Office for Institutional Diversity

Community Reading Project

The primary objective of each Community Reading Project is to support the academic mission of the college. On occasion the Office for Institutional Diversity will host a major scholar or public intellectual whose work we believe will benefit the entire community. Such visits will include a reading component, a public lecture, and when appropriate, a workshop led by the special guest with targeted members of the community. It is our goal that every constituent group within the college be included and encouraged to participate. Each Community Reading Project will also seek to provide an enduring service to Portland’s non-Reed community.

Past Community Reading Projects have included Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do by Claude Steele; The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz; The Residue Years by Mitchell S. Jackson; The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander; Counternarratives by John Keene; and So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo.