Manhattan Institute Fellow John McWhorter

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Manhattan Institute Fellow John McWhorter’s recent column on a teaching experience at Columbia University (“A Look at Real Diversity,” March 17, 2009) begins on an uncharacteristically humble note. McWhorter is reknown for his insistence that there is no inherent educational benefit in having a diverse student body. His March 17th column, however, begins with an admission that his prior dismissal of the value of diversity may have been a bit too hasty. McWhorter explains:

I have been teaching a class at Columbia on Western Civilization since September.

The class is highly diverse. By that, I mean that among the 21 students there is an Orthodox Jew, a child of Russian immigrants, and a couple of Korean-Americans. Plus a Chinese-American. And one of them grew up in France; just why she has no accent I have never been quite sure, but culturally she is more French than American. One student is even seven feet tall. And Catholic.

Yes, I have had four black students, and a few Latino ones. They’re “diverse” too.

This has been a lesson for me in the benefits of diversity in education. Back in my days as a Berkeley linguistics prof, I was teaching linguistics, a scientific field in which there was little coherent concept of a “diverse” contribution: subordinate clauses have no ethnicity.

But here is a class on the intellectual heritage of our civilization. This is the kind of class that fans of racial preferences in university admissions tell us will be enriched by diversity.

And I heartily agree that discussion in my class would have been much less interesting and rewarding if all of the students were upper-middle-class white kids from the suburbs. If Columbia has created this vibrant mixture by attending to more than grades and test scores in composing their student body, then I applaud them mightily. I was in love with my students after a week and a half and will miss them immensely.

I you believe that this mildly transformative experience may have turned McWhorter into a advocate for affirmative action, though, you are sorely mistaken. Indeed, the demographics of his class, with its wide range of students from European and Asian immigrant backgrounds and U.S. ethnic and religious minorities seems to have taught him that while diversity can indeed contribute to the educational experience of college students, there is no particular reason that specific measures should be taken to attract Blacks and Latinos. Writes McWhorter, “my year’s experience has given no demonstration whatsoever of the benefit of diversity as we are supposed to tacitly understand it: i.e. the presence of black and Latino students alone.”

Indeed, McWhorter has concluded from this experience that Black and Latino students may not even contribute to the type of diversity that truly enhances the classroom experience. Remember that scene in George Orwell’s Animal Farm when the leaders of the government declare that “all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”? Well, McWhorter’s version might read, “all minorities are diverse, but some are more diverse than others.” SpecifIcally, he believes that there is no guarantee that the truly non-mainstream perspectives and analyses in class will be offered up by students from either of these two ethnic groups. And, thus his continued rejection of affirmative action strategies, most of which are directed toward building the numbers of students from underrepresented minority groups (Black and Latino students).

There was nothing particularly “diverse,” recalls McWhorter, about the opinions and experiences of U.S. Blacks in his class. Their privilege and their acculturation within this, the nation of their birth, most often found them with opinions quite similar to their white, non-immigrant classmates. Instead, explains McWhorter,

the most consistently and usefully “diverse” opinions and observations in the class have come from the Orthodox Jew, who firmly believes that the Old Testament is prophecy from on high, is fluent in Hebrew, and is part of a culture more distinct from mainstream America’s than any culture evinced by my brown students.

And so, I must ask: Is the potential contribution that their difference might add to the classroom experience the only justifiable reason for actively recruiting Black and brown students? If their classroom comments don’t enhance the classroom experience by injecting into discussion commentary and analytical frameworks that somehow manifests diversity, should the affirmative action efforts to increase Black and Latino student numbers on U.S. campuses be scrapped? Should the value of campus diversity be evaluated based on the impact that it has within the classroom — or even on the campus — or is it more important (and more relevant) to consider the impact that diverse student bodies (and thus diverse cohorts of well-educated Americans entering the workforce every year) have on the larger society?

