Fisher Hired as Director of Center for Social Justice & Civil Liberties

​​Tracy Fisher, Ph.D., has been hired as the director of the Center for Social Justice & Civil Liberties.

Tracy Fisher comes to Riverside Community College District with a wealth of experience working in higher education with undergraduate and graduate students in addition to researching, co-organizing, and participating in a wide range of interdisciplinary antiracist and decolonial projects, and collaborations rooted in justice. Before joining the District, she was a professor at the Fielding Graduate University. She has also taught courses at Scripps College and Pitzer College and was on the faculty at the University of California, Riverside. She earned her Ph.D. in Anthropology from The Graduate Center, City University of New York; her master's and undergraduate degrees from Temple University in African American Studies (master's) and Political Science and African American Studies.

“The District and its Board of Trustees are committed to re-energizing the Center for Social Justice & Civil Liberties," Wolde-Ab Isaac, Ph.D., chancellor of RCCD, said. “Diversity, equity and inclusiveness have been hallmarks of the District for over 100 years. The Center for Social Justice & Civil Liberties is one avenue we can use to spur discussion on racial diversity while at the same time furthering human and social services and fostering economic development and public safety."

A published author, Fisher penned What's Left of Blackness: Feminisms, Transracial Solidarities, and the Politics of Belonging in Britain. She served as co-editor of Gendered Citizenships: Transnational Perspectives on Knowledge Production, Political Activism, and Culture. She has also been published in edited volumes and journals, such as Social Justice and Critical Sociology. Her work centers on feminist, gender and sexuality studies; critical race and ethnic studies; Black diaspora studies; and anthropology.

Fisher says, she takes a critical intersectional approach to explore the ways in which people of different racial-ethnic backgrounds have actively transformed racial meanings, and how they struggle to build solidarities across race, ethnicity, gender, and nation, within specific political-economic and sociocultural circumstances. 

​“As an educator, I am committed to justice within and beyond college and university settings," Fisher said. “I'm excited by the incredible opportunity to re-imagine the Center for Social Justice & Civil Liberties as an interdisciplinary public space for intellectual-community engagement; a dynamic hub for educational enrichment; and a thriving museum-educational site committed to addressing some of the most urgent issues and questions facing communities today."