Center for the Education of Women+ scholarship winners pose for a group photograph.

The Inclusive History Project

A journey of institutional self-discovery committed to challenging our conception of the past and taking action to build a truly inclusive present and future.

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Inclusive History Project Summit 2025

Join us on Friday, April 4, 2025, for the IHP Summit on the University of Michigan-Dearborn campus! At the Summit, explore histories of inclusion and exclusion at the University of Michigan; engage in dialogue about the work of inclusive history; attend a hands-on archiving workshop; learn about research, engagement, and teaching taking place across the three campuses; and see student-led projects in a variety of forms.

Our Charge

The IHP is committed to building a project that covers the whole university and engages deeply and meaningfully across and beyond our campuses.

Research

The IHP is charged with studying and documenting 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.

Engage

Through the histories we tell and the partnerships we create, the IHP is committed to engaging with faculty, staff, students, alumni, patients, and neighbors. This broad and deep engagement is fundamental to a fuller understanding of the university’s past and its contemporary effects.

Repair

The IHP must foreground the continuing impact of the university’s history on its present, and build out from a renewed knowledge and acknowledgment of our institution’s past to make concrete commitments to reshaping its future.

Women's basketball team poses for a group photograph.
Women's basketball team, Class of 1904

University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library

People gather around tables for Passover seder.
Hillel Passover Seder, 1942

Hugh Grannum, Detroit Free Press
Ivory Photo Collection, Bentley Historical Library
University of Michigan Library Digital Collections
© Regents of the University of Michigan
This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Intercultural Center staff participating in the UM-Flint Homecoming Parade, Sept. 2022
Intercultural Center staff participating in the UM-Flint Homecoming Parade, 2022

Courtesy of University of Michigan-Flint Intercultural Center

Rosa Parks receives honorary doctorate at UM-Dearborn Commencement, April 28, 1991
Rosa Parks receives honorary doctorate at UM-Dearborn Commencement, 1991

University of Michigan-Dearborn Campus Archive

Parks was awarded an honorary Doctor of Law degree.

Our Origin

The IHP was announced as a presidential initiative in June 2022. It emerged in response to contexts that include the rich histories of campus activism and institutional support for diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts here at the university, historical name reviews that have taken place on the Ann Arbor campus over the last several years, and the broad movement of other colleges and universities to reckon with their histories. It also builds on wide-ranging efforts to study and reckon with U-M’s history that are underway on our campuses.

Drone view of UM-Flint campus in the fall, 2020
Students crossing State Street in front of the Michigan Union on the Ann Arbor campus, 1947

A Design for the Inclusive History Project

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 guide the IHP’s work.

Explore Our Research Plan and Priorities

The IHP is engaged in rigorous, scholarly work to study and document the university’s full history. Our research is organized by four Frames, which are essential themes that provide a structure for the project’s wide-ranging research.

U-M graduate student Austin McCoy speaking at a protest in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Updates & Events

Stay informed about events, research findings, and other project news.

Co-sponsored event
Jews, the Academy, and Antisemitism: How and What Should We Study?
  • March 17, 2025 (6:00 pm - 7:30 pm)
  • In-Person

Jews, the Academy, and Antisemitism: How and What Should We Study?

Guest Lecture by Riv-Ellen Prell (University of Minnesota Twin Cities)

This lecture is associated with the IHP project site Outsiders, Insiders, Radicals, and Reformers.
Event
Come to Ann Arbor and Taste the World!
  • April 02, 2025 (7:00 pm - 9:30 pm)
  • In-Person

Come to Ann Arbor and Taste the World!

Three Jewish Food Writers on Their Time as U-M Students in the 1960s and 70s with Ruth Reichl, Joan Nathan, and Ari Weinzweig

World-renowned food writers and U-M alumni will discuss the rich cultural encounters they experienced as students in Ann Arbor and share how their time at U-M shaped their career trajectories. The conversation will explore how food and identity are tied together and how those ties have been experienced and explored by our special guests as students and in their careers.
Summit
Inclusive History Project Summit
  • April 04, 2025 (9:00 am - 5:30 pm)
  • In-Person

Inclusive History Project Summit

The IHP Summit will explore histories of inclusion and exclusion at the University of Michigan. Join us to engage in dialogue about the work of inclusive history; attend a hands-on archiving workshop; learn about research, engagement, and teaching taking place across the three campuses; and see student-led projects.
Research
The Education of James Earl Jones
  • Feb. 2025

The Education of James Earl Jones

The legendary actor came to U-M to become a doctor. He left on the path to stardom. Read more from Dr. Lorena Chambers, IHP Postdoctoral Fellow, in the Michigan Alum.
News
Task force to consider process for new honorific namings
  • Record
  • Jan. 2025

Task force to consider process for new honorific namings

News
Inclusive History Project offers funding for research, engagement on U-M history
  • Record
  • Dec. 2024

Inclusive History Project offers funding for research, engagement on U-M history

Update
IHP Teaching Fund course examines language and policy at UM-Flint
  • Dec. 2024

IHP Teaching Fund course examines language and policy at UM-Flint

Through in-depth research in a forensic linguistics class this fall, three undergraduate students at the University of Michigan-Flint made a compelling argument to the Department of Language and Communication to remove a policy from the course catalog that set up unjust standards. The course, Linguistics 231: Language and Law, is a new course developed and taught by Emily Feuerherm, Associate Professor of Linguistics at UM-Flint, with the support of an IHP Teaching Fund Course Development Grant.
News
Lecturer Rashid Faisal wants you to remember — and see yourself in — Cornelius Henderson
  • Nov. 2024

Lecturer Rashid Faisal wants you to remember — and see yourself in — Cornelius Henderson

With an Inclusive History Project grant, the education lecturer is challenging his students to reckon with the nearly forgotten life story of a 1911 African American U-M grad who became an accomplished Detroit civil engineer.