I don’t know how McWhorter would respond to these questions, but I have the sneaking suspicion that he and I would disagree.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

As the end the school year approaches, I find myself doing a lot of thinking about all that I’ve learned — about colleges and academia, about students and teaching — over my 14 years as a college professor .

If I count the classes I taught as a graduate student, I have at this point taught somewhere around 2000 students, ranging from first-semester freshman year to Ph.D. candidates. I’ve watched students change and grow as they’ve realized new interests and talents. I’ve watched the world open up in new ways to young men and women who’ve discovered their passion for academic areas they’d never even heard of before going to college.

On a somewhat less positive note, though, I’ve also watched students struggle to complete the required courses for majors that they have no interest in,  but that they or their parents believe to be practical. Such students often end up completing their majors, but in 5 or 6 years rather than 4; or they graduate, but with grade point averages that reflect the disinterest of a person who’s chosen a major s/he doesn”t really care about. In the worst cases, I’ve seen students drop out of college altogether, daunted by the daily reality of course after course in an area that holds no interest for them.

These scenarios result when students opt to put the subjects that they are passionate about aside, in favor of what they and/or well meaning family believe to be more practical courses and majors. Sadly, much of the perception of what is and isn’t practical or realistic in terms of college education is based on the idea that majors in the humanities and the arts are frivolous, and cannot lead to long-term sustainable employment.

In my experience, this misperception disproportionately impacts students of color — African American, Asian American, and Latino students, in particular. It is this mistaken notion that is partly responsible for the dearth of people of African descent in the nation’s doctoral programs in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. It’s not that Black students have no interest in these fields; but with so much at stake — in terms of loans, familiy responsibilities and hopes, etc. — Black students and other students of color are often  reluctant to declare majors that don’t seem to point directly to a specific career path or job.

How much happier both students and parents would be if they realized that when it comes to choosing a major that truly lead to employment opportunities and upward mobility after college, passion is practical. When it comes to getting into graduate school — MBA programs, medical schools, law schools — high grades and enthusiastic recommendations matter more than a student’s choice of college major.*  Students almost always earn higher grades in those fields that they are passionate about. Majors like pre-med and pre-law are no subsitution for a 4.0 GPA in Art History or Philosophy or French or Comparative Literature. And when it comes to graduate school recommendations, there is no substitute from references from professors who know the applicant well because her passion for their subject is reflected in her outstanding work in their classes.

Think of all the investment bankers who majored in English, French, Art History, Chemistry and Music; and there are physicians and lawyers who majored in all of these areas and others — Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, Semiotics, Physics, African American Studies, Philosophy. What most successful professionals have in common is that they focused in their undergraduate years discovering and then excelling in majors that were truly compelling to them. Their interest was reflected in exceptional grades, academic honors, honor society memberships (Phi Beta Kappa, Golden Key, et cetera), and awards. When the time came to apply to grad school these outstanding scholars were evaluated not for their choice of discipline, but for their demonstrated capacity to perform at the highest levels of achievement.

So, the same rule applies to choosing an undergraduate major that applies to choosing your career — do what you love, and success and happiness and a satisfying career will follow.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

*I did not include PhD candidates in this list, because these applicants are self-selecting. Interest in the doctoral degree usually grows out of that same passion that fueled those students do excell at the undergraduate level.

Amherst students don’t just have big brains — they also have big hearts.

In a recent issue of The Tufts Daily, staff writer Alexandra Bogus reports that students at Amherst college have voted overwhelmingly to donate $70,000 from the Associated Amherst Students’ (AAS) reserve funds to help financially stressed members of the Amherst community. Of the 70 thousand dollars, $50,000 will go to student financial aid, and the remaining $20,000 will go to the staff salary pool. The $20,000 donation to staff salaries is an attempt on the part of students to help maintain the current pay level for low-paid college employees.

This most recent donation from the AAS reserve funds follows a $30,000 donation made earlier in the semester. These earlier funds will be used, “to help fund student activities that would otherwise have been cut or significantly reduced in light of the economy.”

