Marc H. Morial, former mayor of New Orleans and current president and CEO of the National Urban League (NUL), sees proactive collaboration as a way to create a movement and drive social change, particularly toward equity in education.
In a visit with the Diverse editorial board, the political and civic leader elaborated on NUL’s 15-year strategic plan to empower African-Americans and other underserved urban citizens to secure economic self-reliance, parity, power and civil rights. Among the strategies is an eight-point “Educate, Employ and Empower” plan to provide equitable funding for all schools and targeted workforce development programs.
While the National Urban League is “fighting to affect progress across the board,” higher education is “front and center” on the organization’s agenda, Morial said.
“Education is an economic empowerment issue.”
NUL is working to influence policy around the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA), but leaders do not want a “bad bill” just for the sake of reauthorization, Morial said. For this reason, the organization takes both an offensive and defensive stance on higher education policies.
At the request of the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, NUL is among groups that will offer recommendations tied to the reauthorization of HEA. Morial shared highlights of a letter that the NUL is completing that contains recommendations aligned with the Urban League’s principles regarding college access, affordability, completion and accountability.
The letter admonishes Congress to “do no harm” to historically Black colleges and universities and other minority-serving institutions that educate low-income and minority students due to biases in outcomes-based performance measures.
