Besieged by a barrage of hate incidents and propaganda efforts by White supremacists, colleges and universities must lead authentic discussions about troubling aspects of the nation’s racial past in order to secure a better future.
That is one of several themes that emerged among higher education administrators, student activists, Congressional leaders and scholars during recent discussions on the issue of racial climate on America’s college campuses and to probe ways to combat hate.
“In order for us to have a successful future, we have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, which means having real conversations about our shortcomings as a nation in the past,” said Payton Head, former student body president at the University of Missouri and a fellow at the National Campus Leadership Council.
“If our educational institutions pretend there is no problem, we won’t have the opportunity to create solutions,” said Head, who was student body president at Mizzou during the protests that led to the ouster of the university system’s president in 2015.
Dr. Teresa Sullivan, president of the University of Virginia, listed a series of steps her institution has taken to acknowledge the fact that it was “built by the hands of enslaved labor.” Those actions include renaming campus buildings after individuals such as William and Isabella Gibbons, who were held in slavery by different UVA professors in the 1800s. “Acknowledging the past is one way for us to improve the racial climate and build a brighter future,” Sullivan said.
Head and Sullivan made their remarks Friday on Capitol Hill during a Democratic-led forum titled “Affirmative Action, Inclusion, and Racial Climate on America’s Campuses.”
The forum — led by U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., ranking member of the house committee on education and the workforce, and US Rep. John Conyers, Jr., D-Mich., ranking member of the house judiciary committee — sought to explore what, if anything, Congress can do to help create safer college campuses.
