Studying social inequality is a precondition to overcoming it in the wider world

Indeed, the study of social inequality is more urgent than ever, especially if higher education is to fulfill its mission as a promoter of expanded opportunity and well-being. Students, professors and administrators need a deeper understanding of how human disparities have developed, why they persist and how they continue to evolve over time. They also need to understand how the forces of social inequality inform the habits and practices of colleges and universities today. To understand inequality is to understand the modern world and the forces that created it. More to the point, understanding inequality is precondition to overcoming it: that is, to healing the wounds of the past, generating social solidarity and rebuilding a more just society.

Duke University has created a new path for focused study of inequality in the undergraduate curriculum. We are excited to announce a new minor in inequality studies, a program of study that constitutes a collaboration between the department of history and the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity. The program, which the university will launch officially during the spring 2021 semester, is believed to be just the second of its kind in higher education in the United States.

The minor includes required courses on the history of inequality and social science research methods in the study of inequality, as well as focused undergraduate research in social inequality on topics such as entrepreneurship, social crisis, health disparities and reparations. It also includes elective courses -- such as Caribbean 1492-1700, Modern and Global India, U.S. Social Movements, and African Americans and the World -- that track processes generating inequality across periods in history and different global regions. Above all, the new minor in inequality studies will help undergraduate students acquire rigorous, analytical understanding of social inequality and integrate that understanding into their liberal arts education, as well as their social and professional engagement at Duke, in the surrounding community and in the wider world beyond.

We salute Cornell University’s Center for the Study of Inequality, which has offered a minor in inequality studies for the past two decades. Our program advances this necessary work, most notably distinguishing itself through the minor’s required core courses -- History of Inequality, Methods in Inequality Studies and the Global Inequalities Research Seminar -- which culminate in a capstone course and student production of original research on inequality. Advancing Duke’s commitment to undergraduate research, the minor cultivates deep-rooted historical understanding of inequality and activates student capacities for addressing social problems through novel research.