Inclusive History Project
Photo by Austin McCoy
The Inclusive History Project (IHP) is a presidential initiative to study and document a comprehensive history of the University of Michigan that is attentive to diversity, equity, and inclusion and stretches across the university’s three campuses and Michigan Medicine.
The IHP engages members of the university community and our campuses’ neighbors to better understand the full history of the institution, including its record of inclusion and exclusion, and to consider what reparative actions that history demands in the present and for the future.
The IHP was announced as a presidential initiative in June 2022. It emerged in response to contexts that include the broad movement of other colleges and universities to reckon with their histories, historical name reviews that have taken place on the Ann Arbor campus over the last several years, and the rich histories of campus activism and institutional support for diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts here at the university. It also builds on wide-ranging efforts to study and reckon with U-M’s history that are underway on our campuses. Following a year of planning, in July 2023 the IHP's Framing & Design Committee released a design for the IHP’s next five years that includes a research plan and priorities, recommendations for additional project activities, and an articulation of the values and commitments that must govern the IHP’s work.
The IHP is currently engaged in scholarly research and wide-ranging engagement efforts to gain a deeper and more complete understanding of the university’s past and its contemporary effects.
Leading the IHP are two distinguished scholars: Elizabeth R. Cole and Earl Lewis. The IHP is funded by the Office of the President and housed within the National Center for Institutional Diversity (NCID).
Learn more about the Inclusive History Project.