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The impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions, SFFA v. Harvard College and SFFA v. University of North Carolina, will stretch far beyond the freshman lecture hall.
While the 6-3 decision will certainly have a negative impact on undergraduate campuses, the Supreme Court decision to strike down race-conscious admissions practices in most colleges and universities will be felt in all aspects of industry and civil leadership. It will also have a serious negative impact on the legal profession. In a blistering dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said, “the devastating impact of this decision cannot be overstated.”
As widely predicted, the ruling reversed 40 years of legal precedent that protected race-conscious admissions in higher education. Earlier decisions allowed schools to use race as one of many factors that college admissions officers could consider when conducting a holistic review of applicants. But last Thursday’s decision found that affirmative action in higher education violates the Constitution. The majority ruled that the admissions policies at Harvard and UNC violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Rather than protecting programs that advance equity in education and opportunities, the increasingly polarized Supreme Court has now banned them.
Olympia Duhart
The decision will harm diversity at the undergraduate level; in turn, it will also harm diversity of law school classes and other professional programs. By decreasing the number of Black and Brown students admitted to graduate schools across the country, the SFFA decision strips students of educational opportunities and blocks their path to professions and civil posts.
It will certainly shrink an already narrow pipeline for law school. The ruling undermines the progress that we have made toward an inclusive legal profession that reflects the nation’s diversity. And even that progress has been slow and stunted. The legal profession is already grappling with diversity.
While a 2022 survey by the American Bar Association found a growing number of women, Asian-American, Hispanics and mixed-race people in the legal profession, the number of Black lawyers remained stagnant. Even among groups experiencing growth, the numbers fall short of the US population demographics. Women are still underrepresented. Asians make up 5.5% of all lawyers. Black attorneys are underrepresented -- making up only 4.5% of practicing attorneys. Hispanics represented only 5.8% of all lawyers. Native Americans represented the smallest racial or ethnic group among lawyers; less than one percent of lawyers in the United States are Native American. In several important ways, the demographics of the legal profession fail to reflect the demographics of the population.
This failure will only be exacerbated by the SFFA ruling. As Justice Sotomayor has warned: “The Court subverts the constitutional guarantee of equal protection by further entrenching racial inequality in education, the very foundation of our democratic and pluralistic society.”
While some affirmative action proponents have argued that the Court’s ban on affirmative action will mostly impact highly-selective elite schools, the fact is that this small group of schools play a significant gate-keeping function both in private businesses and government, and especially in law. Even the composition of the Supreme Court bears this out. Among the nine justices who issued the SFFA decision, eight attended Harvard or Yale law school. Even the lawyers most likely to argue before the Supreme Court remain white and male.
From 30,000 feet up, the Court imagined a world with no color considerations or race-based structural inequities. But here on the ground, college admissions officers and applicants are left to grapple with persistent structural inequities that plague education in the United States. Testing performance, access to Advanced Placement tests, likelihood of school suspension and other categorical inequities are marked along racial lines. These inequities translate to fewer students in the pipeline for law school. ABA data shows that only 19% of the nation’s lawyers are people of color – this is less than half of the total US minority population of 40%.
The lack of meaningful representation among lawyers impacts everything from charging decisions to cultural competency in dealing with diverse clients. As Boston University law dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig noted, the small pool of lawyers of color perpetuates a "cycle of inequality in all aspects of the justice system.”
While pipeline programs and recruitment at diverse colleges have played a role in increasing law school diversity, affirmative action has been cited as the critical component to helping law schools attract more students from diverse backgrounds. Now stripped of one of the most effective tools used to increase diversity, admissions officers are especially challenged to ensure that their classrooms reflect the diversity of the communities they serve.
The Court’s SFFA decision just made this task harder.
Olympia Duhart is a Professor of Law at Nova Southeastern University’s Shepard Broad College of Law. She is the Co-President of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT). SALT was one of 22 organizations that joined Equal Justice Society and California ChangeLawyers in filing an amicus brief in SFFA supporting race-conscious admissions.
Voters outside the Alameda County Courthouse casting their ballots in the 2020 election in Oakland, Calif.
Guest post by Niloufer Siddiqui and Erum Haider
In 2021, in the midst of national political turmoil resulting from increasingly polarized politics, by-elections in the Pakistani mega-city of Karachi were being tightly contested over a seemingly mundane issue: access to water.
That water should become an election issue was perhaps not surprising. Karachi “faces an absolute scarcity of water,” with experts estimating that demand for water exceeds supply by twice as much. Most of Karachi’s residential areas are connected through pipes managed by the state-run Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB); however, given vastly inadequate supply, some of these physical connections only provide water once or twice a month. Problems are compounded in Karachi’s many low-income, informal settlements, which have little established infrastructure for water supply. Households in these neighborhoods often rely on low-quality water sold at exorbitant rates by private water vendors.
