCP2. (by Spring 2021)

6. Make the MCP thesis a worthwhile exercise for all students: reorient thesis away from an academic exercise towards a career visioning tool or eliminate as a requirement. (by Fall 2021)

7. Recognize the student-moderated panels on various planning topics. (Immediate)

2. Fund external scholars of color to speak within the department as keynote speakers. (Immediate)

3. Allocate funding towards supporting established Black programming and placemaking (Black women’s event, Black History Month programming, etc). (Immediate)

4. Support co-designed spaces to engage each other on white supremacy and planning. (Immediate)

5. Allocate 20% of DUSP procurement from Black-owned businesses in the local community. (Immediate)

6. Create a paid fellowship for Black students or recent graduates to facilitate and organize Black experiences on campus. (by Fall 2021) 

7. Allocate funding for the regular maintenance and upkeep of existing student spaces to make them habitable for students (i.e. student lounge). We cannot accept rats, mice, odors from the student lounge and we cannot accept the use of limited students' funds going towards cleaning it. (by Spring 2021)

8. Allocate annual funding for the continued maintenance of Black Student Union lounge (in Walker Memorial). (by Spring 2021)

9. Develop an optional curriculum for incoming students from non-planning backgrounds to familiarize themselves with the program and begin on the right footing (i.e. books, available funding, recommended activities, scholarships, alumni outreach, etc.). (by 2021 Admissions)

10. Develop a single centralized dashboard where students can access all scholarships, funding opportunities, job postings, DUSP calendar, etc. News throughout DUSP is disjointed and received on a piecemeal basis, causing countless missed opportunities and increasing anxiety for overwhelmed students. (Immediate)

11. Develop a process of making physical spaces available at no cost to community organizations for meetings. (by Spring 2021)

12. Create an activist-in-residence program to sustain the work of local activists, artists, and public intellectuals in the Boston area (including stipend and physical office space). (by Fall 2021)

OUTSTANDING QUESTIONS 

1. What are the metrics for success for the career development office at DUSP?

2. Why is it acceptable that Black students at DUSP are expected to dedicate exorbitant amounts of time to improving DUSP and still be engaged students?

3. Why is the onus of mentorship and emotional labor often put upon Black women staff and faculty?

4. Why is a school of planning so bad at disseminating information and planning for the future?

We LOVE Ananya but Y’all Can Do More: Implement an Anti-Racist Curriculum and Strengthen Anti-Racist Educators

VISION STATEMENT 

We deserve a DUSP whose core curriculum ensures that students are deeply informed of the lineage and rich contributions Black and Indigenous scholar-activists have offered to the planning profession. That our contributions are celebrated as part and parcel of planning curriculum and not solely elective or recommended. We commit to building a reflective and reflexive curriculum that enables all planning students to knowledgeably contribute towards dismantling white supremacy in all of our work.

KEY PRIORITIES AND IMMEDIATE ACTIONS

1. Launch a syllabi audit with racial/ethnic and gender background of authors and other relevant summary statistics from all courses taught in the department over the last 5 years. (Immediate, Ongoing)

1. Use results from syllabi audit to integrate the research of theorists and planners of marginalized backgrounds (Black, Indigenous/First Nation, grassroots activists) throughout course syllabi. (by Fall 2020)

2. Require syllabi audit for all new and proposed courses and condition course approval on meeting the threshold for race/ethnicity and gender representation. (by Spring 2021)

2. Commit to professors and TAs engaging the Teaching & Learning Lab to improve practice, specifically in inclusive teaching and managing racism in the classroom. (Immediate, Ongoing)

3. Mandate professors to do their due diligence in understanding how race/culture/colonialism operate within each seminar, technical course and practicum.

3. Demonstrate their commitment to anti-racist teaching through an explicit statement on their course syllabi and/or practicum proposal

4. Integrate an analysis of power into all syllabi for coursework in a context where race is a less salient indicator. (by Spring 2021)

4. Redesign practica, both local and international, to explicitly unpack white supremacy and U.S. imperialism as a core theme of the study topic. (by Spring 2021)

5. Integrate the work of making DUSP anti-racist into internally-focused practica. (by Fall 2020)

6. Hire Black and Indigenous faculty with expertise in urban design and environmental policy. (by Summer 2021)

OUTSTANDING QUESTIONS 

1. How will DUSP use curriculum to interrogate, repent, and make amends for its own past and present complicity in promoting gentrification, displacement and dispossession, real estate speculation, and urban renewal?

