The Crisis Of Race In Higher Education

"Why is it that as we enter the twenty-first century, the nation's predominantly white colleges and universities continue to be settings where people of color feel unwelcome and marginalized? The contributors to this volume dissect a variety of structural and attitudinal factors that are prevalent in the higher education community, organizational constructs and value orientations which seem to hark more to the past than to the future. They comment on the political, social, and economic factors that have shaped academic culture, and buttressed its quietly efficient maintenance of racially discriminatory practices. "The American system of higher education is often regarded as the best in the world. Smith, Altbach, and Lomotey have edited a volume that implicitly asks how much better still it could be if it embraced people of color and provided them with a supportive and nurturing environment, one which encouraged them to reach their fullest creative and intellectual potential. Indeed, this will probably be the most significant challenge that the academy faces in the twenty-first century." — William B. Harvey, Vice President and Director, Office of Minorities in Higher Education American Council on Education, Washington, D.C.

The compendium of writings in this edited volume sheds light on the event “Race & Ethnicity: A Day of Discovery and Dialogue” at Washington University in St. Louis and the work current students, faculty, and staff are doing to improve inclusivity on campus and in St. Louis.

A crisis of immense magnitude persists in higher education in the United States. For this third edition of The Racial Crisis in American Higher Education, Kofi Lomotey and William A. Smith have gathered outstanding scholars in the field to address this dilemma on several levels. In thirteen original essays, contributors establish a framework for understanding the current crisis, provide historical perspective on the present, offer a stark overview of the day-to-day realities on campuses, and illustrate the role and impact of university leadership. With a foreword by Donald B. Pope-Davis and an afterword by Valerie Kinloch, as well as an introduction by the editors, the volume is provocative, up-to-date, and solution-driven, giving readers both a comprehensive analysis of the racial crisis in American higher education and ideas for addressing it.

The history of African American studies is often told as a heroic tale, with compelling images of black power and passionate African American students who refused to take no for an answer. Noliwe M. Rooks argues for the recognition of another story, which proves that many of the programs that survived actually began as a result of white philanthropy. With unflinching honesty, Rooks shows that the only way to create a stable future for African American studies is by confronting its complex past.

At the beginning for the new millennium, higher education is under siege. No longer viewed as a public good, higher education increasingly is besieged by corporate, right-wing and conservative ideologies that want to decouple higher education from its legacy of educating students to be critical and autonomous citizens, imbued with democratic and public values. The greatest danger faced by higher education comes from the focus of global neo-liberalism and the return of educational apartheid. Through the power of racial backlash, the war on youth, deregulation, commercialism, and privatization, neo-liberalism wages a vicious assault on all of those public spheres and goods not controlled by the logic of market relations and profit margins. Take Back Higher Education argues that if higher education is going to meet the challenges of a democratic future, it will have to confront neo-liberalism, racism, and the shredding of the social contract.

The current socio-political moment—rife with racial tensions and overt bigotry—has exacerbated longstanding racial inequities in higher education. While educational scholars have developed conceptual tools and offered data-informed recommendations for rooting out racism in campus policies and practices, this work is largely inaccessible to the public. At the same time, practitioners and policymakers are increasingly called on to implement quick solutions to what are, in fact, profound, structural problems. Racial Equity on College Campuses bridges this gap, marshaling the expertise of nineteen scholars and practitioners to translate research-based findings into actionable recommendations in three key areas: university leadership, teaching and learning, and student and campus life. The strategies gathered here will prove useful to institutional actors engaged in both real-time and long-term decision-making across contexts—from the classroom to the boardroom.