Water in Karachi involves a large number of actors with complex, often bewildering links to one another. In addition to the state-run KWSB, public benefit corporations direct water at certain neighborhoods at the expense of others. Sometimes the paramilitary Rangers step in by operating tankers. Licensed private water companies also provide water at a cost. All of these providers operate legally, but there is also a shadowy water mafia in Karachi that illegally siphons off water from the main supply and uses it to fill its own fleet of tankers and operate its own hydrants. The mafia sells this water to rich and poor consumers alike—anyone willing, or desperate enough, to pay for it.
In interviews conducted in July 2021, we were told that control over water from the city’s depleting freshwater sources has become one of the most lucrative arenas in a mega-city already saturated with criminality and political violence. The people we spoke with reaffirmed what others have found: that the water mafia operates often with explicit links to and assistance from political figures and representatives of the state. And because ethnicity remains central to how political and social life in Karachi is organized, many Karachi citizens believe that ethnic links are critical to how water is directed and prioritized.
That access to a commodity as vital as water should be determined by political ties and who can pay is not unique to Karachi. Where state capacity is weak, the provision of goods and services is often taken over by non-state actors, including criminal and illegal organizations. Scholars, journalists, and activists have chronicled this phenomenon in contexts ranging from Medellin to Baghdad to New York City. These often illicit actors step in to provide security in the presence of a weak state, but also provide citizens with essential public goods—at a price.
In December 2021 and January 2022, together with the Pakistan Institute of Public Opinion (an affiliate of Gallup International in Pakistan), we surveyed 2,000 people in Karachi to understand how voters in this ethnically-polarized city evaluate political candidates based on the candidates’ ethnicity and their claimed links to water resources.
We found that, while a majority of respondents preferred candidates who share their ethnicity, ties to the water mafia seem to do little to increase the appeal of even a co-ethnic candidate. Indeed, co-ethnic candidates with mafia linkages are seen as significantly less credible and helpful than those with state water linkages. Most people preferred candidates who share their ethnicity, especially when they have links to state water resources.
These results surprised us. It is often assumed that politicians use connections to the water mafia to direct water to their political constituencies as a vote-getting strategy. What we found, however, is that voters appear skeptical that politicians’ connections to the water mafia will directly benefit them, and so those connections do little to boost votes.
For politicians, manipulating the source of water is a profitable business opportunity. “Water provision ‘is more lucrative than drugs’” and, as one former National Assembly member told us, selling public water to tankers is “the easiest racket in town.” Rather than benefitting voters, water access is used by politicians to “fill their [own] swimming pools, water their lush lawns, bestow on friends, or indulge in their own tanker business on the side.” It is also used to curry favor with groups other than voters. Where water mafia connections do result in patronage, it appears to be primarily targeted towards political workers linked to the party apparatus rather than ordinary citizens.
There are many examples around the world where criminal gangs have been able to garner local support by stepping in where the state fails, providing health, education, and myriad other services. Think Hezbollah in Lebanon, gangs in Rio de Janeiro, and militant actors in Iraq. In Karachi, the water tanker mafia is perceived as contributing to, and emblematic of, overall state corruption. When respondents in our survey were asked who they believed was responsible for the water mafia in Karachi, about 53 percent blamed the provincial government and nearly 10 percent blamed the KWSB. In this context, then, it is likely that a politician with ties to water tanker networks would not be seen as an attractive candidate to alleviate the respondents’ water problems but rather seen as responsible for Karachi’s water crisis itself.
The case of the Karachi water mafia is emblematic of an increasingly common paradox in cities where weak governance and criminality plague the provision of basic services. On the one hand, rich and poor citizens alike are frustrated with illegal water provision, which many see as linked to corrupt practices within the state apparatus. On the other hand, illegal water services fill a gap created by inadequate state provision. Many individuals, particularly the poor in underserved neighborhoods, depend on these services. But just because they rely on illicit actors doesn’t imply that they are happy about it.
Niloufer Siddiqui is an Assistant Professor at the University at Albany-State University of New York. Erum Haider is an Assistant Professor at the College of Wooster.
This post is the first in a series on illicit economies, organized crime, and extra-legal actors and came out of an IGCC-sponsored conference hosted in October 2022 by the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy.
The authors acknowledge funding from the International Growth Centre in support of this project.
After reading the article “Another Education Fight Over DEI Emerges…” on CNN.com, a daunting thought came over me. Some faculty in Texas may not be expected to demonstrate proficiency in knowledge transfer. This leaves in question whether it is considered a bona fide qualification or a valued skill. The article seems to make clear that incorporating a DEI statement into the application folio of faculty is not considered necessary. Moreso, it is regarded as an illegal practice in Texas. Knowledge transfer, i.e., intellectual accountability, is a critical component of academic excellence. Devaluing this as a skill can potentially adversely impact any institution’s diversity agenda.
Dr. Ken Coopwood Sr.