To read the entire Tufts Daily article, click HERE.

Here are a few fun facts about Black folks in higher education to take you into the weekend:

• By 2007, approximately 4 million African Americans (or 18.5% of all Blacks) held at least a bachelor’s degree.  (Source: Journal of Blacks in Higher Education [BHE]by way of The Black Commentator).
• Percentage of all African Americans ages 18 to 24 who were enrolled in college in 1981: 19.9%. (Source: Journal of Blacks in Higher Education [JBHE]).
• Percentage of all African Americans ages 18 to 24 who were enrolled in college a quarter-century later in 2006: 32.6%. (Source: Journal of Blacks in Higher Education [JBHE]).
• Percentage of all master’s degrees awarded at the nation’s historically black colleges and universities in 2006 that were awarded to women: 72.5%. (Source: Journal of Blacks in Higher Education [JBHE]).
• Percentage of white parents of preschool children in 2007 who read to their children every day: 67%. (Source: JBHE).
• Percentage of black parents of preschool children in 2007 who read to their children every day: 35%. (Source: JBHE)

…and this week’s most surprising/heartening (?) set of facts about Blacks and higher education:

• Median earnings in 2006 of a white American aged 25 to 34 who held a bachelor’s degree but no higher degree: $45,000. (Source: JBHE)
• Median earnings in 2006 of an African American aged 25 to 34 who held a bachelor’s degree but no higher degree: $37,000. (Source: JBHE)
• Median earnings in 2006 of a white American aged 25 to 34 who held a master’s degree: $50,000. (Source: JBHE)
• Median earnings in 2006 of an African American aged 25 to 34 who held a master’s degree: $50,000. (Source: JBHE)

Posted by Ajuan Mance

It’s a must-have for almost all incoming college applicants.

It is daunting and requires preparation and focus.

It is standardized for all students, regardless of race class or gender.

It is biased toward white students whose parents are college graduates.

It is the gatekeeper to college access for most of America’s students.

It is not the SAT.

The federal federal financial aid form, called the Fafsa, is one of the biggest hurdles a student must face on the pathway to college enrollment. Longer than the 1040 tax form and consisting of roughly 30 more questions than even the IRS requires, the Fafsa has tested the will, spirit, and patience of many a parent.

For most financial aid applicants, parental information is required. While the Fafsa makes exceptions to this rule for young men and women who have served in the military, who bear the primary fiscal responsibility for children of their own, who are wards of the state, and a handful other constituencies, any young man or woman who can be claimed as a dependent,  must provide detailed information about his or her parents’ assets and income. But what if the parents are either unavailable or unable to help their applicant, possibly due to a lack of information or ability; or what if the parents are willing to help, but have access to none of the required financial records; or what if the parents are reluctant to or unwilling to provide detailed employment information to a government agency?

Fafsa favors students from families that are financially stable, have good financial record keeping, and–most importantly–are already familiar with the steps involved in applying for financial aid.  As in so many other aspects of the world of higher education, middle-class families in which at least one parent is a college graduate are at a distinct advantage in this process. The news for families of color is even worse; much such household tend to be white.

Even those students whose parents are willing and able to be active partipants in the finanical aid applicantion process often turn to public or private help in completing the Fafsa forms. NY Times reporter Tamar Levin dropped in on a Fafsa help session, one of many held in communities across the country, to see how parents were dealing with the stress of completing this crucial hurdle in the college application process. Here is a sampling of some of the things she heard and saw:

‘It’s daunting,’ said Janette Logan, a Connecticut mother who had her daughter, Kate Brown, in tow recently at College Goal Sunday at Norwalk Community College. ‘Kate met her deadlines in applying for college, and now this is mine.’

But after about an hour in the computer room, Ms. Logan realized that she did not have all the necessary information, so she and her daughter left without submitting the form. As the afternoon wore on, many families drifted away without finishing.

