WASHINGTON — Higher education leaders and stakeholders gathered for the 100th annual meeting of the American Council on Education (ACE) to share ideas and best practices revolving around the most pressing issues institutions face today.
Notable conference sessions highlighted advising and data strategies to increase student retention and support, practices for institutions to collaborate with the Office of Civil Rights around Title IX policy and the need for some institutions to grapple with their troubled history of slavery. 
“Such examinations by Brown, Georgetown and other institutions create a unique opportunity for higher education to confront the past in an open and honest matter,” said ACE president Ted Mitchell in his opening keynote address, “Facing History.”
During the keynote session, Presidents Ruth J. Simmons and John J. DeGioia explained how their universities created unique projects — the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University and the Slavery, Memory and Reconciliation working group at Georgetown University — that would “walk people through the truth” and shed light on each institution’s ties to slavery.
However, the presidents noted that in doing so, they faced people who were not enthusiastic about the cause.
“So many people thought that undertaking a subject like this would be divisive,” said Simmons, now president of Prairie View A&M University. “If universities cannot do this most essential thing, then what good are we, anyway?”
Confronting this history in a way that still fosters unity in a community means that “we can touch the ‘third rail’ of race and survive it … you can talk about the wrong that’s been done and be forgiving,” Simmons said.