In fairness, incorporating a DEI statement can cause a significant issue of subjectivity when no criteria are established to measure what is extracted from the statement. But it’s a start. Still, standards must first exist. Otherwise, a person who states, “I treat all my students the same,” could be rejected for another who writes three pages of believable fluff. Moreover, a DEI statement can be considered an extension of a “philosophy” statement, which many faculty are familiar with and likely have for interviewing purposes. Perhaps the most important issue to think about is that a DEI statement cannot indicate whether a potential faculty harbors skill at knowledge transfer. Summarily, such DEI inquiry should help detect demonstrated achievement at transferring knowledge, engaging in advocacy, and impacting relevant change in human behavior across diverse groups. Some faculty speak to this in their philosophy statements. Still, it’s nearly impossible to gauge any breadth or depth in someone’s statement without criteria, a rubric, or some mechanism to weigh it against.
The article states that “faculty and students have to judge us by our actions” regarding support to their person and environment. Unfortunately, it seems that the “action” is to question the result of incorporating a DEI statement instead of advancing the merit of the practice, which is historically in line with the foundation of the academy – inquiry. Knowing how a person views the responsibility of knowledge transfer is essential. No amount of disciplinary knowledge will nullify the adverse impact of not learning to teach it to others.
The academy is supposed to enhance student and constituent out-of-classroom experiences. How can faculty with demonstrated instruction to 21st Century students improve our classrooms? How can an institution discern when opportunity, activity, and integration to readdress the mono-cultural instructional histories of its faculty is needed? How can more underrepresented students achieve A-level academic success in STEM disciplines? Classroom discourse should aid in managing the multiple stages of student identity development while promoting the conception of a global society. It should empower the student to apply the discipline freely and skillfully across racial, ethnic, social, economic, and cultural lines. This social justice mandate begs the question: Why would any institution want to hire a faculty person who can’t demonstrate the capacity to instruct at this level? Again, asking for a DEI statement is a start, however subjective, and needs to be supported to strengthen the practice for alignment with an institution’s diversity mission and vision. Calling it “illegal” and inferring that an inquiry practice is synonymous with “dogma” vetting is an illusion that suggests collaborative and malicious intent by diversity executives, professionals, and supporters.
I’ve learned from 30 years in higher education that transformative DEI initiatives are refined with technologies, information, education, and collaborations outside of traditional American educational values. They are grounded in real-life research and practices that celebrate the valor and contributions of people, cultures, and movements that shape the constructs for global atonement.
There is a growing assault on DEI as an opponent of academic excellence instead of as an essential component installed throughout the academy. I applaud and support Paulette Granberry Russell , president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, for speaking directly on the issue. I urge other national organizations to do the same. The DEI statement insertion into faculty interview folios is an overdue starting point. Still, the pressure is already mounting to make it a completed journey. There’s more to do, lest the assault on DEI results in a higher education that is more of a business rather than a human development infrastructure.
Dr. Ken Coopwood is the CEO of Coopwood Diversity Leadership & Education Universal LLC (Coop Di Leu).
This article received an honourable mention in the graduate category of the 2023 National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics
Written by James Shearer, University of St Andrews student
In an increasingly politicised society, previously mundane decisions about our daily lives can take on normative qualities. One such question is “what news media should we consume?”. Alex Worsnip suggests that we have an obligation to consume media from across the political landscape. This essay argues against this claim by showing that any obligation to diversify our media consumption in this way would face severe limitations. §2 will consider Worsnip’s argument. §3 will show why we are under no general obligation to diversify our media consumption. Finally, in §4 I consider and respond to potential responses to my position.
Worsnip claims that we are obliged to diversify the news media we consume such that we should read sources from across the political landscape, including those belonging to political positions that we disagree with[1]. Before looking at how Worsnip structures and justifies his argument, I want to clarify the strength of his claim. There is a distinction between an obligation and a mere reason; Worsnip posits that we are under the former. I have a reason to attend office hours for my classes, it would improve my learning, but if I fail to do so I am not necessarily open to criticism. Perhaps I have a class scheduled at the same time; this would be a stronger reason to not attend office hours. However, if I fail to follow through on an obligation (say, the obligation not to kill) it seems that you automatically have licence to criticise me.
Obligations are not totally general, I might rightly kill an unprovoked attacker to save my own life. Such instances indicate the limit of an obligation. If an obligation can be shown to be so limited that we can freely break it in a wide range of cases, then talk of an obligation becomes less natural. Instead, it starts to look more like we just have a reason to act. I suggest that Worsnip’s obligation is better thought of as a reason to diversify our media consumption; one that will often be defeated.
Now, let us consider why Worsnip thinks we are obliged to diversify our media consumption. He claims that all publications, regardless of partisan affiliation, are illicitly influenced to a non-trivial degree. Illicit influences are those that lead a publication to report in a non-ideal way, leaving out important details or presenting the details in a way that is misleading, etc.
Worsnip considers two relevant ways that illicit influence might affect reporting. The first is through belief formation. Suppose a reporter believes that NATO should arm Ukraine. An uncomfortable consequence of arming the Ukrainian military is that some civilians will inevitably be killed by the donated arms. The desire to avoid acknowledging this tragic outcome might lead the reporter to wilfully ignore or discredit evidence that shows civilian deaths occurring because of these weapons. If they erroneously discredit the evidence or underreport the deaths, they do so under illicit influence.
