Henry Luce Foundation Awards Morgan State University $1 Million Grant

Funding will Support Creation of City-Wide Listening, Learning, and Exhibition Project Led by Center for Religion and Cities Through 2026

BALTIMORE— In a continuation of its support for community-based engagement and grassroots efficacy, the Henry Luce Foundation has awarded the Morgan State University (MSU) Center for Religion and Cities (CRC) a $1-million grant. The funding will be used to support Lifeways of Hope, an initiative centered on deep listening and collaborative practices for advancing the quality of life in cities, especially for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) communities who are too often excluded from planning processes by cultural and research institutions. This marks the fourth grant CRC has received from the Foundation, bringing the total support to date, to nearly $2 million.

Lifeways of Hope was developed collaboratively by Harold Morales, Ph.D., executive director for CRC; Amy Landau, Ph.D., director of Education and Interpretation for the UCLA Fowler Museum; and Rupa Pillai, Ph.D. senior lecturer of Asian American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, with input and support from numerous community partners including the CRC collective, in addition to Morgan students and staff.

“I am grateful for continued support from our communities, from Morgan, and from the Henry Luce Foundation,” said Dr. Morales. “I’m excited about the work this grant will make possible…lifegiving work that asks us to slow down, listen, and learn from each other. This is an opportunity to not only tend to the city’s wounds, but to center our desire for and presence of an abundant love.”

With the funding, the Center will develop three collaborative-learning initiatives: a Listening Lab, Museum Co-Lab, and Curricula Lab. The labs will be used to inspire critical approaches to dismantling unjust physical and social infrastructures by encouraging deep listening, collaborative work, and other practices or lifeways of hope.

The Listening Lab will be used to collect, analyze, and grow deep listening models, which will be leveraged throughout training, workshops, and experiential retreats, to improve collaborations between community organizations, universities, and museums.  Lessons learned from the Listening Lab will be applied in the work of the Museum Co-Lab and Curricular Lab to encourage and support healthier approaches to public knowledge production and sharing within cultural and educational institutions. This high-impact and vital work will be carried out in cities across the country where CRC has existing partners, including Baltimore and Los Angeles. All three labs will draw upon experiences and relationships created within CRC’s first four years of existence.

“Our prevailing public discourse about religion is too often shrill, polarized, acrimonious and inhumane," said Jonathan VanAntwerpen, Program Director at the Henry Luce Foundation. "Through its collaborative, community-based work—and under the creative leadership of Dr. Harold Morales—Morgan State University’s Center for Religion and Cities is building an alternative approach to religion’s public presence, rooted in an understanding of religion as a dynamic element of city ecologies, with the potential to shape how urban contexts change and thrive. Convening and engaging diverse participants—from academic researchers and museum curators to community activists and spiritual leaders—the Center’s latest initiative will catalyze fresh thinking, cultivate new partnerships, and deepen its support for a wide range of underrepresented knowledge makers. We are delighted to have the opportunity to provide ongoing support for the Center’s important and innovative work.” 

Through the generous and continued support from the Henry Luce Foundation over the past several years, CRC has expanded its critical community-based work and further cemented its ties to Baltimore’s diverse communities. In June 2020, a few months after the start of the pandemic, CRC was awarded $150,000 from the Foundation to address COVID-19-related needs through Relief and Restoration Work that provided support for direct aid while also documenting how marginalized communities were impacted by the pandemic and how they responded to the crisis. In 2021, CRC was awarded an additional $250,000 to support the Good Life Project—a community-based effort to collectively dream of, document, reflect on, and work to bring about healthier post-pandemic futures.

Morgan launched the Center for Religion and Cities in 2018 with a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation with a focus on Baltimore, its religious communities, and its most pressing social justice issues. The Center also receives annual support from the Morgan’s endowment fund boosted by a generous gift from Mackenzie Scott in December of 2020. Housed within the James H. Gilliam, Jr. College of Liberal Arts (CLA) Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, CRC’s mission is to bring together community partners, academics, and students to collaboratively learn about unjust structures in our cities and to support and grow innovative solutions to more equitable futures.

About Morgan

Morgan State University, founded in 1867, is a Carnegie-classified high research (R2) institution offering more than 140 academic programs leading to degrees from the baccalaureate to the doctorate. As Maryland’s Preeminent Public Urban Research University, and the only university to have its entire campus designated as a National Treasure by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Morgan serves a multiethnic and multiracial student body and seeks to ensure that the doors of higher education are opened as wide as possible to as many as possible. For more information about Morgan State University, visit www.morgan.edu.

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Media Contacts:
Dell Jackson or Cheryl Stewart, University Relations
443-885-3022