AC alumna, Professor Lorgia García Peña (Mellon Associate Professor in the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora at Tufts University), received a 2021 Freedom Scholar Award from the Marguerite Casey Foundation and Group Health Foundation along with Amna Akbar, Orisanmi Burton, Angélica Cházaro, Cathy J. Cohen, and Robin D. G. Kelley (see here)! Lorgia received her Ph.D. in American Culture from U-M in 2008 with a dissertation titled “Dominicanidad in Contra (Diction): Marginality, Migration, and the Narration of a Dominican National Identity," which she went on to publish with Duke University Press.

Freedom Scholars awards represent a commitment to scholarship relevant to movements led by Black and Indigenous people, migrants and queer people, poor people, and people of color. The awards also recognize the role that scholars play in cultivating and nurturing movements for justice and freedom.