Black On Campus
Higher Education and the African American Experience

Nearly Wordless Wednesday: Howard University Women’s Lacrosse

November 10th, 2009 by Ajuan Mance

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Black on Campus trivia: Howard University women’s lacrosse team is the first and only such team to be fielded by a Historically Black College or University (HBCU). To learn more about Howard Women’s Lax and it’s outstanding women athletes, follow THIS LINK and cheer them on during their upcoming spring 2010 season!

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Columbia Professor Arrested for Assault on Female Colleague

November 10th, 2009 by Ajuan Mance

“It was a very unfortunate event. I didn’t mean for it to explode the way it did.”

– Columbia University Professor Lionel MacIntyre on his physical altercation with female college Margaret Camille Davis

111009assault1wclLionel McIntyre

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Lionel McIntyre, the Nancy and George Rupp Associate Professor in the Practice of Community Development and the director of the Urban Technical Assistance Project at Columbia University, was arrested on Monday and charged with assault for his Friday evening attack on colleague Camille Davis.

The New York Times reports that Lionel McIntyre and Camille Davis, a theatre production manager for Columbia’s School of the Arts,  were having drinks at the Toast, when they got into a heated discussion about the issue of white privilege. The Times reports that, “Professor McIntyre liked to engage fellow patrons on the subject of race, according to one regular customer, Daniel Morgan, who considers himself a close acquaintance of both Professor McIntyre and Ms. Davis.”

The New York Post provides this account of the events leading up to McIntyre’s arrest:

The professor, who is black, had been engaged in a fiery discussion about “white privilege” with Davis, who is white, and another male regular, who is also white, Friday night at 10:30 when fists started flying, patrons said.

McIntyre, who is known as “Mac” at the bar, shoved Davis, and when the other patron and a bar employee tried to break it up, the prof slugged Davis in the face, witnesses said.

“The punch was so loud, the kitchen workers in the back heard it over all the noise,” bar back Richie Velez, 28, told The Post. “I was on my way over when he punched Camille and she fell on top of me.”

The other patron involved in the dispute said McIntyre then took a swing at him after he yelled, “You don’t hit a woman!”

“He knocked the glasses right off my face,” said the man, who would only give his first name as “Shannon.” “The punch came out of nowhere. Mac was talking to us about white privilege and what I was doing about it — apparently I wasn’t doing enough.”

McIntyre had squabbled with Davis several weeks earlier over issues involving race, witnesses said. As soon as the professor threw the punch Friday, server Rob Dalton and another employee tossed him out.

“It was a real sucker punch,” Dalton said. “Camille’s a great lady, always nice to everybody, and doesn’t deserve anything like this.”

Davis was spotted wearing sunglasses yesterday to conceal the black eye. Reached at her Columbia office, she declined to comment on the alleged attack.

McIntyre was released without bail at his arraignment last night.

“It was a very unfortunate event,” he said afterwards. “I didn’t mean for it to explode the way it did.”

I’ll be following the developments in this case, and I’ll definitely post when and if I learn anything new.

I am still having a bit of difficulty making sense of how a seemingly reasonable faculty member could engage in a physical attack on a colleague because a disagreement over this topic. White privilege is certainly a challenging and emotional topic, one that can be very frustrating to discuss both for people of color who are daily exposed to their benefits that white skin privilege confers and for those white people who perceive any assertion that they have “privilege” as an attempt to hold them individually culpable for the existence of racism.

McIntyre is an experienced professor, though, and thus should have been quite experienced in engaging productively with those whose understanding of white privilege differs from his own. I hope that his egregious behavior does not have any long-term negative impact on the racial climate on the Columbia University campus; I hope that Ms. Davis recovers from her injuries without any permanent damage; and, finally, I hope that Prof. McIntyre gets professional help for his anger management issues.

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The Quotable Black Scholar: Pedro Noguera on Class and Black Identity Formation

November 9th, 2009 by Ajuan Mance

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Pedro Noguera

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“In many black communities, it is the ethos, the style, the orientation of poor black kids that influences middle-class black kids in ways that [are not] true for middle-class white kids. Most middle-class white kids don’t know poor white kids.”

