Yolanda Moses

The 2017 prize for Distinguished Achievement in the Critical Study of North America was awarded to Dr. Yolanda Moses.

The SANA Prize for Distinguished Achievement in the Critical Study of North America was inaugurated in 1994 to recognize notable long-term programs of research and publication. It also takes into account contributions in other areas, such as teaching and training, SANA and AAA service, and community, activist, or policy involvements outside academia. I am so proud to present the 2017 award to Dr. Yolanda Moses whose work is based on her concern with minorities, higher education, and public policy and who has made major contributions to the field as a teacher, scholar, administrator, and public intellectual.

With a B.A. (With Honors) from California State College, San Bernardino, Yolanda earned an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Anthropology (with Highest Honors) from the University of California, Riverside. She currently serves as Professor of Anthropology and Associate Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Excellence at the University of California, Riverside, but she held positions at George Washington University (2000 to 2004), and at CUNY, including at the CUNY Graduate University. She is known both inside and outside of the academy for her skills at bringing people together for the accomplishment of lasting goals.

It is especially to striking to note that Dr. Moses works beyond the university in ways that are unfamiliar to many. For example, she has held memberships on over thirty advisory boards including the United Nations, the Smithsonian, the National Science Foundation, and the Ford Foundation; she has served as a spokesperson in national and international media; written introductions to many texts; and given invited and distinguished lectures. She has shaped research agendas and public discourse; and successfully raised funds to create platforms for initiatives concerned with social issues ranging from race and human diversity to women in higher education. She created conferences, seminars, meetings, and public events to advance debates on racism, its conceptualization, and treatment.

Much this was accomplished while serving as a full-time administrator, which as many of you know, is a site of crucial but time-consuming work. Professor Moses creatively combined her research, writing, and substantial organizational skills with a keen sense of the problems at hand to reframe discourses on race, ethnic, and gender inequities. She used her positions as president of a major university, as president of the AAA, and the American Association for Higher Education to advance debates concerning minorities. Since 1985, she not only developed dozens of initiatives concerning social issues, she has raised millions and millions of dollars to support diversity-related efforts from various governmental agencies, non-governmental organizations, and philanthropic institutions.

Let me rehearse just one of her significant contributions: in 2004, the American Anthropological Association received a $2.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation to support the second phase of the project “Understanding Race and Human Variation: A Public Education Program.” Building on a series of conferences and books sponsored from the mid 1990s onward by the AAA, this project, initially funded by the Ford Foundation, aims to promote public discourse, knowledge, and education on the issues of race and diversity. Besides conceptualizing and providing leadership to the project, Dr. Moses wrote significant portions of the grant application. This project has mobilized scholars from across many fields and institutions as it provides a platform for examining how ideologies of naturalized race are promoted to the American public.

The resulting exhibition uses state-of-the-art museology techniques, historical artifacts, iconic objects, photographs, and multimedia presentations to invite interaction. In addition to the travelling exhibition, Professor Moses co-authored a book aimed at scholarly and lay audiences. As Jane Hill describes it, How Real Is Race? A Sourcebook on Race, Culture and Biology is “a fundamental reference, combining lively reading with authoritative scholarship and an imaginative selection of visuals. The book is both a classroom basic and a resource for students of race and racism at all levels.”

Yolanda’s early efforts to make the anthropological conversation a public one were instrumental in legitimizing the varieties of engagement we consider vital to the SANA mission. As President of AAA in the mid-1990s, when the Association’s meetings were still largely closed to non-anthropologists, she sponsored executive events such as “When Race Makes News,” a panel that brought academics together with print and broadcast journalists. Her presidency coincided with the early days of SANA, when work in the US, Mexico and Canada was still treated as lesser by many in AAA. Yolanda’s leadership during that time fostered an environment where SANA’s efforts to curate existing scholarship while supporting new work in the critical study of North America could take root and flourish.

So, she has throughout her career provided a series of interrelated initiatives whereby others could refine their knowledge and then bring it to bear upon the pressing issues of the day. We thank you for your tireless efforts.