In Feburary a report on Black graduate students in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education moved me to blog on the clustering of Black graduate students in the fields of Education and Business. You can read that blog post HERE. This issue made the news again just last week when the Baltimore Times published “Fewer Blacks Earning Degrees,” an analysis of the current state of African Americans and doctoral education, written by education advocate Jayne Matthews. Click on the highlighted title to read this article in its entirety.

Early in her piece, Matthews cites the familiar statistic, that 36.5 percent of African Americans with doctorates hold those degrees in the field of education. She then goes on to explore some of the more disturbing implications of Black clustering in that field. Matthews reveals that the pursuit of the Ed.D. as a professional degree (commonly used as a stepping stone into principalships, school superintendent positions, and certain college administrative posts) has prompted a reconsideration of the necessity of pre-administrative training at the doctoral level, noting that Arthur Levine, president of the highly influential Columbia Teacher’s College, has suggested removing the dissertation component of the Ed.D., which would effectively eliminate it as a doctoral degree option, and replacing it with a professionally-oriented M.Ed. Matthew’s writes:

Arthur Levine, president of the Teachers College at Columbia University, has proposed that Ed.D. degrees be abolished and be replaced with a master’s degree in educational administration. He believes that people who aspire to be school superintendents or college administrators are wasting their time doing a research dissertation on a topic that will have little or no bearing on the job that they plan to hold.

The effect on the numbers of Black doctoral numbers would be dramatic:

Should the Levine view prevail, the black percentage of all doctoral awards would fall dramatically. If we eliminate educational doctorates from the 2006 statistics, we find that blacks earned only 4.8 percent of all doctorates in fields other than education.

While the sharp downward shift in black percentage of doctoral awards would be troubling on many levels, it would not have much of an effect on the real-life experiences of Black faculty and students on college and university campuses, where the clustering of Black doctoral degree holders in primary and secondary school administrative posts has had little or no direct impact on the number of Black instructors that undergraduate and graduate students encounter in their college classrooms.

It is possible to argue that there should already have been an M.Ed. oriented specifically toward to aspiring administrators, possibly along the lines of an M.B.A., but for education professionals rather than business professional. Then, as is the case in the field of business, the doctorate in education would be a Ph.D., oriented specifically toward those who have an interest in college-level teaching and research.

As a Black academic I have to wonder, though, whether or not the popularity of the Ed.D. among African Americans has anything to do with some institutions’ willingness to consider doing away with it. This very question may seem fraught with racial paranoia; but given the history of Black people in the academy, to ignore such a possibilty would be foolish.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

“There’s no greater honor, obviously, for an alumni to have a building named for him, one that he hasn’t donated the money for.” — Ret. Lt. Cmdr. Wesley A. Brown in the Baltimore Sun

Ret. Lt. Cmdr. Wesley A. Brown

A number of institutions are celebrating this commencement season by naming Black scholars to leadership positions that African Americans have never previously held or by honoring their institution’s Black pioneers. Over the next few days, I will be posting news of some of these exciting milestones under the heading “Black Firsts, May 2008.”

The series continues with this brief report on the U.S. Naval Academy and its upcoming dedication of the new Wesley Brown Field House, named for its first African American graduate.

The dedication will take place this coming Saturday (May 10, 2008 ) and Ret. Lt. Commander Wesley A. Brown, the 81 year-old guest of honor, will be in attendance, along with a number of family members and friends. A member of the Academy’s class of 1949, Brown was the sixth African American to enter the Naval Academy, but only the first to graduate. Like previous Black enrollees, Brown endured isolation and harrassment but, he is not bitter. The Baltimore Sun reports that, “Brown has said in previous interviews that he did not recall many of the bad experiences at the academy and prefers to talk about the friends he had there.”

Midshipman Wesley A. Brown, ca. 1949

The Sun reports that Brown, “entered the Navy’s civil engineer corps after graduation. He retired from the Navy in 1969.” Brown feels fortunate to be alive to experience this dedication and to share it with his family. The Sun explains the health crisis that nearly prevented him from reaching this moment:

Brown said he was taken aback several years agowhen someone from the academy called to say officials planned to name an athletic complex after him. Brown said he initially thought the caller was a prankster or a telemarketer.

Two months later, he suffered a heart attack at his home, and doctors told his wife that he would likely die before morning. Their four children flew in from other parts of the country to be at his side.

Brown said he is simply thankful to be alive for Saturday’s ceremony.

He has spent recent weeks finalizing the guest list, which has grown to 70 family members and more than 300 friends.

The Wesley Brown Field House is a state-of-the-art athletic facility. HomeTownAnnapolis.com describes the $52 million, 140,000 square foot sports complex:

The facility includes track and field areas, such as sand pits for broad jumps, that can be covered by a retractable artificial turf football field.

When being put in place or retracted, the 76,000-square-foot, 100,000-pound carpet floats on a bed of forced air created by fans hidden in the floor. The goal is to reduce friction and make the turf last longer, said retired Cmdr. Tom McKavitt, an associate athletic director at the academy.

