YALE NEWS — In 2021, Yale established a center based at Yale Law School to focus on racial injustice, perhaps the most pernicious and deep-rooted problem facing the United States. The Law and Racial Justice Center, now taking shape, will be a hub for related teaching, interdisciplinary research, and policy work. Fundamental to the mission of the center, which will be housed off campus in New Haven, will be engagement with partners outside the university, in its home city, and across the state of Connecticut. Working in collaboration, they will identify programs, interventions, and solutions that can be put into practice, with an emphasis on transforming public safety and creating new opportunities for marginalized communities. In a recent interview with Yale News, the center’s faculty director, James Forman Jr., and its inaugural executive director, Kayla Vinson ’11, spoke about the systems that perpetuate racial injustice in the United States, how the burden of indignities, large and small, borne by individuals also harm families and society, and how the Law and Racial Justice Center will begin to tackle these challenges.