The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded the Humanities Action Lab (HAL), headquartered at Rutgers University–Newark, a $500,000 grant over three years to establish and support Climates of Inequality and the COVID Crisis: Building Leadership at Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs). This national initiative comprises a cohort of minority-serving colleges and universities charged with confronting COVID, and its racially disproportionate impacts, through public humanities and public engagement.