– NYU sociology of education Professor Pedro Noguera on the impact of class on African American students’ identity conflicts, from an interview with NPR’s Nancy Solmon. To read more on this, or to listen to the NPR report on the ways that the struggle for an “authentically Black” identity impacts Black children’s academic performance, follow THIS LINK.

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Biographical Notes: Pedro Noguera is a professor in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, at New York University. He is also the Executive Director of the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education and the co-Director of the Institute for the study of Globalization and Education in Metropolitan Settings (IGEMS). He holds a B.A. from Brown University (sociology, 1981) an M.A. from Brown University (sociology, 1982), and a Ph.D. from the University of California - Berkeley (sociology, 1989).

He is the author of several books, including:

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Friday Facts: For November 6, 2009

November 6th, 2009 by Ajuan Mance

factoid-nerdgirl

  • Obama administration stimulus funds allotted to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) for the preservation of historic buildings: $14.25 million (Journal of Blacks in Higher Education)

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Yale Sophomore Found Unresponsive, Cause of Death Unknown

November 4th, 2009 by Ajuan Mance

andre-narcisse

Andre Narcisse (1990 - 2009)

(Source: Yale Alumni Magazine)

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You could never stop learning when you were around him. He was in love with every moment he experienced.

– Jonah Quinn, on classmate and friend, Andre Narcisse

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From the age of three until the end of my 8th grade year, I lived in the village of Freeport, a suburb of New York city, located on the south shore of Long Island. Freeport is one of a handful of small, ethnically diverse, middle-class communities clustered together on the side of the island that was not immortalized in The Great Gatsby.

Freeport, Roosevelt, Hempstead, Uniondale, Baldwin. When I think about my childhood, these are the places that come to mind.

Thus is was with particular shock and sadness that I read of the recent death of a Andre Narcisse, Roosevelt native, in his dorm room at Yale University. A former teacher at Uniondale High School remembers Narcisse as, “probably one of the most brilliant students to come into the science program, if not the school,” and young Andre was greatly missed by both teachers and classmates when he left for Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, at the beginning of his junior year.

The recipient of a National Achievement Scholarship, awarded to Black students who earn high scores on the PSAT, Narcisse was an academic standout at Exeter, where his commitment to academic excellence earned him a spot in Yale University’s class of 2012.

Sadly and ironically, it was at Yale, a place that should have marked the beginning of his young life, that Andre Narcisse passed away. Roommates discovered the 19 year-old in his dormitory room, around 11am on Sunday. He did not respond to attempts to resuscitate. His cause of death is unknown, though police have found no signs of foul play.

On Sunday night, a large group of Narcisse’s friends gathered in a campus chapel to share stories about his life.

On Monday night, more that 300 Yale student gather in the courtyard of Branford College residence for a candlelight vigil in memory of this beloved student.

My sincerest condolences to his family and friends.

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Yale students gathered at a Monday night vigil in Andre Narcisse’s memory.

(Source: Yale Daily News)

Sources:

Newsday

Yale Daily News

NBC Connecticut

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The Quotable Black Scholar: Cornel West on Vocation and Truth

November 4th, 2009 by Ajuan Mance

cornell-west

Princeton University Professor Cornell West

(Source: nj.com)

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Just like the musicians, I’ve got a unique voice. I’m constantly searching for truth. I don’t restrict myself to traditional boundaries. There’s a difference between a vocation and a profession. One’s a calling, the other’s a career. I have a calling. When you have your calling you have to be true to yourself and true to the God that called you. My calling is to try and tell the truth.

– Dr. Cornel West, in an interview in publish in Inside Jersery

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Biographical Notes: Cornel West is the Class of 1943 University Professor of African American Studies and Religion, at Princeton University. A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University (he completed his degree in only three years), West went on to complete his Ph.D. at Princeton.

