COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement dominated the headlines in 2020, but there were also precedent-setting events in higher education that garnered our attention.
In mid-March, college and university campuses around the country emptied out due to the worldwide coronavirus pandemic. Professors transitioned courses to virtual spaces and students headed home, many to households that did not have adequate internet connections or quiet spots to study.
“We’ve heard stories of students who have been in parking lots to get Wi-Fi,” said Dr. Michelle Asha Cooper, president of the Institute for Higher Education Policy. “It has really magnified the stark inequities in our educational system.”
Then, in late-May, people began taking to the streets after a video surfaced of a White police officer in Minneapolis pressing his knee to the neck of George Floyd, leading to Floyd’s death. In response to Floyd’s death and other victims of police brutality, more than 200,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in August on the 57th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington at which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
Among the protesters were thousands of high school and college students, who were organized by Tylik McMillian, national director of the youth and college division of the National Action Network, the civil rights organization founded by organizer of the march Rev. Al Sharpton. Affordable higher education — including doubling the Pell grant — and increased funding for the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and other minority-serving institutions were prominent issues at the gathering.
“Today, the college education is not only a means to literacy and respectability; it is also about participation in key economic activities,” said Dr. S. David Wu, president of Baruch College. “From a social justice point of view, it’s critically important to provide that opportunity for students that may be coming from underserved communities.”
COVID-19
