Provostial Fellows Symposium

Stanford Provostial Fellows Breakout Sessions

April Burrage: When Talent Isn’t Enough: Rethinking Opportunity Gaps

Why do underrepresented groups remain missing from high-growth careers such as innovation, entrepreneurship, and other high-paying fields, even when they have the talent to succeed? Traditional explanations focus on human capital, but new research reveals deeper barriers that shape access to opportunity. Featuring Victor Bennett (Strategy, University of Utah), Jordan Starck (Psychology, Stanford University), and April Burrage (Provostial Fellow in Management Science & Engineering). Together, they provide an interdisciplinary overview of the social and economic forces driving these disparities and explore strategies to expand pathways into high-skilled fields. Expect fresh insights and lively discussion on how to close persistent gaps in access and opportunity. 

Speakers:

April Burrage, Stanford University Provostial Fellow, Department of Management Science & Engineering, Stanford University (Learn more)
 

Victor Bennett, Professor, Department of Entrepreneurship & Strategy, University of Utah (Learn more)
 

Jordan Starck, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Stanford University (Learn more)

Abdulbasit Kassim: Caravans of Knowledge, Intellectual Networks, and Transregional Scholarly Communities Across the Maghrib and Muslim West Africa c. 1450-1800

The corpus of writings on the histories and cultures of Muslim societies in the Maghrib and Muslim West Africa has advanced considerably, moving from the earliest scholarship of Arab scholars and merchants that bifurcated the two regions into culturally and racially contrasted Africas - the northern sāhil and southern sāhil - to more recent cross-temporal literature that collapses the synthetic construct of a divided continent by transcending geographical and disciplinary boundaries with more nuanced historical and cultural analyses. Bruce Hall (University of California, Berkeley) and Vaughn Rasberry (Stanford University) will join Abdulbasit Kassim to discuss the caravans of knowledge, intellectual networks, and transregional scholarly communities that connected the movement of people, caravans, texts, local histories and material artifacts across the Muslim societies in the Maghrib and Muslim West Africa during the late medieval and early modern periods, c. 1450-1800. The panel will draw upon archival research on Arabic manuscripts, documents, and textual sources, including legal works and didactic literature, biographical dictionaries, travelogues, poetic compositions, and chronicles authored by theologians, linguists, poets, and Islamic jurists.

Speakers:

Abdulbasit Kassim, Assistant Professor, Department of Religion and Classics, University of Rochester and Stanford University Provostial Fellow, Department of African and African American Studies, Stanford University (Learn more)

Bruce Hall, Associate Professor, Department of History, UC Berkeley (Learn more)
 

Vaughn Rasberry, Associate Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Associate Professor, Department of English and African and African American Studies, Stanford University (Learn more)

Mathew Mendez: "Haunted House Blues": Bessie Smith and Competing Imperatives in Intellectual Property Reparations

Jane Gaines (Columbia University) and Matthew Morrison (Stanford University) join Matthew Mendez to discuss his work on a 1970s lawsuit initiated by the adoptive son of “empress of the blues” Bessie Smith (1894-1937). The first “intellectual property reparations” lawsuit in music industry history, the suit centered around Smith’s business relationship with her old label, Columbia Records, particularly the racialized contracting practices that followed from her categorization as a 1920s “race records” artist. The session explores the myriad tensions embodied by the lawsuit—its goal of bringing about restitution for Smith and her son, versus the impulse to do justice on behalf of an entire class of disenfranchised Black artists; and between the strategic and rhetorical commodification of the sound of Smith’s voice, as a prerequisite to its acknowledgement as a worthy object of rights on the part of liberal-legal decision-makers, versus a then-emergent Black feminism that heard Smith’s singing voice as a symbol of refusal of the commodification of African Americans’ (sounding) bodies.

