ADI Pods make significant progress on projects to disrupt systemic racial inequality and intersectional injustice

August 2025—Launched in 2021, the Antiracist Development Institute (ADI) at Penn State Dickinson Law works to dismantle structures that scaffold systemic racial inequality. It has employed ambitious scholarship, workshops, and convenings to spark critical conversations and effect change within law schools, across the legal academy, and in the legal profession.

Over the past 15 months, the ADI has successfully scaled across the Penn State University ecosystem by creating five “PODs,” aka University-wide working groups comprising faculty, staff, administrators, and students. These PODS are developing projects to disrupt systemic racial inequality and intersectional injustice, and all have made significant progress on their goals.

Using the ADI’s three-pillar system based on systems design, institutional antiracism, and critical pedagogy, the PODs have identified focus areas and even begun piloting solutions. PODs have held 33 hours of meetings over the past year, partnering with 61 colleagues across 30 units and campuses within the Penn State ecosystem.

“Our colleagues have put in the time and effort to break out of the siloes of their day-to-day routines to prioritize the necessary work of antiracism in and throughout our amazing University ecosystem,” said ADI Program Manager TaWanda Hunter Stallworth. “We have enjoyed stewarding them while helping them consider innovative approaches solving problems. Now, we are excited to share their work with the greater Penn State community.”

Here is an update on the work these PODs have completed so far.

Antiracist Leadership Certificate

This POD has thoughtfully constructed a noncredit certificate for those interested in becoming antiracist leaders. It chose to focus the certificate's modules on industry-specific content, starting with law enforcement.

To gather insights on what to include in the certificate, the POD met with critical stakeholders, including members of the Penn State Justice and Safety Institute (JASI), Cumberland County Probation and Parole, the Borough of Carlisle, Carlisle Police Department co-responders, and administration. Based on that meeting, a pilot took place in July to test the certificate.

Jamie Merida, interim director of continuing education and education program specialist at Penn State Lehigh Valley, is part of the Antiracist Leadership Certificate POD. “Our POD has been working diligently on the creation of the certificate,” said Merida. “It will officially launch in the fall, during ADI's Third Annual Convening.”

Reimagining Higher Education Policy

The policy POD recently split into two sub-PODs, with one POD focused on undergraduate admissions policies and the other focused on graduate and professional degree attainment.

The undergraduate admissions POD is gathering information about holistic admissions processes and discussing who else should be a part of the conversation. The graduate and professional degree POD aims to provide Penn State students with more information about post-graduation options, including law school, medical school, and business school. It is exploring how using artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies could make the information more accessible, especially for the university's historically underrepresented populations. 

Building Leadership Capacity with Antiracism

The leadership POD has met with key operational stakeholders across the university who are engaged in work related to diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, accessibility, and antiracism. Based on these meetings, the POD decided it would like to engage in discourse with key leadership members to support them in discussions about similar topics.

Antiracist Justice Frames: K-12 Engagement, Community Engagement, Sustainability, and Praxis

Embracing the iterative nature of the ADI’s approach, which encourages repetition of a process to find the optimal strategy, the POD has refocused to engage with the design thinking process more intentionally. It is also working to bring more community members into the fold to become more intentional about how to support K-12 educators, formally and informally, in discussing sustainability and environmental justice in their classrooms.

Transformative Justice: Methods for Dismantling a System of Incarceration

The Transformative Justice POD has diligently worked through the design thinking process multiple times to identify all the different users at play in the system of incarceration. Members have read stories about the individuals impacted by incarceration as well as different texts to learn more about the system. The ADI also collaborated with the Restorative Justice Initiative (RJI) and the PA Reentry Coalition (PARC) to host a reentry simulation at Penn State Dickinson Law’s Carlisle location in April.

“In the Transformative Justice POD, we have drawn on our team’s wide-ranging expertise to build a shared understanding of the people most impacted by the justice system,” said POD member and Penn State Dickinson Law Assistant Professor of Law Andrea J. Martin. “Our group includes attorneys specializing in criminal law, children’s advocacy, family, disability, and poverty law, as well as a former prosecutor and defense attorney, a journalist, and experts in community-based programs focused on social justice, human rights, law, and education.

“One member spent 52 years in prison, and his voice has been essential—he consistently grounds our conversations and challenges us when our assumptions do not reflect lived experiences. That kind of insight has been invaluable. Through this process, our team has developed a deep empathy for those whom our systems often overlook.”