The BA program in Critical Diaspora Studies (CDS) is an interdisciplinary major that inspires students to bring critical knowledge of racism, migration, colonialism, and social movements to bear on pressing practical issues of belonging, citizenship, social justice, and equality. It addresses the urgent need for a comparative, synthetic, and applied academic program that moves beyond identitarian modes of knowledge production, particularly in the wake of immense social and racial tensions.

Originating in student demands for curricular change, the CDS major enables students to study the connections, solidarities, and dissonances between geographical and cultural areas of study—such as Asian-American, African diaspora, Indigenous studies, and Latinx studies—that are too often considered separately from one another but are in fact connected through entangled histories of migration, colonialism, and social movements.

The CDS major provides unique, interdisciplinary opportunities for students to explore topics related to indigenous and diasporic communities and their migration by prioritizing comparative, synthetic, structural, global, and activist modes of analysis. By moving away from a geographically restricted approach, and toward a more innovative, exploration of the interrelationships between identity, institutions, migration, and displacement, the major also encourages original research and community-engaged practices. 

History of the major

The major was first conceptualized by the Anti-Racist Alliances Student Working Group in 2021, after the Atlanta spa shootings. The group was hosted by the Program in Racism, Immigration, and Citizenship (RIC) and the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA). The group continued to meet over the year, and was joined by critical ethnic studies and Asian-American studies student advocates.

Their work included a roundtable of students and faculty members, and was featured on both JHU’s undergraduate newspaper the News-Letter and WYPR’s “On the Record.”

The RIC board unanimously approved the proposal for a Critical Diaspora Studies major in spring 2022, after which they hosted a panel discussion called a “A Department of Reparations?,” new courses, public events, and student research presentations. The major was approved in December 2023, and the Chloe Center for the Critical Study of Racism, Immigration, and Colonialism was launched in January 2024.

Undergraduate students were able to enroll in CDS courses and select Critical Diaspora Studies as a major in spring 2025.