DuBois Bunche Center for Public Policy

The DuBois Bunche Center for Public Policy (DBC) is an academy of scholar activists and advocates dedicated to forging solutions to the challenges confronting people of color living within urban communities in the United States and throughout the African Diaspora. DBC produces research, formulates policies, sponsors conferences and produces public affairs media programming that advances economic and social justice.

Mission

In the spirit of the scholarship and activism that were promoted by W.E.B. DuBois and Ralph Johnson Bunche the DuBois Bunche Center for Public Policy was founded to empower and cultivate the work of a new generation of scholar activists and advocates dedicated to identifying progressive solutions to the challenges confronting urban communities in the U.S. and throughout the African Diaspora. The DuBois Bunche Center accomplishes this economic and social justice mission through:

Scholarly Research including:

• The identification of emerging trends, issues and best practices in public policy;
• The organization of round tables, forums and conferences to connect policy makers with governmental and non-governmental actors;
• The formulation of laws, public policies, programs, and community covenants that advance progressive change;
• The dissemination of research and public opinion via academic journals, traditional media and new media outlets; and
• The cultivation and empowerment of a new generation of scholar activists and advocates in the tradition of Dr. DuBois and Dr. Bunche.

History

The DuBois Bunche Center for Public Policy was founded by Dr. Edison O. Jackson, President of Medgar Evers College. Dr. Jackson envisioned that the Center would serve as a vehicle to harness the intellectual capital of scholar activists and advocates who could bring about a positive transformation within urban centers in the U.S. and throughout the African Diaspora.

In 1994 John Flateau, Ph.D. became first Director of the Center and immediately provided positive leadership by addressing major policy issues ranging from community justice reform to voting rights.

DBC Historical Icons

The DuBois Bunche Center for Public Policy is honored to be named after two of the most respected scholar activists and human rights statesmen of the 20th century –
William Edward Burghardt DuBois.

William Edward Burghardt DuBois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts in 1868. He completed his undergraduate education at Fisk University and received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Harvard University. In 1896, he received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Harvard University, with a doctoral dissertation entitled, “The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870,” he also did post-doctoral studies at the University of Berlin.

DuBois served on the faculties of Wilberforce University and the University of Pennsylvania, where he researched The Philadelphia Negro, America’s first sociological study of an urban Black Community. He was appointed professor of history and economics and for twenty years, produced the “Atlanta University Studies of the Negro Problem,” the definitive body of sociological research on Blacks in America. W.E.B. DuBois was a founder of the Niagara Movement, the N.A.A.C.P. and editor of its Crisismagazine. He was also a founder of the Pan African Congress, which birthed African Nation’s independence from European colonialism. W.E.B. DuBois, one of the world’s great scholars, intellectuals and international activists, died in Accra, Ghana on August 27, 1963, on the eve of the March on Washington.

Ralph Johnson Bunche was born of humble origins in Detroit, Michigan in 1904. He graduated summa cum laude and was class valedictorian at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his Master’s degree in Political Science and his Ph.D. in Government and International relations from Harvard University, with the year’s best doctoral dissertation entitled, “French Administration in Togo and Dahomey.” Bunche founded the Political Science Department at Howard University; produced several scholarly works on urban Black America, politics, race and international relations and he was a major contributor to Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma, a classic work on America’s race relations.

Ralph Bunche headed the African Section of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services during World War II. He was one of America’s key strategists in the formation of the United Nations, was the first African -American to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 for the Arab-Israeli settlement, was a major architect of the de-colonization of Africa and was a behind-the-scenes supporter of the American Civil Rights Movement. This great international statesman and scholar served as Under Secretary for Political Affairs at the United Nations until his death in 1971.

Publications – Working Papers

The faculty affiliated with the DuBois Bunche Center has authored books and policy papers on topical issues that are of concern to constituencies and individuals seeking insight into the challenges and solutions confronting Urban Centers throughout the African Diaspora.

For more information on these books and other publications please feel free to call 718-512-8636 or E-mail DBpolicy@mec.cuny.edu