The second illicit influence more directly acts on the decision-making process regarding what facts to report. Consider the Ukraine example again, but this time the reporter actively believes that the donated weapons are killing civilians. However, because they still support NATO’s involvement, they do not want to do anything that will lead to public pressure against the intervention. This desire leads them not to report credible evidence of the deaths. Again, illicit influence is at play.
Having defined illicit influence, Worsnip’s argument is as follows:
Conclusion: We have an obligation to diversify our sources to be from across the political spectrum (From 5,6).
(1) is plausible; given the presumption that all publications have a political leaning, it seems that any given publication is going to have illicit, politically biased influences. We could dig into the differing degrees of influence, but I will grant Worsnip this claim for the purposes of this essay. (2) is a straightforward consequence of illicit influence.
(4) seems an uncontentious claim about our psychology but it does highlight an important aspect of Worsnip’s theory, it is non-ideal. The distinction between ideal and non-ideal epistemic theories is in the agents that they apply to. Ideal epistemic theories consider ideal agents. Perhaps ideal agents would be able to adjust their beliefs appropriately once they recognise that their data set was incomplete, Worsnip’s argument would not apply to them. Non-ideal theories try to determine what course of action to recommend to non-ideal agents considering their failings. That Worsnip is acting in the non-ideal theory space will be relevant when we come to the objection and rebuttal. (6) is the premise which I will be indirectly contesting in the rest of this essay: in many cases, we are not obliged to diversify our sources. Given this creates a contradiction with the argument as stated, I suggest that (6) is misguided. Instead, we generally have a defeasible reason to avoid epistemically non-ideal beliefs by diversifying our media sources. With this in mind we can now turn to the objection.
The claim is this; in many cases, we do something wrong when we follow Worsnip’s advice. We could not be obliged to do something that is often wrong so I conclude that we are not under a general obligation to diversify our media consumption. I want to examine a case where many people are going to be obliged to not diversify their sources on partisan lines. I will use Black Lives Matter (BLM) as an instance of a positive social movement, however the argument will generalise to any positive social movement that the reader prefers.
We start with the premise that social movements such as BLM can be undermined by publications reporting only true claims. Banks’s 2018 work more fully explores the use of racial grammar, public memory, and framing in delegitimising BLM[2]. Here, I want to focus on framing. In April 2015 Baltimore police killed Freddie Gray, a black man, while he was in their custody. This resulted in a largely peaceful protest, during which a small number of protestors rioted. Media coverage focussed heavily on the protest’s violent aspects, highlighting photos of the rioters over the peaceful protestors and keeping the debate focussed on the appropriateness of the rioting, rather than the virtues and necessity of BLM.
By focussing on these factors, publications make salient certain facts that can erroneously undermine our faith in legitimate social movements. Framing BLM in such a way as to link it with violent protest can delegitimise it when non-ideal agents are unable to adjust their beliefs appropriately in light of this framing. Given the politically charged nature of BLM, we can expect partisan media that is aligned against BLM to be illicitly influenced towards framing its reporting in this delegitimising fashion.
That we are non-ideal agents is therefore highly relevant in this situation. We know that we may be susceptible to framing techniques that seek to discredit BLM, and we also know that should we consume media from across the political spectrum, we are highly likely to encounter those techniques. Following Worsnip’s suggested obligation would therefore pose a risk to BLM by making pernicious facts salient to a larger number of people.
If we think that supporting BLM is a moral obligation, then it would follow that we are obliged to avoid putting support for BLM at risk by making ourselves susceptible to discrediting techniques. This would constitute an obligation to avoid diversifying our media consumption in relation to BLM that would apply broadly to all people who are obliged to support BLM. Given this generalises out to all positive social movements that we are obliged to support, we consequently have a broad limit on Worsnip’s obligation. Now recall the distinction drawn between reason and obligation. That the obligation would be so often defeated suggests that we have a reason, not obligation, to diversify our media intake.
Before closing, I will consider two potential responses to my argument. First, we will look at a question regarding the extent of the limit I have argued for. We will then consider the importance of the distinction between epistemic and moral obligations.
Worsnip might agree that there are limits on the obligation to diversify our media consumption, but say that this is not the same as saying there is no obligation as such. It might be that we have a general obligation, but that it does not apply in the cases I have outlined. Perhaps I should not diversify my intake on social issues, but should do in other cases like on the economy.
I have two issues with this response. First, the non-ideal aspect of the theory makes it difficult to see how actionable the advice to “diversify your media consumption, but only on some issues” really is. Sifting through publications looking for “safe” reports while avoiding the riskier ones is error prone for agents like us. Second is that I am not sure how many issues really are both important enough that we are obliged to be informed on them and free of any type of positive movement that can be undermined via pernicious reporting. It seems to me that for any given important issue, there is some side which I am under a moral obligation to support. For each, the argument regarding BLM will go through[3].
Finally, there is a response based on the distinction between epistemic and moral obligations. Epistemic obligations are derived from requirements of rationality, whereas moral obligations are based on requirements of morality. Worsnip is arguing for an epistemic obligation; it is an obligation based on the premise that we do better epistemically when we diversify our body of evidence. I, on the other hand, have been arguing that there may be countervailing moral obligations, but it is not obvious that we could not be obliged epistemically in one direction but morally in the other.
