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Section: Opinion

African-American

Calling Asian Americans to Action: Why We Can’t Stay Silent about Black Lives Matter

Black Lives Matter protests erupted across the United States this year, provoked by the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and many others that have not seen full justice. As Asian Americans, we need to assess how we’ve been silent or apathetic to Black issues. It’s time we speak up and do something for Black Lives Matter – because frankly, we haven’t done enough.

July 20, 2020

A Work of Heart: Practicing Critical Compassionate Pedagogy in the Face of Adversity

As a faculty member, my biggest concern was the online (re)creation of a deeply engaged and rich environment, while simultaneously supporting students battling various challenges due to COVID-19 including but not limited to the loss of jobs, mental health conditions, and deaths of family members.

July 17, 2020

Sustaining Professional Development in the Midst of COVID

Professional development initiatives that support employees are essential, particularly as we navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and consider how best to reopen campuses. Pivoting to online learning and teleworking while preparing for a new normal has highlighted this need. Perhaps, more than ever before, we are challenged to build the capacity to meet the diverse needs of our students and one another.

July 16, 2020

Roueche Center Forum: Helping Hispanic-Latino Students Make a Good Living and Live a Good Life

The Coachella Valley in Southern California is a series of 12-plus small cities linked by a commitment to big ideas. College of the Desert (COD), the local community college, is one of the biggest and best organizations in the Valley that serves the various communities as the epicenter of social and economic justice through a […]

July 15, 2020

Dr. Kinnamon March 2020-DOW

Intellectual Humility: Re-Imagining a Democratic Virtue

The role of educational institutions—as a supplement to media, economic and governmental institutions—is crucial in developing virtues to balance the tension between the intellectual entitlement to have one’s own views respected and the intellectual humility to see those views as fallible, partial, dogmatic, and often unjustified.

July 12, 2020

Community Colleges

The Early Impacts of COVID-19 on the Community College Student Experience

To help community college leaders understand what their students were experiencing, the Center for Community College Student Engagement offered a free online survey focused on how students were managing all the changes that came with the pandemic. The survey asked students about the information and support they were receiving from their college and from their instructors, the challenges they were facing as a result of the sudden transition to online classes, and their level of concern regarding food and housing security.

July 10, 2020

How to Infuse Trans-Inclusive Housing in Your University-Wide Changes

For colleges and universities that will hold brick-and-mortar classes in the fall, and amidst this unprecedented review of how we keep our students safe in residential life, campuses are presented with the unique opportunity to center trans and non-binary students’ voices in creating new, more inclusive, housing practices. As broad changes on housing are being considered, now is the time to include trans and non-binary students’ experiences in charting a path forward.

July 9, 2020

A Brief History Lesson and Open Letter to the Nation’s Schoolchildren and College Students about White Male Power

Dear Generation Z Students, you are digital natives. So, this letter would better reach you by video, Instagram, Snapchat, maybe Twitter or a hashtag. But I need more letter characters and time than these platforms allow. Please bear with me as you read.

July 9, 2020

Faculty & Staff

Minoritized Senior Faculty in Higher Education, Please Stand Up

Recently, the tenure denials of faculty such as Sibrina Collins at the College of Wooster, Lorgia García-Peña at Harvard University, Paul Harris and Tolu Odumosu at the University of Virginia, and Ashley Woodson at the University of Missouri at Columbia, have reignited a conversation about the role of bias in tenure and promotion processes. But also, the role of tenured senior faculty of color in not only mentoring their junior colleagues, but also working to disrupt and revise these processes. Reimagining these processes in a way that is grounded in equity and justice, we offer a few recommendations.

July 8, 2020

On Slave Patrols, a Pandemic, the NBA, and HBCUs: The Birth of an Historic Alliance?

People from all walks of life, including numerous professional athletes, have been protesting ever since, doing whatever they can to try to affect change. Most notably, several NBA players, whose season has been suspended since March 11, formed a coalition and declared that “Enough is enough.”

July 8, 2020

Leadership & Policy

‘Dramatic Change Will Require Leadership.’ A Message to the Next Generation of Leaders

This summer we have all been living and learning through an unprecedented crisis: literally the greatest disruption to daily life in the United States since at least World War II, a rapid economic collapse that is approaching and may exceed the scale of the Great Depression, deeply inequitable impacts from the crisis mapped into pre-existing inequalities of race and class, and a death count conservatively estimated at more than 500,000 and rising.

July 7, 2020

African-American

The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Revisited in ‘The Sword and The Shield’

As the nation witnesses around-the-clock Black Lives Matter protests, Dr. Peniel E. Joseph’s ‘The Sword and The Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.’ could not have been published at a more apropos time.

July 6, 2020

African-American

Proposing a Concept of the Black Tax to Understand the Experiences of Blacks in America

The protests occurring in many cities in America to call attention to the systemic racism in society has provoked us to critically reflect on our experiences as Black men in this country. This cathartic process has led us to believe that as African Americans we are involuntarily mandated to pay a “Black tax.” This term is not new. In fact, it has been primarily associated with a family member who has advanced to a high socioeconomic status and who provides monetary support to other family members. Some have used this term to underscore the ways in which discrimination has impacted the financial standing of African Americans. Our conceptualization of the Black tax differs from the ways it has been used previously.

July 6, 2020

With Every Breath, We Move Forward: Addressing Policing Reforms

In the aftermath of the George Floyd senseless murder by several Minneapolis police officers, protests have erupted in numerous cities both nationally and internationally. What could be different this time as compared to prior protests is that the movement to curb and check police power has reached an inflection point and change is coming. Based on our deep involvement and roles within the local Houston community, we offer suggestions and proposals that are applicable to any police department.

July 3, 2020

How “Different” Will Post-COVID Higher Education Be, Especially for “At-Risk” Students?

How are institutions preparing to deal with access to technology issues? While I can imagine many institutions providing students with laptops, students may encounter barriers to accessing reliable internet or even power for their devices. For residential campuses specifically who will have many students stay home, how do you ensure that your low-income students have access to adequate working space to learn and study?

July 1, 2020

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Asian American Pacific Islander

Stare Down the White Gaze: Demystifying the “Model Minority” Stereotype

“You brought the virus here.” These words were thrown at me on a street corner as I walked my dog, soon after the stay-at-home order was issued. Before I realized that these words were meant for me, the man who uttered them already moved on.

June 30, 2020

How and Where We Exit: Seven Propositions on Black Positionalities in the Pandemics Era

The world has tried to recalibrate after the seismic shift that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacted on key aspects of everyday life, as we once knew it. For certain populations, this shift has been coupled with a cataclysmic jolt. For Black people globally, and specifically for African-Americans in the United States, the battle has been at best—formidable. While the Black gaze focused on the destruction and devastation that COVID-19 was exacting, it was the concomitant spread of a second pandemic, racism, which proved to be just as, if not even more virulent for the Black community.

June 30, 2020

African-American

Do You Hear Me? Language of the Unheard

With protests and outrage sweeping through our nation, we must channel our frustrations into actionable policies and reform. Riots are never a coherent or moral response to injustice. We each have a role to play in the fight against systemic racism, but it is important that we remain unified in our resolve.

June 29, 2020