Reckoning With Race and Gender in Public Administration and Public Policy: A Substantive Social Equity Turn

• Published date: 01 May 2022
• Author: Sanjay K. Pandey,Kathryn Newcomer,Leisha DeHart‐Davis,Jasmine McGinnis Johnson,Norma M. Riccucci
• Date: 01 May 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13501

Research Article:

Race and Gender

Symposium

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Jasmine McGinnis Johnson is an

Associate Professor in Public Administration

and Public Policy at George Washington

University. Jasmine’s research interests

broadly relate to the areas of the

democratization of philanthropy, the effect

of board networks on funding and human

resource issues in nonprofit organizations.

Email: jmcginnis@email.gwu.edu

Abstract: Promoting race-aware and gender-aware scholarship is essential for giving substance to social equity

research. This review and introduction provides an account of one such initiative to promote race and gender

scholarship through collaboration between Public Administration Review (PAR), and the Consortium of Race and

Gender Scholars (CORGES), and introduces the PAR Race and Gender Symposium. CORGES is an informal group

of scholars motivated by the pressing need to address issues of racial justice and gender justice in public administration

and public policy scholarship. This PAR symposium is based on the CORGES inaugural conference, held virtually

in September 2020. Conference organizers, with the help of Editor-in-Chief Jeremy Hall, devised and oversaw a

thoughtful and detailed plan to provide developmental feedback before papers were submitted to PAR’s standard peer

review process. The symposium is comprised of 14 research articles and 2 viewpoint contributions. In addition to

describing symposium contributions, this review provides an account of CORGES origins and its ongoing intellectual

and normative commitments on furthering inquiry on racializing and gendering, while also elaborating on the idea

of everydayness of scholarly activism. CORGES, with a recently expanded board of advisors committed to centering

public administration scholarship on race and gender, as well its intersection with other markers of oppression,

continues to support academic research and public outreach on race and gender scholarship.

Let us live so we do not regret years of inertia and ignorance, so when we die we can say all of our energy was

dedicated to the noble liberation of the human mind and spirit, beginning with my own.

Maya Angelou, Celebrated Poet and Civil Rights Activist

It is our honor and privilege to introduce Public

Administration Review’s (PAR) Race and Gender

symposium, a collaborative effort with the

Consortium of Race and Gender Scholars (CORGES),

an informal group of scholars motivated by the

pressing need to address issues of racial justice and

gender justice in public administration and public

policy scholarship. This collaboration brings together

PAR, with a long and storied tradition of impactful

public administration and public policy scholarship,

and CORGES, an emergent community of scholars

dedicated to “cultivating a more representative and

inclusive climate for voices that have been historically

marginalized throughout the expansive and

multidisciplinary study of governance.”

In addition to introducing the articles in the race

and gender symposium, we provide an account of

editorial activities as well as community organizing

activities that have supported the development of

this symposium. This intertwined account simply

recognizes that communities of scholars, rather than

individuals, make an impact on setting and reorienting

scholarly trajectories. Our informal organizing,

working as CORGES, has brought together many

colleagues who support a reckoning with race and

gender in public administration scholarship.

Our primary goal in centering on race and gender is

to provide substance to long cherished social equity

ideals in public administration scholarship. Before

proceeding further, we acknowledge that there are

other important marginalizations and oppressions

(e.g., religion, class, caste, colonization).1 Social

equity has functioned as a big umbrella idea in

public administration scholarship bringing together

disparate theoretical and empirical approaches. These

different efforts, however, have worked with an

impoverished understanding of race and gender. A

richer conceptualization of race and gender as social

institutions, structures, and processes is essential for a

substantive social equity turn in public administration

and public policy scholarship.

The rest of this review and introduction is organized

as follows. We begin by providing an account of

CORGES origins. Next, we describe our intellectual

and normative commitments to promoting scholarly

Reckoning With Race and Gender in Public Administration

and Public Policy: A Substantive Social Equity Turn

Leisha DeHart-Davis is the current

Coates Distinguished Professor of Public

Administration and Government at the

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

She is the current president of the Public

Management Research Association. Her

research addresses public sector organizational

behavior and gender in public organizations.

Email: ldehart@sog.unc.edu

Kathryn Newcomer is a professor in

the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy

and Public Administration at the George

Washington University where she teaches

graduate courses on program evaluation.

Her research spans across the program

evaluation and public management fields,

and focuses on evidence building and

accountability in government. She is an

elected fellow of the National Academy of

Public Administration.

Email: newcomer@gwu.edu

Sanjay K. Pandey is Shapiro Professor

of Public Policy and Public Administration

at the Trachtenberg School, The George

Washington University. His scholarship

focuses on public administration and public

policy, dealing with questions central to

leading and managing public organizations.

Email: skpandey@gwu.edu or

sanjay.k.pandey@gmail.com

The George Washington University

The George Washington University

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Rutgers University, Newark

Sanjay K. Pandey

Kathryn Newcomer

Leisha DeHart-Davis

Jasmine McGinnis Johnson

Norma M. Riccucci

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 82, Iss. 3, pp. 386–395. © 2022 The Authors.

Public Administration Review published

by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American

Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13501.

Norma M. Riccucci is Board of Governors

Distinguished Professor at the School

of Public Affairs and Administration at

Rutgers University, Newark, USA. She

has published extensively in the areas of

diversity, representative bureaucracy, and

social equity. She is an elected fellow of the

National Academy of Public Administration.

Email: riccucci@rutgers.edu