I will not be attempting to offer a full account of the relation between epistemic and moral obligation here. I will instead settle with noting two problems that may emerge should Worsnip rely on this distinction in their defence. Firstly, Worsnip thinks that the obligation to diversify your sources is a case of moral and epistemic obligations “lining up”, but my objection shows that in many cases, this is not true[4]. Second is that if moral and epistemic obligations do come apart as I have suggested, that would be a severe limit on said epistemic obligations. It seems to me that in these situations we do better to think of ourselves as having an epistemic reason that is defeated by our moral obligations. This would be a rejection of (6) in Worsnip’s argument.
This essay has argued that we have no obligation to diversify our media consumption. We began by looking at Worsnip’s argument to the contrary and his understanding of illicit influence. I then refuted Worsnip’s argument by looking at obligations to support positive social movements. If that argument goes through, then broad limits on the obligation will emerge. We would do better to take ourselves as having a mere reason to diversify our media consumption.
Notes:
[1] (Worsnip, 2019)
[2] (Banks, 2018)
[3] Incidentally, this issue is why Worsnip cannot rely on his exception of publications that are “beyond the pale”. (Worsnip, 2019, Pg 258) Worsnip agrees that we are not obliged to consume publications that push immoral view points. My contention here is that unideal agents who try to diversify will inevitably do exactly that.
[4] (Ibid, Pg 243)
Bibliography:
Banks, Chloe (2018) Disciplining Black activism: post-racial rhetoric, public memory and decorum in news media framing of the Black Lives Matter movement, Continuum, 32:6, 709-720.
Worsnip, Alex (2019). The Obligation to Diversify One’s Sources: Against Epistemic Partisanship in the Consumption of News Media. In Carl Fox & Joe Saunders (eds.), _Media Ethics: Free Speech and the Requirements of Democracy_. London: Routledge. pp. 240-264.
“It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten”--- saying in the Twi language spoken in Ghana.
Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida and other right-wing conservative legislators would like us to believe that the field of African American studies is “woke’ indoctrination and has no value in K-12 classrooms or college and university curricula. The governor has even promoted the idea that teaching about anti-Black racism in U.S. history makes white children feel “discomfort, guilt, anguish, and psychological distress,” without any consideration of Black students’ feelings of isolation and unimportance. Clearly, legislators’ denouncement of African American studies is a denouncement of Black people, Black history, and Black culture. It sends a clear message of disrespect for a group of people who have lived and worked in the U.S. for hundreds of years, voted as citizens, fought in consequential American wars, and significantly contributed to American culture. Dr. Cheryl Holcomb_McCoy
Over the last month, we, like so many justice advocates, have been troubled by attempts to erase Black history from schools and classrooms. Many of our colleagues and friends have taken to the streets in protest or written letters to legislators describing the need for students to learn the history of all of America’s people — including Black history, not just history that elevates whiteness. There is a vast movement of white nationalism in the U.S. that is prominent in state legislatures, university systems, and local school boards. We believe this is dangerous and threatens to reverse our country’s progress toward creating a more perfect union, as our founders called for in the Constitution.
We believe that higher education faculty and administrators play an integral role in combating the faulty assumptions, racist ideas and harmful policies put forth by white nationalists. If successful, they will not only erase African American history and culture from schools, but also limit educators’ academic freedom, women’s reproductive rights, marriage equality, immigrants’ rights, and progress on racial and gender diversity. We’ve been here before, and we don’t want to go back.
Close to 100 years ago, Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the ‘father of Black history,’ believed young Black students were being deprived of learning their own history and, as a result, would not have the confidence and pride in their own capacity to achieve great things. He instituted Black History Week, which is now called Black History Month. It’s hard to believe that today there is still resistance to teaching Black history in schools — from the history of enslavement to the Black Lives Matter movement. There is truly a fear of acknowledging Black history and, more importantly, Black progress. Dr. Eddie Glaude, the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor at Princeton University, emphatically states that the U.S is in the throes of a “White reprisal” to the racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd. For some, according to Glaude, America’s movement toward understanding and acknowledging the effects of racism on Black and brown people became too much after Floyd’s murder. Terror and panic settled in. The College Board’s AP African American Studies course debacle is also proof of the fear surrounding full acknowledgment of Black people’s history in the U.S. Dr. Johnnetta Betsch Cole
Elevating racism, as Florida has done by banning diversity initiatives and African American studies courses, is ultimately costly to all Americans. While Black and brown people experience the devastating effects of racism (e.g., discrimination), white people are negatively impacted too. Author Heather McGhee draws on economic data to make the case that racist laws and practices targeting Black Americans also negatively impact white people economically. For instance, a regional report by the Tampa Bay Partnership published in 2020, indicated that “eliminating racial and ethnic discrimination in wealth would add $50 billion to the region’s $248 billion economy.” Social justice educator and writer Paul Kivel even suggests that anti-Black racism leads white people, particularly those with less wealth and power, to believe or rationalize that Black people, immigrants and people of color somehow threaten a system that benefits whites when whites themselves are actually paying a steep price for racism. And, according to Kivel, white people’s tendency to ignore, deny and rationalize away racism leads them to a false security in white superiority. This, too, is dangerous.
