Columbia College in New York has announced the Eric H. Holder Initiative for Civil and Political Rights, to honor former U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., according to a press release from the college.
The Initiative will provide a distinctive academic experience for the university's undergraduate students. With the generosity of an anonymous donor, $10 million has been raised to secure the Holder Initiative; the school needs a total of $20 million in order to fully fund the project, turning it into a permanent institute.
The Holder Initiative will sponsor courses, fellowships for practitioners, public events and student internships that provide a focused investigation of the tools that support and highlight justice, civil and political rights.
And, in order to combat what Holder considers “the quiet prejudice of inaction,” the Holder Initiative will encourage students to “live the core” by supporting their civic action in the real world, on and off campus.
Initial financial support for the Holder Initiative came partially from a three-year grant from the
Ford Foundation, whose mission involves reducing poverty and injustice, strengthening democratic values, promoting international cooperation and advancing human achievement.
“Eric Holder’s lifelong commitment to active citizenship and public service is woven into the very fabric of Columbia — and nowhere more so than the College and Law School he proudly attended," University President Lee C. Bollinger said.
“Our students, faculty and alumni have a long tradition of working for civil rights, human rights and equal justice. It’s especially appropriate for us to establish an initiative in his name that gives future generations of Columbians a deep grounding in how the great ideas of our Core Curriculum can be applied in practical ways to the ongoing work of a more just society.”
Columbia College Dean James J. Valentini said, “From the moment Eric and I discussed this idea two years ago, we knew that the Initiative would build on the foundation of our Columbia College Core course Contemporary Civilization, in which students engage fundamental issues of justice, of citizenship, and of rights and responsibilities … [today] marks the culmination of our combined commitment to provide College students opportunities to turn their intellectual learning into action that will advance civil and political rights for all citizens.”
Eric Holder was a 1996 recipient of Columbia’s John Jay Award for distinguished professional achievement, and a 2015 recipient of the Hamilton Alumni Medal, the college’s highest honor.
Holder was the third longest-serving attorney general and the first African-American to ever hold the office. Since the end of his term, Holder has since rejoined Covington & Burling law firm in Washington, D.C., where he was previously a partner from 2001 until he joined the Obama administration.
As a former University Trustee, Eric Holder was the Columbia College Class Day keynote speaker in 2009, Dean’s Day speaker in 2013 and the 2010 and 2016 Law School’s graduations speaker. Holder was a former member of the College’s Board of Visitors (1997–2003, 2003–2007) as well as Columbia Law School’s Board of Visitors (1995–2003). Holder also was a recipient of Columbia’s Law School Medal for Excellence in 2010.
As early as spring 2018, the Holder Initiative will sponsor The American Voter Project, a multiple-part initiative that explores the state of voting in the U.S. currently. Each of the project's six events will unite activists, artists, community members, journalists, politicians, scholars and students to discuss issues that influence American voting today, followed up with a capstone panel on the state of ‘one person, one vote’ in the U.S.
The Initiative will also offer a new capstone course next spring, Power, Rights, and Social Change: Advancing Justice, which is intended to bridge the core and contemporary issues of social justice. The Initiative is also working with undergraduate student leaders to initiate student-centered events in partnership with the project.
Through the Holder Initiative, undergraduates have will have access to a summer internship program, which provides additional financial support for work in civic and community engagement projects at Columbia and other educational institutions. Reniya Dinkins CC’18 was the first to hold the newly established Eric H. Holder Internship at the NAACP-LDF, along with seven other students who received internship funding in Summer 2017.