‘I didn’t bring everything I need, but at least I know what to do now,’ said Gary Curto[.]

The Obama admistration has pledged to do away with the Fafsa, and nearly everyone in the financial aid community agrees that something has to be done to simplify the form. Until these changes comes to pass, though, most students, will continue to slog through the form, every year, with or without their parents’ cooperation.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

While many of the nation’s wealthiest universities have pledged to maintain the generous financial aid policies that they have adopted in recent years, a growing number of somewhat less well-funded schools are responding to the current recession by turning to their wealthiest applicants.

According to a recent New York Times report, filed by staff  writer Kate Zernike, a number of U.S. colleges are turning increasingly to those applicants who can afford to pay full tuition and fees, all in order to pre-empt believe could well be a meteoric rise in financial aid expenditures.

This may seem ironic, given the falling economic fortunes and great financial need of so many American families, but colleges are struggling to explain that need-aware admissions (so to speak) does not necessarily spell the end of need-blind admissions. Many of those colleges who have conceded an interest in enrolling greater numbers of students who pay their own way also maintain that these policies will not impact students who are accepted as part of their regular freshman admissions pool. In other words, those applicants — mostly high school seniors — who are accepted for regular fall enrollment will have been evaluated with no weight given to their ability to pay. At many of these same schools, though, the need-blind admissions policy will not be applied to students who are evaluated for admission off the waitlist or as a transfer applicants.

What does this mean for Black applicants? Well, African Americans tend to enroll disproportionately at 2-year colleges, many with the intention of transferring to 4-year institutions later on. Many students do this in able to make college more affordable. Such students will, then be at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to tranfer admissions, because of their need for financial aid. African American students who have an interest in attending a private college or university would be well advised to apply to their favorite 4-year institutions right out of high school (since their financial need will matter less or not at all if they are evaluated as part of the regular freshman admissions pool). Keep in mind this little known fact: The generous financial aid packages that many private institutions make available to their regular (non-transfer, non-waitlist) admitted students often make the overall cost of attending a private 4-year college cheaper than the cost of attending a public 4-year college. Also, keep in mind that even after enrolling at a private (or public) 4-year institution, it is possible to take summer courses at a community college in order to accelerate your time until graduation. Although this is not ideal, it is possible to save up to an entire year’s worth of tuition by satisfying a significant number of your core requirements (the required courses outside your major) at a community college, and then transferring the credits.

To read Kate Zernike’s article, “Paying in Full as the Ticket into Colleges,” click HERE.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

2008 was marked by so many wonderful developments in higher education for Black people, that I did not even bother to compile a Hall of Shame list. While there were certainly setbacks and disheartening moments, the balance was toward the positive. If I had chosen to put together a roster of low points, though, this performance from the Texas Southern University marching band would have ranked pretty high.

If you aren’t familiar with either this song, “Please Excuse My Hands,” or the artist who made it famous (the rapper Plies), then I invite you to click HERE for the lyrics and HERE to watch the music video.

I could write a whole treatise on how a song whose lyrics mark rapper Plies as an apologist for unwanted touching seems at cross purposes with Texas Southern University’s stated mission, to “produce competent graduates who are poised to make positive contributions to humanity.” Instead, though, I’ll just let the song lyrics speak for themselves.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

(Source: Ohio State Archives, Hallie Q. Brown/Frances Brown Hughes Collection)

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Hallie Q. Brown (1845? – 1949) was women’s rights activist and teacher. A graduate of Ohio’s Wilberforce University, she eventually became an instructor and trustee.

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Posted by Ajuan Mance

John Hope Franklin, photographed at Davidson College, in 2002. That year, Davidson awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Letters at their Family Weekend celebration.

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On Wednesday, March 25, 2009, John Hope Franklin died of congestive heart failure at the Duke University Hospital in Durham, North Carolina. He was 94 years old. Dr. Franklin was the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History at the same institution.