It is apparent to us that a clear strategy for combating white nationalism in American education is urgent and necessary for our multiracial democracy to thrive. The need for all students to not only learn African American studies, but for them to learn a fully inclusive history of our country should be our goal. We should not, cannot and will not stand by and remain silent about these assaults on our democracy. We encourage other educators, including our higher education colleagues, to continue to protest and advocate for African American Studies, and most importantly, to advocate for the full inclusion of African American history in American history. Below are some additional actions for higher education faculty and administrators:
● Write even more books (including for children and teens), articles, other publications and stories about Black people. We believe there is a need to elevate diverse African American experiences with intersectional social identities. The discipline of African American Studies was birthed out of the civil rights movement and the Black Power Movement of the 1960s. We must birth a new era of African American studies and narratives at this point in American history!
● Write about the human costs of racism in democratic institutions such as the legal system, media, and public education. Right-wing extremists are reinventing white nationalism and denying citizens of their civil liberties. This must be challenged. Erasing African American history from the education curriculum is a definitive step toward denying students a right to an excellent, fair education.
● Create multidisciplinary scholar networks of educators and community activists committed to developing African American curricula for PK-12 schools. Produce history and African American studies courses and lessons for all students, at all levels.
● Prepare and train educators to teach about racism, anti-Black racism, and systems of inequality in our nation and around the world. Schools/colleges of education must restructure their teacher training to be more inclusive of African American studies and antiracist pedagogy. Evaluate in-service and pre-service teachers for their understanding of American history, particularly the history of colonialism, enslavement, and oppression in the U.S.
● Convene teach-ins and conferences at multiple institutions, including 4-year and 2-year colleges and universities, historically Black colleges and universities, tribal colleges, Hispanic serving institutions, and Predominately White Institutions consisting of African American scholars, community members and activists. Teach-ins are spaces for sharing new ideas and information to uplift the value of African American history, culture and people.
● Partner with legislators and policymakers to ensure that Black voices are not erased from statewide and local school curricula. Speak up at school board meetings and testify before congress in defense of African American Studies. Make phone calls and write letters to those representing us on local, state and national levels. Vote for candidates at the local, state, and national levels that are committed to education about all of America’s people and that, includes African Americans.
We conclude this call to action to defend the teaching of African American studies with this well-known African American saying: “You can’t know where you are going if you don’t know where you have been."
Dr. Johnnetta Betsch Cole is President Emerita of Spelman and Bennett Colleges
Dr. Cheryl Holcomb-McCoy is Dean and Distinguished Professor at American University School of Education
I’m doing a one-man show in New York City, where I talk about the Philippine American War. It’s the war no one likes to talk about.
That’s because the U.S. is the aggressor against a sovereign, the Philippines. In other words, the U.S. is in the role of Russia. And the Philippines is in the role of Ukraine. That’s your update on geopolitical ironies.
But I want to talk about the war in the context of the final days of Black History Month, and the one historical story I love because it shows Black history is American history is Asian American history. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. When the American is an African American in Asia, that’s a richness worth contemplating. Emil Guillermo
If the name David Fagen doesn’t roll off your lips, or immediately come to mind, then remember it now. It’s a history lesson and a humanity lesson, that’s always worth repeating. For the history buffs, Fagen was an African American born in Florida in 1875. It was after slavery, after the Civil War, and yet was there really much difference? You still had blacks lynched, burned and murdered in the South. This was the reality for Fagen who joined the segregated all-Black 24th Infantry and was sent to fight Native Americans as a “Buffalo Soldier.” His unit was so good, the Army sent him first to Cuba for the Spanish American War. And then they were dispatched to the Philippines for what I’d rather call the U.S.-Philippine War, reserving the lead position to the aggressor.
The first shots were fired Feb.4, 1899. It was around that time, that Fagen started hearing the “N” word being hurled about. But when he turned his head, the Filipinos turned their heads too. The white officers were calling Filipinos the “N” word. The N word as the F word? That’s what began the soul searching for Fagen. How could any African American with integrity or empathy fight a white man’s war and turn his gun on another person of color fighting for freedom?
Don’t know how Fagen felt about the Native Americans he encountered in previous campaigns, but by time he was in the jungles of the Philippines, he was changed. Fagen could no longer fight for the U.S. imperial army. He became one of 15 to 30 deserters among the four units of the all-Black “Buffalo Soldiers". He was the only one known to have joined the Filipino freedom fighters of the U.S.-Philippine War.
Others felt what Fagen felt. One of my favorite Black History books is William Gatewood’s, Smoked Yankees and the Struggle for Empire: Letters From Negro Soldiers, 1898-1902. The letters make the racist nature of the war clear and provides an understanding for Fagen’s defection. Gatewood’s book has letters written by African American soldiers and published in the U.S. by the Black ethnic press, such as the Boston Post, the Cleveland Gazette, and the American Citizen in Kansas City.
