Presidential Task Force on African American and Native American History and the University of Florida
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in the summer of 2020, President Kent Fuchs formed a task force to investigate UF’s historical relationship to Black and Indigenous peoples. Department of History faculty played an important role in the Presidential Task Force. Its co-chair was Professor Paul Ortiz of the Department of History, and its members included Associate Professor David Canton, departmental faculty and director of the Center for African American Studies, and Professor Jon Sensbach, chair of the history department. The product of their work was an extensively documented, 110-page report published in the spring of 2022 that outlines UF’s history with Black and Native American peoples and cultures. As Professor Ortiz writes in his introduction, “A historically white university that has enormously benefited from the land, labor, and resources of African and Native American communities from 1853 onwards is obligated to strive harder to become a place of academic excellence, inclusion, and equity for all.”