The Chronicle of Higher Education

Are Colleges Really Falling Short on Racial Justice? - Interview

September 23, 2020

In this conversation, Michael J. Sorrell, president of Paul Quinn College, in Texas, and Sarah Brown, a senior reporter at The Chronicle, were joined by several scholars and administrators, including Kennedy, to discuss how the national reckoning over racial injustice intersects with academic life. The discussion also covered how higher ed’s structural problems can harm Black professors and communities, and how colleges can diversify their faculties. Fred A. Bonner II, author of a 2004 Chronicle Review article on the experience of Black faculty members at predominantly white institutions, is a professor of educational leadership and counseling at Prairie View A&M University. Darrick Hamilton is a professor of economics and urban policy and director of the Institute for the Study of Race, Stratification, and Political Economy at the New School. Tracey E. Hucks, a scholar of Africana studies, is provost and dean of the faculty at Colgate University. And Marcia Chatelain, who recently wrote in The Chronicle Review about how colleges have co-opted Black students’ protests, is a professor of history at Georgetown University.

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