“I feel sorry for these people and all that have come under the control of the United States,“ wrote Patrick Mason, a sergeant in Fagen’s 24th Infantry, to the Cleveland Gazette. “The first thing in the morning is the “(N-word)”and the last thing at night is the “(N-word).”. . .You are right in your opinions. I must not say as much as I am a soldier.”
It took the courage of humanity to take action like David Fagen. If you’ve never heard of this history, it’s not surprising. It’s one that runs counter to America’s white supremacist narrative. Few teach history with a mention of Fagen. I was surprised that even my father, who was born under the American flag in the Philippines a few weeks after the U.S.-Philippine war started, had never heard anything about Fagen. That likely wasn’t taught in his colonized American school, where he learned English well enough to come to America in the 1920s as a colonized American national.
All throughout the discrimination my father faced in the U.S. (anti-miscegenation, lack of opportunities in employment and housing), he found himself in the Black community. But he still was in the throes of colonial mentality. Generally, that’s known as an acceptance of the white narrative, as one goes along to get along in society.
Coincidentally, I’m telling my father’s story live on stage during various times at Frigid.NYC, the New York Fringe Festival, at the Under St.Marks Theater. You don’t necessarily have to be in New York to experience it. See it from home with a livestream ticket, available at Fringe.NYC via this link:
Emil Guillermo is a veteran Northern California journalist, speaker, and commentator. He’s at www.amok.com
The question of how equitable the engagement of higher education institutions with private equity firms and other investment management groups is a difficult one to answer. The reason for this is that there is an incredible lack of transparency in identifying what money managers many higher education institutions are using to steward their endowments.
The Knight Foundation’s 2021 report that sought to examine the diversity of the asset managers for the wealthiest 50 public and private universities had 34 of the institutions decline to participate. These institutions have a combined $273 billion under management. The key question is, who is managing these assets?
The fact is that many higher education institutional endowments and pension plans more broadly have significant percentages of students and personnel of color that pay into these vehicles on a regular basis. Many of these institutions hand out these funds to investment firms across the country. These funds do not equitably go to Black and Hispanic owned firms. It seems that people of color are good enough to put their money into the system, but they aren’t perceived as being good enough to manage the assets. Dr. Marcus Bright
One result is that Black and Hispanic owned firms are frequently not able to raise funds that are as big as their counterparts. Thus, many are denied greater opportunities to increase their capacity to make meaningful investments in communities that they have direct connection to.
There is also the false narrative of having make a tradeoff between diversity and performance. Multiple reports have found that there is no evidence of being a reduced level of performance in utilizing diverse money managers. Diversity has been shown to be an enhancer of performance in many cases.
New pipelines of opportunity for diverse investment managers are needed to break into areas where little to no diversity has historically existed. The aforementioned report from the Knight Foundation cited some reasons for why asset manager rosters can be slow to change including “asset managers’ intentionally long-term investment objectives and processes, established relationships with current managers, low manager turnover and the need for extensive due diligence before hiring new managers.”
One recommendation that was put forth by the Diverse Asset Managers Initiative in a guide related to investing with diverse asset managers is to utilize the “Rooney Rule” that is used in the National Football League (NFL) for the hiring of head coaches and general managers. The rule requires that teams “conduct an in-person interview with at least one external minority candidate for any GM or head coaching interview” among other requirements. This could also be used for decisions regarding investment firm selections by colleges and universities for money management.
The guide also highlighted the fact that the state of Illinois already has the Rooney Rule language in its legislation. It reads: “if in any case an emerging investment manager meets the criteria established by a board for a specific search and meets the criteria established by a consultant for that search, then that emerging investment manager shall receive an invitation by the board of trustees, or an investment committee of the board of trustees, to present his or her firm for final consideration of a contract. In the case where multiple emerging investment managers meet the criteria of this section, the staff may choose the most qualified firm or firms to present to the board.”
There is also a need for greater efforts to build more diverse talent pipelines into the investment banking and private equity industry. A piece entitled “PE Firms Are Making Diversity Efforts, But It Will Likely Be a Long Road” by Hannah Zhang asserted that private equity has lagged behind other areas of the finance sector when it comes to diversity stating that “according to a recent Ernst & Young report, only 3 percent of employees in the PE industry are Black, compared with 12 percent at banks. Among the portfolio companies backed by the top 18 PE firms and venture capitalists, only 2 percent of board seats are held by Black and Latino directors.”
Just as higher education institutions should increase their level of transparency when it comes to who is managing their endowments, investment management firms should have transparency in their recruiting, hiring, promotion, and workforce diversity status.
One step forward would be for firms to better articulate what knowledge, skills, ability, competencies, credentials, and intangible factors are needed to attain roles at every level of the organization. This would provide some clearly defined targets for people to prepare, train, and shoot for. The bar does not have to be lowered for diversity to flourish, it just needs to be made clear and people of different backgrounds need to be given a fair chance to compete.
