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Our Mission

The Program on Race, Science and Society (PRSS) is an initiative at the University of Pennslyvania devoted to transformative and interdisciplinary approaches to the role of race in scientific research and biotechnological innovations, aiming both to promote social justice and to dispel the myth that race is a natural division of human beings.

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PRSS Director Dorothy Roberts was named a 2024 MacArthur Fellow

 Professor Roberts is a legal race scholar and public policy researcher "exposing racial inequities embedded in social service systems and uplifting the experiences of people caught up in them. 

LEARN MORE ABOUT HER WORK AND THE MACARTHUR FELLOWSHIP

Upcoming Events



Register Now For the Our Right to Care International Conference!

Save the Date: Thursday, April 10 - Friday, April 11
Dorothy Roberts, Selma James, Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI)
- | | Thursday, April 10, 2025
University of Pennsylvania, Penn Carey Law, Fitts Auditorium
3501 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104

Friday, April 11, 2025
Crossroads Women’s Center
5011/5013 Wayne Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19144

Caregiving for family members and other loved ones including children, older, ill and disabled people, overwhelmingly done by women inside and outside the home, keeps economies and society going but…

PRSS Videos

PRSS Director Dorothy Roberts discusses the history, myths, and harms of race-based medicine in herTEDTalk: The Problem with Race-based Medicine, November 20, 2015. The talk was part of the 2015 TEDMED session called “Who Cares for Health Care?” that highlighted surprising perspectives and under-appreciated challenges facing our health care system. 

Click here to view the video of this talk and videos of other PRSS events
Penn Medicine and The Afterlives of Slavery Project

Given that Penn Medical School was the first of its kind in colonial America, the University of Pennslyvania has a special responsibility to not only uncover its relationship to enslavement but to lead other institutions in similar efforts. 

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