Speakers:

Matthew Mendez, Stanford University Provostial Fellow, Department of Music, Stanford University (Learn more)
 

Jane Gaines, Professor, Department of Film, Columbia University and Professor Emerita, Department of Literature and English, Duke University (Learn more)

Matthew Morrison, Associate Professor, Department of African and African American Studies, Stanford University (Learn more)

Roxanne Rahnama: Contested Communities: How Status, Identity, and Inclusion Shape American Political Life

This panel explores how questions of belonging, status, and social boundaries manifest across different domains of American politics. Tali Mendelberg (Princeton University, Political Science) examines public resistance to affordable housing developments, investigating how community members' own economic positions and attitudes toward redistribution shape their perceptions of what constitutes meaningful affordability and appropriate developer benefits. Hakeem Jefferson (Stanford University, Political Science) analyzes how respectability politics functions as a form of internal social control within Black American communities, shaping political behavior and group boundaries. Roxanne Rahnama (Stanford University, Provostial Fellow) demonstrates how elite groups strategically deploy ideology to maintain social hierarchies when facing challenges to their dominance, using the case of the United Daughters of the Confederacy's promotion of Lost Cause mythology. Together, these papers illuminate how communities - whether local neighborhoods, racial groups, or regional elites - negotiate questions of inclusion and exclusion through both policy preferences and cultural narratives, revealing how economic interests, social identities, and power dynamics intersect to determine who belongs and who benefits in American society.

Speakers:

Roxanne Rahnama, Stanford University Provostial Fellow, Department of Political Science, Stanford University (Learn more)
 

Hakeem Jefferson, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Stanford University (Learn more)
 

Tali Mendelberg, John Work Garrett Professor, Department of Politics, Princeton University (Learn more)

Laura Weiwu: When Neutral Isn't Equal: How Economic Structures Shape Racial Inequality

This session brings together three economists to examine how policies, institutions, and firm dynamics influence racial inequality across contexts and generations. We begin with an introduction that situates economic approaches to studying racial inequality. Conrad Miller (UC Berkeley) presents The Dynamic Effects of Co-Racial Hiring, which uses evidence from Brazil to show how racial disparities in entrepreneurship and referral hiring reinforce persistent gaps in employment opportunities. Lukas Althoff (Stanford) follows with Race-Blind Policy and Racial Inequality: Long-Run Effects of the GI Bill, highlighting how one of the largest social policies in U.S. history fostered the white middle class while largely excluding Black Americans. The session concludes with Laura Weiwu (Provostial Fellow in Economics), who examines how the U.S. Interstate Highway System deepened racial segregation and amplified inequality both contemporaneously and intergenerationally. Together, the papers illustrate how structures that appear neutral on the surface can perpetuate racial disparities.

Speakers:

Laura Weiwu, Assistant Professor, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley and Stanford University Provostial Fellow, Department of Economics, Stanford University (Learn more)

Lukas Althoff, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Stanford University (Learn more)
 

Conrad Miller, Associate Professor, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley and Faculty Research Fellow, National Bureau of Economic Research (Learn more)

CCSRE Panel: Speech, Scholarship, and Surveillance: Faculty Voices on Academic Freedom

What is the meaning of academic freedom in the present day? This panel will convene a conversation on foundations, meanings, and implications of academic freedom for higher education under the Trump administration. As crackdowns and negative repercussions mount against faculty and students who engage in writing, speech, and research that has been deemed undesirable by the government, how will we collectively protect academic freedom? Panelists will share experiences, perspectives, and strategies to initiate a community discussion on this watershed moment for higher education.

Speakers:

anthony antonio, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Education and Associate Director, Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research, Stanford University (Learn more)

Yvonne (Bonnie) Maldonado, Senior Associate Dean, Faculty Development and Engagement and, Taube Professor of Global Health and Infectious Diseases, Professor, Department of Pediatrics (Infectious Diseases) and of Epidemiology and Population Health, Stanford University (Learn more)

Priya Satia, Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History and  Professor, Department of History, Stanford University (Learn more)

Keynote: Deepa Fernandes

The symposium will feature a keynote address by award-winning journalist Deepa Fernandes, a radio journalist and current CASBS Fellow who focuses on race and equity. Ms. Fernandes has founded a youth media training program in New York City public schools and a fellowship program for new reporters from communities that are most often excluded from journalism.

Deepa Fernandes is a nationally renowned journalist, heard by millions each day during her tenure as co-host of NPR’s “Here and Now”. Her signature warmth and rigor won her many fans and elevated rarely heard voices to a national audience. (Learn more)