As an African American professor working in the field of Black studies (specifically African American literature of the 19th century), I am infinitely grateful to Dr. Franklin. He was a pioneering scholar in African American history, and his work laid the foundation for much of what I and other Black scholars have been able to accomplish. His high visibility as a prolific and well-respected African American history specialist did much to create a broader space within the academy for other Black scholars, as well as to establish African American studies (U.S. Black history, U.S. Black literature, et cetera) as a serious field of scholarly inquiry.

In an interview with The Academy Speaks, Dr. Peniel Joseph, associate professor of Africana Studies at Brandeis University, describes Franklin’s legacy:

His large corpus of scholarship and civic activism promoting diversity in the academy leaves a monumental legacy for other scholars to follow. Dr. Franklin was that rare combination of exemplary scholar and engaged citizen who sought to promote history and multiculturalism to a larger public.

John Hope Franklin was born in Rentiesville, Oklahoma. His father was an attorney and his mother was an elementary school teacher. He earned his B.A. at Fisk University, and his M.A. and Ph.D., both in history, from Harvard University. Perhaps his most important scholarly achievement was his groundbreaking study of U.S. Black history, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African-Americans. He first published this volume in 1947. Since that time it has sold over 3 million copies. In a NY Times tribute to the late scholar, NYU history professor David Levering Lewis explains the impact of this paradigm-shifting text:

When you think of ‘From Slavery to Freedom,’ there’s before and there’s after, there’s the world before and then we have a basic paradigm shift […] Before him you had a field of study that had been feeble and marginalized, full of a pretty brutal discounting of the impact of people of color. And he moved it into the main American narrative. It empowered a whole new field of study.

The Times article goes on to describe how Dr. Franklin’s treatment of African American history shaped and transformed the ways that all marginalized histories are now told. Times reporter Peter Applebome explains:

Dr. Lewis and others argue that Dr. Franklin’s work helped empower not just African-American studies, but the whole range of alternative stories — of women, gays, Hispanics, Asians and others — now so much a part of mainstream academia.

Dr. Franklin was the recipient of any number of awards and honors, from both local communities and national organizations, from academic institutions and from the highest government offices in the land. When I think of his accumulated awards, they seem to me an all-too-human effort to give due honor to someone whose contributions can really, truly never be adequately recognized. I have spent the last couple days wish that I had taken the time, at some point during the last years of his life, to send Dr. Franklin a letter of thanks for the the ways that his work has impacted mine and the lives of other Black scholars.

But what words could I use to tell someone that so much of my intellectual life and, indeed, my very occupation — a job that I truly enjoy — might well be inaccessible to me if it wasn’t for him? John Hope Franklin was not the first Black person to study African American history, but his outstanding work in this field made it possible for ever greater numbers of us who are passionate about the culture and history and literature of Black people to actually get paid to write about, teach, and do research in a field that we love.

The best that I can do — indeed, the best that any of us Black folks in academia can ever do — is to build on his legacy, in the quality of our work, in the responsibility that we take as transmitters and creators of knowledge, and in our commitment to principle of scholarly work as a stepping stone to true freedom, the emancipation of the mind.

Rest in peace, Dr. Franklin. Much admiration and many thanks,

Ajuan Mance

Many thanks to Sean at Tullycraft News for calling my attention to this wonderful and historic photograph. This photo was taken on March 19, 1966, a day that marked a turning point in NCAA men’s basketball. If you saw the 2006 film that told the story of this team, then you already know 1) that in 1966, Texas Western College (now University of Texas at El Paso) defeated the University of Kentucky in the NCAA final, and 2)that this marked the first time that a team with an all African American starting lineup won the Division I college hoops final.

The Texas Western starting five consisted of Bobby Joe Hill, Harry Flournoy, Nevil Shed, David Lattin, and Willie Worsley. The final score was Texas 72 – Kentucky 65.

Posted by Ajuan Mance