J. Keith Motley, chancellor of at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, was honored by Community Change Inc. on Nov. 22 at the organization’s “Looking Back … Moving Forward” 45th anniversary celebration. Motley was given the Drylongso Leadership Award for Challenging Structural Racism during the event, which was held at UMass Boston.
Established in 1989, the Drylongso Awards honor ordinary people doing extraordinary anti-racism work in Greater Boston. The Drylongso Awards are inspired by the book “Drylongso: A Self-Portrait of Black America.” In that book, anthropologist John Langston Gwaltney details the daily struggles of drylongso, or ordinary African Americans fighting racism.
Motley is the eighth chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Boston. He leads an institution with nearly 16,000 undergraduate and graduate students, a full-time and part-time faculty of more than 1,000, and a $323 million annual budget. Under his leadership the university has earned recognition by the Princeton Review as one of the 150 “Best Value Colleges” in the United States.
Prior to his appointment as chancellor on July 1, 2007, Motley served as vice president for business, marketing, and public affairs at the University of Massachusetts President’s Office. Prior to joining the President’s Office, he was the interim chancellor of the University of Massachusetts, Boston, where he previously had served as vice chancellor for student affairs, following more than 20 years in higher education administration that included 10 years as dean of student services at Northeastern University.
Community Change is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote racial justice and equity by challenging systemic racism and acting as a catalyst for anti-racist learning and action. The organization focuses particularly on involving white people in understanding and confronting systemic racism and white privilege.
