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Welcome to The EDU Ledger! We’ve moved from Diverse: Issues In Higher Education.

Section: Opinion

What Will Happen to the Most Vulnerable Student Populations During the COVID-19 Public Health Crisis?

Over the last few days, hundreds of colleges and universities have decided to encourage students to move out as soon as possible and handle the remainder of the academic semester online. While major precautions are necessary to help avoid making this public health crisis any worse, the announcements have made one thing clear: institutions assume that students will be able to figure out where to live, how to eat, and how to finish the semester in a matter of days.

March 12, 2020

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Leadership & Policy

Decide For Yourself About TSU Presidency

With all due respect to Dr. Walter M. Kimbrough and his opinion piece, “A Warning to Anyone Thinking About Being the Next TSU President,” Texas Southern University (TSU) is an outstanding educational institution and does not have a Board of Regents that needs to be wiped out by our governor.

March 12, 2020

Stepping Away from the Brink: Part VII: Faculty and The Academy

Faculty, in conjunction with students, represent the core of an academic institution. Without either, colleges and universities don’t have a purpose. It is faculty who provides education, advice, and enlightenment to our next generation of leaders, entrepreneurs, politicians, educators, and hopefully change-makers. However, as higher education continues to find itself on the brink, questions around the appropriate faculty structure remains critical to thinking of the future of institutions.

March 11, 2020

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Coronavirus Silver lining—Online Learning?

Let’s face it. Learning isn’t about entering in engaged conversation while standing in togas. It’s the changing world of teaching a younger generation already well attuned to technology. Coronavirus fears have resulted in some unintended positive consequences.

March 11, 2020

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You Can’t Compromise With Racism: College Leaders Must Address Our Ugly Racial Past

Institutional leaders must move beyond rehearsed rhetoric and seek to forcefully tackle their institutions’ problematic racial histories of exclusion and exploitation of people of color. This process requires identifying and addressing current policies, practices, and symbols that make campus environments openly hostile, unwelcoming, and disempowering for students of color. Such action is necessary to create equitable environments that affirm, welcome, and support all students.

March 10, 2020

From Business Schools to Boardrooms, a Proactive Approach Will Advance Gender Equity

On this year’s International Women’s Day, I vividly recall the life-changing advice I once received about the delicate balance between career ambition and family.

March 8, 2020

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When Inhumanity ‘Trumps’ a Fundamental Basic Need to Live and Learn

Far too many families live in food deserts – low income communities, more than a mile from a grocery store, and many do not have a car. Many grocery stores do not accept food stamps (#sigh). Estimates indicate about 25 million families are trapped in food deserts; a disproportionate percentage are families of color — Black and Hispanic – in both urban and rural communities. Their mental and physical health are compromised based on food insecurity and/or access to unhealthy food options that are affordable. When hungry, any food is better than no food. Some policy makers appear to be clueless or uncaring about this. Where’s the humanity, I ask rhetorically? #absent.

March 7, 2020

Faculty & Staff

Authorship: The Elephant in the Room

When it comes to tenure-track faculty positions, and pursuing tenure altogether, there’s no doubt that one item stands above all others: Research. Even in the field of higher education, a field that is supposed to critically reflect on the issues of the academy, including the shortcomings of tenure processes, our programs still emphasize the same flawed indicators: Research -> Publications -> Authorship.

March 4, 2020

Removing the Blindfold of Domestic Violence Against Women on College Campuses

According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 21% of college students experienced domestic violence by a current partner, and 32% of college students experienced domestic violence by a previous partner. The numbers are more likely higher because some women do not feel comfortable sharing their abuse with University officials for fear of retaliation. So what can colleges and universities do to create the kind of campus environment that allows women to seek help from an abuser?

March 4, 2020

A Warning to Anyone Thinking About Being the Next TSU President

The entire Texas Southern University board must be replaced. Immediately. All Texas Southern supporters should pressure Governor Greg Abbot to make this happen.

March 2, 2020

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Redefining Access in Higher Education

As colleges and universities become increasingly diverse in terms of their enrollment, they are quick to highlight how their incoming class is either the most racially or ethnically diverse class, the most first-generation college students to be admitted in a given year, or the most socioeconomically diverse incoming class. But what happens when these students come to campus?

February 27, 2020

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“Spirit-Murdering in Academia”

Let me be clear. There is a long history of the ideas by women of color scholars being co-opted and reproduced by others. Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, citing is a political act.

February 26, 2020

Crafting Our Political Self: A Powerful Antidote to Intolerance

It is difficult and counterintuitive to ask questions about the self when we have been attacked by another. The reality, however, is that how we craft ourselves, and our communities, is the only thing within our control.

February 25, 2020

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Coronavirus is Society’s Diversity Stress Test

I was among the 19 million people watching last Wednesday’s Democratic debate in Nevada, the first really diverse state in the nation on the campaign trail. And while everyone beat up Mike Bloomberg, I was waiting to hear someone pounce on an even hotter topic that surely would have made an Asian Americans like myself lean in.

February 24, 2020

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African-American

Supporting Black Students When They are Further Traumatized in School

There is no question that student trauma is on the rise and some school professionals are part of the problem.

February 23, 2020

Institutionalizing Support for College Students Impacted by Foster Care

Despite the growing national media attention, shedding light on the precarious experiences of college students impacted by the foster care system, they remain on the margins of higher education research, policy and discourse. The data are clear though. On any given day there are nearly half of million youth in the foster care system (of which Black and Native American students are disproportionately represented) who have been subject to some form of abuse, neglect, or concerns about safety and wellbeing.

February 19, 2020

Teaching Confederate Monuments

After Heather Heyer’s death, I knew I had a responsibility as an educator to engage the debate on Confederate monuments in my classes. As a teacher of early American literature and history as well as critical thinking and argument, I knew I needed to do so by taking Kessler’s (and many, many other’s) rhetorical manipulation of history, memory, and monuments seriously. I needed to help my students analyze that rhetoric, to understand our shared history and transform our future.

February 17, 2020

Expanding Rural Students’ Opportunities is as Simple as Getting Online

When it comes to college, the odds are stacked against students like me. Neither of my parents went to college – my dad didn’t even graduate high school – and we live in a rural part of South Carolina, where college and career opportunities are harder to come by unless you’re willing and able to travel far distances.

February 13, 2020