Meet our Spring 2021 author, Ellie Kleiman

Ellie (she/they) is a soon-to-be graduate from Brandeis University with a double major in Anthropology and International & Global Studies and minors in Women’s, Gender, Sexuality Studies and Asian American Pacific Islander studies. They began organizing at Brandeis in their first year with the Brandeis Asian American Task Force (BAATF) towards establishing (and winning) an AAPI studies minor program. She […]

Meet the Spring 2017 team

Aja Antoine ’17 and Mercedes Hall ’17 were the first two students hired as Archives Assistants to do BBAC work in the Archives. As former participants in the Ford Hall 2015 movement, Aja and Mercedes were well positioned to help develop the ideas of the founding members into some of the first BBAC archival projects. On March 23 2017 Aja […]

Meet the BBAC founders: 2016

In the Fall of 2015 there was a direct action student protest known as #FordHall2015 (FH15), in which Black Brandeis University students convened in the Bernstein Marcus administrative building for what became a 13 day sit-in. The following year some members of that action, Queen White ‘16, Chari Calloway ‘20, and Wil Jones ‘18 along with Brandeis alumna Micha Broadnax […]

Brandeis presence with Project STAND

Some of Brandeis’ archival collections featuring student activism can now be found here on the Project STAND website. Project STAND (Student Activism Now Documented) is an organization of archivists and students dedicated to promoting such resources from various colleges and universities. We are happy to be a part of Project STAND, where the activist histories of minoritized student communities are […]

Archiving Student Activism Toolkit

During the Fall 2019 semester several archivists, including Maggie McNeely at Brandeis, worked on the Archiving Student Activism Toolkit for Project STAND. The Toolkit, now live, is meant to be utilized by both student activists and archivists. The tool covers considerations and best practices for archivists. It also aims to empower student activists through an understanding of the many options […]

Meet the 2019 Team

Rai McKinley Rai is a very Black, very queer/trans soon to be Brandeis graduate in the African and African American Studies department, or as they call it “Black Arts and Social Theory”. Rai has been using digital media to document varying expressions of Black life for a decade, and is particularly interested in the intersections of new media and culture, […]

BBAC project history: 2016 to 2019

In the Fall of 2015 there was a direct action student protest known as #FordHall2015 (FH15), in which Black Brandeis University students convened in the Bernstein Marcus administrative building for what became a 13 day sit-in. The following year some members of that action, Queen White ‘16, Chari Calloway ‘20, and Wil Jones ‘18 along with Brandeis alumna Micha Broadnax […]

Archivist notes on the profession and the work; and a big thank you!

It is now widely acknowledged within the profession that archives largely reflect history from a white upper class privileged position. This reality is due to many factors including the lack of diversity in the profession and institutional practices that follow established patterns of systemic racism and classism. By creating the Initiative on Under-Represented Collections with a Focus on Students of […]