ABOUT 

"The 2020 Project" is a Special Issue publication coordinated by the African & African American Studies Program at Stanford University (AAAS). Co-editors, Dr. Kimberly McNair, Dr. Hadiya Sewer, and our Interim Faculty Director Dr. Arnetha F. Ball, sought to record the experiences and reflections of the broader Stanford Black community as history unfolds during this critical conjuncture.

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“The 2020 Project” aims to help illuminate the significance of this moment and the collective struggles faced by Black faculty, staff, students, and alumni of Stanford. We grapple with anti-blackness and its implications on climate on and off campus. Drawing inspiration from The 1619 Project, “The 2020 Project” is named for all that this year lays bare about power, crisis, and the im/possibilities of being Black at Stanford, in America, and across the world. A confluence of crises form 2020— the environmental crisis, the Trump era, the Covid-19 pandemic, the deaths of key luminaries and advocates, and the state sanctioned violence against those who exist on what Sylvia Wynter calls the “interstices of history.” Yet, “2020” is a double entendre that also nods to “20/20” and Black temporality, our individual and collective visions of what could be and the work that we must do to create a new world, a just one predicated on free AfroFutures. These salient human rights issues have taken center stage over these past months breathing new life into “Black Lives Matter” as a rallying cry, global movement, and organization.