Over the last year, COVID-19 brought on financial and academic disruptions to institutions across the country, forcing leaders to adapt. To provide insight into the current landscape of higher education, colleges and university presidents participated in a panel discussion on Monday at the American Association of Blacks in Higher Education’s (AABHE) virtual conference.
“A crisis reveals the most honest versions of institutions and leaders,” said Dr. Shirley M. Collado, president of Ithaca College. “It is when you are stripped down to your core and the very thing you value is being called into question.”
This past year was also a time of racial reckoning within the United States after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other Black Americans at the hands of police officers.
“As a Black man, who has raised two Black sons, I long for the day when I need not fear for my life or the lives of my sons living our everyday lives,” said Dr. Jack Thomas, president of Central State University, a historically Black university located in Wilberforce, Ohio.
Panelists noted that as institutions confront existing racial inequities on campus, there is a need to increase the number of people of color in higher-level administrative positions, particularly as college presidents.
“It will take a monumental effort to lead and reshape the academy,” said Collado. “We need freedom fighters, we need trailblazers and we need people who are going to stay honest to the work of students regardless of what we do.”
With students grieving and social justice protests occurring on campuses, university presidents have the responsibility to speak out, educate and lead, according to Dr. Tuajuanda Jordan, president of St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
