About the Equity Advisor

Equity Advisor for UCI's ADVANCE Program for Equity and Diversity, and Advisor to the Dean of the UCI School of Humanities on equity, diversity, and inclusive excellence

Tiffany Willoughby-Herard is Assistant Professor of African American Studies, a Faculty affiliate of Gender and Sexual Studies as well as Queer Studies at the University of California, Irvine. During her time at UCI, she has received the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Fostering Undergraduate Research through her contribution in the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program and Division of Undergraduate Education. Willoughby-Herard works on comparative racialization in the South African and North American contexts, Black political thought, and African feminisms. Some of her research focus include topics on South Africa, poor whites, race in foreign policy, diaspora, comparative racial politics, feminism, and community and civic engagement. In her recent book, Waste of a White Skin: Carnegie and the Racial Logic of White Vulnerability, she uses black feminism, black internationalism, and the black radical tradition, to explore the effect of politics of white poverty on black people’s life, work, and political resistance. In particular, this groundbreaking book examines the philanthropic institution of the Carnegie Foundation, contributed to the constitution of apartheid as a process of knowledge production in South Africa. Her manuscript examines U.S. complicity in constructing notions of whiteness, arguing that the Carnegie Commission Study of Poor Whites helped create knowledge production process central to apartheid, in particular scientific racialism. Some of her other works include "Black Rainbows: Militant White Women Writers, Post-Racial Discourse, and the Stakes of Race, Class, and Gender in South Africa," "Mammy No More/ Mammy Forever: The Stakes and Costs of Teaching Our Colleagues," and "More expendable than slaves? Racial Justice and the After-Life of Slavery."