West is the author of a number of books and articles, including the following:

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The Quotable Black Scholar: Bell Hooks on Healing the Black Psyche

November 2nd, 2009 by Ajuan Mance

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Profilic writer-scholar bell hooks (nee Gloria Watkins)

(Source: Rhetericia on PhotoBucket)

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For many years, and even now, generations of black folks who migrated north to escape life in the south, returned down home in search of a spiritual nourishment, a healing, that was fundamentally connected to reaffirming one’s connection to nature, to a contemplative life where one could take time, sit on the porch, walk, fish, and catch lightning bugs. If we think of urban life as a location where black folks learned to accepts a mind/body split that made it possible to abuse the body, we can better understand the growth of nihilism and despair in the black psyche. And we can know that when we talk about healing that psyche we must also speak about restoring our connection to the natural world.

– bell hooks in Sisters of the Yam (180)

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Biographical Notes: Gloria Watkins (known professionally by her pen name, “bell hooks”), holds a B.A. from Stanford University (1973), an M.A. form the University of Wisconsin, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Cruz. One of the most prolific and influential feminist scholars of the last 30 years, she has written and published more than 20 books and numerous articles related to Black feminism, cultural studies, and critical analysis.

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Flashback Friday (Way, Way, Back): Harvard’s First Black Student Treasurer

October 30th, 2009 by Ajuan Mance

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From Jet Magazine, 1952

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Biographical Notes: A graduate of New York’s Fieldston School, Clifford Alexander, Jr. completed his B.A. at Harvard in 1955. He went on to earn a law degree from Yale (1958). He served as an attorney and advisor on the White House staff from 1964 - 1967, before becoming the director of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commision (until 1969). He served as the Secretary of the Army under the Carter Administration.

Today Alexander serves on the Board of Governor’s of the U.S. Stock exchange and sits on the boards of a number of U.S. corporations. He is the father of Elizabeth Alexander, the Yale University English professor chosen to compose and read the inaugural poem for the swearing in of Pres. Barack Obama, on January 20, 2009.

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The Quotable Black Scholar: Melissa Harris-Lacewell on Gay Marriage

October 27th, 2009 by Ajuan Mance

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Dr. Melissa Harris-Lacewell

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Typically advocates of marriage equality try to reassure the voting public the same-sex marriage will not change the institution itself. “Don’t worry,” we say, “allowing gay men and lesbians to marry will not threaten the established norms; it will simply assimilate new groups into old practices.”

This is a pragmatic, political strategy, but I hope it is not true. I hope same-sex marriage changes marriage itself. I hope it changes marriage the way that no-fault divorce changed it. I hope it changes marriage the way that allowing women to own their own property and seek their own credit changed marriage. I hope it changes marriage the way laws against spousal abuse and child neglect changed marriage. I hope marriage equality results more equal marriages. I also hope it offers more opportunities for building meaningful adult lives outside of marriage.

– Melissa Harris-Lacewell in “Rethinking Marriage. The World Has Changed. It’s Time!,” from The Nation, posted on AlterNet.com

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Biographical Notes: Melissa Harris-Lacewell is Associate Professor of Politics and African American Studies at Princeton University.

 

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Ruth Simmons, First Black President in the Ivy League, Puts Salary on the Chopping Block

October 26th, 2009 by Ajuan Mance

Brown University President Ruth Simmons

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Brown University president Ruth Simmons has opted to take a voluntary salary cut as part of continued cost-cutting measures. This will be the third consecutive year that her salary has been lowered, although her overall compensation (which includes benefits and deferred compensation) will likely hold steady or even increase.

Apparently Simmons requested her first salary decrease in 2007. Her total salary for this year (minus benefits and other compensation) will likely come in at a sum of $536,000, down from $600,000 in the previous fiscal year. Not too bad for a reduced salary; but I absolutely appreciate the willingness of the institution and its administrators to lead by example during these challenging economic times.

Read more on salary cuts and administrator compensation at this link: The Brown Daily Herald

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