CARL
The Campus Abolition Research Lab (CARL) is an interdisciplinary research incubator focused on leveraging data, research evidence, and critical analyses to disrupt and dismantle the carceral university. Through public programs and events, CARL brings together scholars, practitioners, and organizers to collaboratively reimagine postsecondary education as a life-affirming institution.
CARL DIRECTOR
Charles H.F. Davis III, Ph.D.
FOUNDER & DIRECTOR
Dr. Charles H.F. Davis III is the founder and director of the Campus Abolition Research Lab and a faculty member in the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education at the University of Michigan. Dr. Davis’ current research broadly examines the racialized consequences of higher education on society to include the relationship between university expansion and macro-level inequities affecting Black life-making in urban cities. As a community-engaged scholar, Dr. Davis became first-acquainted with the concept of abolition through his work as an organizer with the Dream Defenders, which later became an intellectual interest primarily through the scholarship of Angela Davis, Geo Maher, Huey Newton, Mariame Kaba, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and W.E.B. DuBois. In attempt to connect and situate abolition in the field of higher education, Dr. Davis introduced the concept of campus abolition as a way of conceptualizing colleges and universities entanglements with the carceral state and the imagining of new possibilities for postsecondary education as a life-affirming institution.