There are some entry-level roles at many firms that college and university graduates can move right into if they have been properly groomed through their coursework and potential internships, apprenticeships, or work experience. There is a need for an increased level of intentionality to be injected throughout the development and maintenance of career pathways in private equity and investment banking. This entails being deliberative and specific regarding the creation of opportunities for both preparation and advancement.
Support along the journey from initial exposure to the securing of upper echelon positions is critical to facilitating breakthroughs for people who historically have been denied the opportunity to ascend to certain career heights in sizable numbers. Putting qualified and capable people and firms on the radar of those who make both hiring decisions at firms and selections of investment managers for college and university endowments is an important step towards the creation of a more equitable landscape for higher education engagement with asset management groups.
Dr. Marcus Bright is a scholar and social impact facilitator.
Recently, when I was asked to appear on a Diverse sponsored panel at the recent AAC&U annual meeting on the best practices of attracting, hiring and retaining diverse faculty and administrators, I approached it from a journalist’s perspective.
I simply asked the most senior people I knew among my acquaintances around the country about the subject. I talked to people who have served on hiring committees at the department and university level. I talked to some who have been around long enough to see how diversity policies have both expanded and contracted over decades. And then I gave my sources full anonymity so as to be free to express exactly what the problems are and how to mitigate them so as to qualify as a “best practice.”
Emil Guillermo
What I thought would be fairly simple isn’t.
And that’s because as my sources put it, every school is geo-culturally limited, locked into different standards for what “diversity” means. And that is just one item in a proverbial list of “dirty little secrets.”
When it comes to diversity in institutions, as the saying goes, your mileage will vary. How else could you have a situation at Purdue Northwest, where Chancellor Thomas Keon could use a mocking Asian accent and get away with it at a graduation?
He’s the leader of diversity there? That’s going to make an Asian American want to work there?
Keon’s been reprimanded by the trustees, though the Faculty Senate gave him a vote of no confidence and demanded a resignation.
Keon stays on.
Since Jan. 1, we’ve been waiting for the newly appointed president of the entire university system, Dr. Mung Chiang, an Asian American immigrant to weigh in and possibly override the trustees. He hasn’t, and likely won’t.
And there’s your geo-cultural limitations. Best practices depends on whether it’s a private or public institution, religious or non-sectarian, in a red state, a blue state or a purple state.
It makes a difference.
When it comes to diversity, your mileage will vary.
Still, it seems we all want to portray an ideal sense of diversity, and yet, we find it’s often near impossible to get. We try to make a “diversity hire” and then we end up with the gap.
The gap is the difference between what we stated were our goals and what we wind up with, if we wind up with anything at all. It is the dissonance of diversity.
We know what we want to hear but we seldom hear what we get. Or what we need. And what we hear sounds like public relations b.s.
But since few institutions want to be seen as anti-diversity, they all want to do the right thing. In the end, however, as my sources say, schools are stuck where they are and what they are—traditional, slow moving institutions whose ideals sometimes exceed their grasp.
So the best practice boils down to one word: Honesty.
Have a diversity policy that is honest to the realities of the institution. If you are in a red state with right wing colleagues, you’re not going to get the diversity of California state college.
Next, in writing an accurate job description, what kind of employee qualities are you looking for— a firebrand or a milquetoast? Broadening the definition gets you more candidates, and more diversity. Narrowing it will get you less. But there’s no guarantee they’ll get funneled into the actual interview process. Not if the goal is getting the right fit for the university, and not for diversity.
“I think a lot of universities are pretending to want to be diverse, but that the hidden agenda is they want someone who will be a good fit for the continuing political culture of that institution,” one of my sources said.
A broadly worded description will get applicants but, in the end, my source says the “inborn biases, the inherent political, cultural biases of the institutions become the criteria.”
Essentially, you’re collecting resumes until it all gets winnowed down to the 2-3 candidates on the short list. And even that may have already been determined. And then once the hiring committees recommend to the administration—the process stops being fully transparent and becomes a “personnel” matter. And then we’re back to yet another “dirty secret.”
This is a semi-secret non-transparent process, that you must fight to keep fair, and unbiased.
My sources said, everyone on a hiring committee must realize the real consequences of a failure to disclose conflicts of interests. Behaviors change if they know false steps could automatically nullify the entire process.
We turn again to Purdue for an example. Here was the process to find a new president to replace Mitch Daniels, the former GOP presidential hopeful and governor of Indiana, who was president of Purdue for ten years.
Daniels basically handpicked Chiang. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, trustees appointed Chiang president “without any search or even interviewing him formally for the position.”
Doesn’t sound like a best practice to me.
But then maybe that explains the recent lack of action against Keon at Purdue NW for using a racial dialect mockingly at a graduation. He’s not a joker, he’s chancellor. But this is the state of diversity around the nation in higher ed. Even in 2023, it’s still a matter of your mileage will vary.
The best practice takeaway then remains to be honest about the current reality about where you are. And not to give up. The struggle for diversity has started, but as we learn, it never ends.
Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. He does a one-man theater show on being Asian American in the U.S. See more at www.amok.com
Nearly half of U.S. parents surveyed by Pew Research Center said that they were raising their children differently from how they had been raised.
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