2. How will the Center for Real Estate improve its curriculum and research labs to promote real estate development and finance policies that redistribute wealth?

3. How will DUSP’s labs and centers affirm their commitment to anti-racism?

4. How can DUSP accommodate modes of expertise and knowing that may fall outside the traditional urban planning canon?

Racism Cannot Be Fixed by Those Who Refuse to Create Systems of Accountability

VISION STATEMENT 

We deserve a DUSP where faculty, staff, and students are held accountable to creating an environment where white supremacy, anti-blackness, and structural violence are not tolerated. We deserve an ethics and culture rooted in anti-racism and an active realignment of academic, research, and fundraising activities with these ethics.

KEY PRIORITIES AND IMMEDIATE ACTIONS

1. Create an accountability process for DUSP community members who contribute to an anti-Black, racist, and otherwise harmful environment-- this includes formalizing anti-racism as a requirement for all faculty (including tenured faculty) and creating an off-boarding process for faculty who repeatedly harm the DUSP community and/or show low competency in their ability to facilitate conversations on  racial inequity, structural racial violence, white supremacy, colonization/decolonization or no/low willingness to facilitate these conversations in their classrooms. (by Spring 2021)

2. Commit research (UROP, RA-ship, etc.) and/or administrative funds (HQ, DUSPCareers) to interrogate DUSP’s role in producing/training agents of urban renewal and the destruction of Black communities across the United States. (by Fall 2020)

3. Create a joint student-faculty-HQ Anti-Harm Council, with decision-making authority, that will routinely attend to the question of how DUSP redresses current perpetuation of structural violence, including but not limited to: ties to MIT, Cambridge, and Boston police, firms invested in the prison-industrial complex, business improvement districts, economic development, and neighborhood plans that displace Black and Brown, poor, and houseless communities, ties to extractive industry, global financial institutions, and other projects implemented in the surrounding community. (by Spring 2021)

4. Develop and use community review protocols (developed in collaboration with community members) for practicum reports, theses and dissertations and other products of the department. Create an option to have one member of thesis and dissertation committees be a community member (i.e., no university or academic affiliation, no PhD, etc). Reward (through tenure and promotion criteria) faculty who use community review boards. (by Fall 2020)

OUTSTANDING QUESTIONS 

1. How does DUSP HQ/SA&P intend on holding faculty, staff, and students accountable to creating an anti-racist environment?

2. Does DUSP HQ/SA&P understand how white supremacy and anti-blackness has permeated it’s culture, in the past and present? What actions has DUSP leadership taken in the past and present to address this?

3. Is DUSP’s current leadership capable of leading anti-racism work? What have the individuals who are in leadership positions (DUSP HQ, DUSP representatives working with Hashim Sarkis, other DUSP anti-racism committees) done in the past to address anti-racism at DUSP (or at their previous institutions) that evidences their competency to lead anti-racism work at DUSP/SA&P?

CITATIONS

An initial accounting of the Black people, places and spaces that have shaped our thinking around planning, and which have our deep gratitude and appreciation:

1. @1ncognito___’s Twitter Threads on African Architecture
2. AbdouMaliq Simone
3. adrienne maree brown
4. Aja Brown
5. Akira Drake Rodriguez
6. Alfred Price
7. Algorithmic Justice League
8. Aliyu Barau
9. Amanda Alexander
10. Amber Wiley
11. Andrea Roberts
12. Angela Davis
13. Angela Glover Blackwell
14. Antionette Carroll
15. Asali Devan Ecclesiastes
16. Ashanté Reese
17. bell hooks
18. Benika Dixon
19. Black Futures Lab
20. Black in Design
21. Black Market Nubian
22. Black Public Media
23. BlackSpace + The BlackSpace Manifesto
24. Boston Ujima Project
25. Bree Newsome
26. Brent Leggs
27. BYP100
28. Ceasar McDowell
29. Cedric Robinson
30. Charisma Acey
31. Cheryl Harris
32. Chokwe Antar Lumumba
33. Clyde Woods
34. Cooperation Jackson
35. Courtney Woods
36. Craig Wilkins
37. Curry Hackett
38. Danielle Purifoy
39. Danielle Spurlock
40. Dayna Cunningham
41. Deanna Van Buren
42. Della Miller
43. Designing Spaces + Designing Justice
44. Devyn Eli Springer
45. Dream Defenders
46. Earthseed Land Collective
47. Ebony McGee Report
48. Emanuel Admassu
49. Emmanuel Frimpong Boamah
50. Erica Caple James
51. Ernst Valery
52. Eve L. Ewing
53. Fannie Lou Hamer
54. Fayola Jacobs
55. Federation of Southern Cooperatives
56. Frank Sidney Jones
57. Fred Moten
58. Gail Wells
59. Garnette Cadogan
60. Gordon Parks
61. Henry Louis Taylor, Jr.
62. Hortense Spillers
63. Ida B. Wells
64. Imani Perry
65. J. Phillip Thompson
66. Jamaal Green
67. James Sofasonke Mpanza
68. Jason Jackson
69. Jean Baptiste Point du Sable
70. john a. powell
71. Julian Agyeman
72. June Manning Thomas
73. Justin Garrett Moore +Urban Patch
74. Kai Alexis Smith
75. Karilyn Crockett
76. Karla Slocum
77. Katherine McKittrick
78. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
79. Kenneth Bailey
80. Kristin Jeffers
81. Lance Freeman
82. Lisa Bates
83. Liz Ogbu
84. Lorraine Hansberry
85. Mabel O. Wilson
86. Malo Hutson
87. Marccus Hendricks
88. Marcus Anthony Hunter
89. Mariame Kaba
90. Mario Gooden
91. Maroon Towns of the Great Dismal Swamp
92. Mary Pattillo
93. Matthew Jordan Miller
94. Mel King
95. Michael Ford
96. Michael Lens
97. Michael Tubbs
98. Mimi Ọnụọha
99. Mindy Fullilove
100. MIT BGSA
101. MIT BSU
102. MIT CoLab
103. Mitchell Silver
104. Movement for Black Lives
105. Naeema Muhammad
106. Napoleon Williams III
107. New Communities Inc.
108. Nmadili Okwumabua
109. Noir’N’Nola
110. Norma Anderson
111. Octavia E. Butler
112. Patrice Lumumba
113. Pete White
114. Phillip L. Clay
115. R. Kelly Cameron
116. Rahwa Ghirmatzion
117. Rashad Shabazz
118. Rebekah Williams
119. Rhiana Gunn-Wright
120. Robert Bullard
121. Robin D.G. Kelley
122. Ruha Benjamin
123. Ruth Wilson Gilmore
124. Saidaiya Hartman
125. Sara Zewde
126. Sarah Long
127. Shirley Sherrod
128. Sunn m’Cheaux
129. Soul City
130. Sweetwater Foundation
131. Takiyah Thompson
132. Tamika Butler
133. Texas Freedom Colony Project
134. The African American Design Nexus
135. The Black Panther Party
136. The Black School
137. The Freedmen’s Bureau, formally known as the Bureau of Refugees
138. The MOVE (Philly)
139. The Streets are Planning
140. Theaster Gates + Rebuild Foundation
141. Thomas Sankara
142. Toni L. Griffin + The Just City Lab
143. Toshi Reagon
144. Tunde Wey
145. Tunua Thrash-Ntuk
146. Turner Prince
147. Twitter List: Urbanist Leaders of Color
148. Ujamaa Economic Development Corporation
149. W.E.B. Du Bois
150. Walter Hood
151. Walter Rodney
152. William Averette Anderson
153. Yeshimabeit Milner
154. Zandria F. Robinson
155. Zoe Samudzi

 ….to name a few.