This is the second in a three-part series during Black History Month celebrating Black academicians and their work.
Shaun R. Harper, University of Southern California
At the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) last November, Dr. Shaun R. Harper argued that higher education needed a major makeover. “It remains an overwhelmingly White profession,” said Harper, who is president of ASHE. “It is White people who determine the metrics of deservingness to have a seat at the table.”
Harper’s blunt comments got picked up by several media outlets, but his critiques were hardly new. For years, he has been on a mission to advance equity within higher education and beyond, both in his role as director for the Center for Race and Equity in Education at the University of Pennsylvania and now as executive director of the Race and Equity Center at the University of Southern California, where he also holds the Clifford and Betty Allen Chair in Urban Leadership in the Rossier School of Education.
Harper, who has published more than a dozen books and more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, earned a Ph.D. in higher education from Indiana University in 2003. Over the years, Harper and his colleagues have interviewed more than 10,000 students, faculty members and staff about race at institutions of higher education across the country.
That work continues with the implementation of the National Assessment of Collegiate Campus Climates (NACCC), a quantitative survey that will be annually administered at hundreds of colleges and universities across the country. The survey will give institutions the data that they need about students’ feelings of belongingness and cross-racial interactions that will allow them to benchmark themselves against their peer institutions.
Marc Lamont Hill, Temple University
