UMass Boston

All full-time faculty of the Africana Studies Department at the University of Massachusetts Boston filed discrimination complaints through the state following years of alleged mistreatment from university administration.

Hettie Williams, a historian at Monmouth University in New Jersey, has been selected as the new director of the William Monroe Trotter Institute for the Study of Black Culture at UMass Boston.

Faculty members at UMass Boston are pushing back on a report commissioned by administrators that is critical of the Africana Studies Department.

For nearly 40 years, the William Monroe Trotter Institute has served as the only public research institution in Massachusetts dedicated to the study of Black communities, tracking the trends in housing, education, politics, immigration and other areas that affect people of African descent in the state. But after UMass Boston officials announced in 2017 that the Trotter and other research institutes would lose university funding over a five-year period, the future of the think tank has been in question.

As Mayor Martin Walsh cut the ribbon on UMass Boston’s first-ever dormitory building last week, students, faculty and staff protested against proposed parking fee hikes outside.