Diversity and Inclusion
A culture of diversity and inclusion promotes respect, engenders creativity, and encourages intellectual risk-taking. Establishing such a culture is intrinsic to the CUNY Graduate Center’s mission.
We are proud to be part of the City University of New York, the world’s largest public, urban university and one of the most diverse and inclusive. The CUNY Graduate Center is committed to promoting diversity and works to ensure our students and faculty reflect the varied demographics of New York City.
Our Commitment to Diversity

The Graduate Center ranks among the top 10 institutions awarding doctorates to members of underrepresented minority groups, according to federal data. To further enhance our diversity, we are creating new pipelines to the Ph.D. for diverse students. Through our first initiative — the Humanities Teaching Alliance with LaGuardia Community College, which is supported by the Mellon Foundation — Graduate Center doctoral students serve as mentors to students at one of the nation’s most diverse and inclusive community colleges.
Institutionalizing diversity in our values and our outcomes is one of the priorities of our strategic plan.
Our faculty and students have long demonstrated their commitment to examining and articulating the needs of minority populations through their scholarship and advocacy.
The Graduate Center is home to more than 30 research centers and institutes, many of which are devoted to addressing issues affecting diverse and underrepresented populations through their research and events. Such centers include the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies; the Center for the Study of Women and Society; CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies; and the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality.
New Initiatives

Attracting exceptional students from underrepresented backgrounds and making them feel welcome in our community are top priorities. We have provided new sources of funding and encouraged our programs to redesign their recruitment strategies with the aim of creating a community of talented and diverse students. Our departments are empowered to work individually with students to establish academic plans that will support their scholarly and career ambitions.
In concert with our student diversity initiatives, we have established new hiring practices that will allow us to recruit and retain outstanding and diverse faculty members and administrators.

Facts and Figures
Review the Graduate Center's student diversity, as well as other diversity facts and figures.
Review diversity facts and figuresGuiding Force
Fostering diversity and inclusion is at the core of the Graduate Center's mission.
— Martin Ruck
Senior Advisor to the President for Diversity and Inclusion

Diversity News
May 19, 2022
From Postdoc to the Tenure Track at Wesleyan
A class of ’22 grad takes an unusual path to a faculty role at a liberal arts university.
- Alumni News
- GC Stories
May 11, 2022
Two Anthropology Candidates Named 2022 Newcombe Fellows
Paloma Rodrigo Gonzales and Mikey Elster received the prestigious fellowship for their research in ethics and religion.
- GC Stories
- Student News
- Research News
May 5, 2022
Nanoscience master’s program graduates its first student
Adewumi Bakare begins a career in optical engineering.
- GC Stories
- Student News
- Alumni News
May 2, 2022
Exploring the Layers of Language
For linguist Sejin Oh, the opportunity to pursue postdoctoral research in Paris represents “a dream-come-true moment.”
- Alumni News
- GC Stories
GC Books Addressing Diversity

Abolition Geography Essays Towards Liberation
New collection of writings from one of the foremost contemporary critical thinkers on racism, geography and incarceration
Gathering together Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s work from over three decades, Abolition Geographypresents her singular contribution to the politics of abolition as theorist, researcher, and organizer, offering scholars and activists ways of seeing and doing to help navigate our turbulent present.
Abolition Geography moves us away from explanations of mass incarceration and racist violence focused on uninterrupted histories of prejudice or the dull compulsion of neoliberal economics. Instead, Gilmore offers a geographical grasp of how contemporary racial capitalism operates through an “anti-state state” that answers crises with the organized abandonment of people and environments deemed surplus to requirement. Gilmore escapes one-dimensional conceptions of what liberation demands, who demands liberation, or what indeed is to be abolished. Drawing on the lessons of grassroots organizing and internationalist imaginaries, Abolition Geography undoes the identification of abolition with mere decarceration, and reminds us that freedom is not a mere principle but a place.
Edited with an introduction by Brenna Bhandar and Alberto Toscano.
Published May 2022
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