Lex Barlowe awarded Nakanishi Prize

Alexandra Zina Barlowe

An African American Studies Major and Mellon Mays Research Fellow graduating with distinction, Lex Barlowe has focused her scholarship on issues of land usage, cooperative economies, and reparations in the American South. She is described as a fierce truthteller who illuminates the challenges affecting her communities, rooting them in history and context in order to promote a deeper understanding of them. Her peers say of her “Lex never fights for just one issue. Her moral imagination operates with the knowledge that issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, etc. are all interconnected.”

Lex has also worked tirelessly to build bridges among organizations and individuals, pushing relentlessly for a more equitable and just campus — and world — through her activism. Serving as past President and Social Justice Chair for the Black Student Alliance at Yale (BSAY), a Communication and Consent Educator (CCE), and an organizer for the group Fossil Free Yale, she brings womanist, feminist, anti-racist work to the fore with academic rigor and a deep integrity, and she has, by example, taught her peers, faculty and administrators about inclusive leadership.

To recognize all she has accomplished in the service of race and ethnic relations, Yale College is honored to bestow the Nakanishi Prize upon Alexandra “Lex” Barlowe.