Cmdr. McKavitt said the facility will house the men and women’s cross country and track teams, the women’s lacrosse team and the sprint football team, as well as supporting 16 club sports.

“The facility will contribute to the overall physical mission at the Naval Academy,” he said.

Cmdr. McKavitt said the building’s wall overlooking the Santee Basin is designed to serve as dike in case of severe flooding.

The wall is mostly blast-resistant glass and is designed to reduce the need for artificial lighting. It is tinted toward the top to make the building easier to cool, according to Lt. Bob Kendall, the project supervisor.

The building has its own storm water management system that includes channeling run-off into flower beds, he said.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

“The seminary’s task, then, is to sear the promise of God’s protective power and transformative capability so deeply into your hearts and minds that when you step out into the lead of God’s people, your shepherding, driving focus will always be more on what can be than on what is.” –Rev. Brian K. Blount

A number of institutions are celebrating this commencement season by naming Black scholars and administrators to positions that they have never previously held or by honoring their institution’s Black pioneers. Over the next few days, I will be posting news of some of these exciting milestones under the heading “Black Firsts, May 2008.”

The series begins with this brief report on Union Theological Seminary and its installation of Rev. Brian K. Blount as the first ever Black person to lead the institution.

5/07/09 — Rev. Brian K. Blount was inaugurated as the first African American president of Union Theological Seminary & Presbyterian School of Christian Education. As the first Black president in its 196-year history, Rev. Blount also became the first African American “to head a seminary of the Presbyterian Church (USA).” Rev. Blount holds was educated at the College of William and Mary (B.A.), Princeton Theological Seminary (M.Div.), and Emory University (Ph.D). He has authored and co-authored several books, including: Making Room At The Table: An Invitation to Multicultural Worship, edited with Lenora Tubbs Tisdale (D.Min.’79), Westminster John Knox Press, 2000; Cultural Interpretation: Reorienting New Testament Criticism, Fortress Press, 1995; Then The Whisper Put On Flesh: New Testament Ethics in An African American Context, Abingdon Press, 2001; Can I Get A Witness? Reading Revelation Through African-American Culture, Westminster John Knox Press, 2005; True to Our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary, general editor, Fortress Press, 2007; and several others.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

The Clinton campaign, like the Obama campaign, is paving new political terrain, simply by virtue of the fact that the candidate is something other that a white male; and while bloggers, columnists, and pundits from all over the political spectrum are actively encouraging voters to look past race and gender and, instead, to vote based on the candidates’ records and ideas, there is no doubt that in this nation — one in which race and gender have far too long been the primary measures by which rights and wealth and granted — race and gender politics do and will continue to inform how Clinton and Obama, their parties, their advisors, and the electorate engage with both of these leading Democratic and their ideas.

Below are some of the most compelling and provocative statements by Black academics on the election and its link to the racial and sexual politics of this nation:

• from “Hillary’s Scarlet O’Hara Act: Why Some of Us Aren’t Falling For It,” on TheRoot.com, by Melissa Harris-Lacewell, associate professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton University

There’s been a lot of talk about women and their choices since Super Tuesday, when African American women overwhelmingly voted for Sen. Barack Obama, while white women picked Sen. Hillary Clinton. Some pundits automatically concluded that “race trumped gender” among black women. I hate this analysis because it relegates black women to junior-partner status in political struggles. It is not that simple. A lot of people have tried to gently explain the divide, so I’m just going to put this out there: Sister voters have a beef with white women like Clinton that is both racial and gendered. It is not about choosing race; it is about rejecting Hillary’s Scarlett O’Hara act.

Black women voters are rejecting Hillary Clinton because her ascendance is not a liberating symbol. Her tears are not moving. Her voice does not resonate. Throughout history, privileged white women, attached at the hip to their husband’s power and influence, have been complicit in black women’s oppression. Many African American women are simply refusing to play Mammy to Hillary.

…

Media have cast the choice in the current election as a simple binary between race and gender. But those who claim that black women are ignoring gender issues by voting for Barack just don’t get it. Hillary cannot have black women’s allegiance for free. Black women will not be relegated to the status of supportive Mammy, easing the way for privileged white women to enter the halls of power.

Black feminist politics is not simple identity politics. It is not about letting brothers handle the race stuff, or about letting white women dominate the gender stuff. The black woman’s fight is on all fronts. Sisters resist the ways that black male leaders try to silence women’s issues and squash female leadership. At the same time, black women challenge white women who want to claim black women’s allegiance without acknowledging the realities of racism. They will not be drawn into any simple allegiance that refuses to account for their full humanity and citizenship.

• from “Hillary or Billary? The Clintons’ Ugly Gender Politics,” on BlackProf.com, by Marc Lamont Hill, assistant professor of urban education and American studies at Temple University

Now that Obama has regained his momentum, the Clintons seem prepared to return to the strategy of promoting Hillary as an experienced politician with more than a matrimonial connection to the White House. Although this approach may win Hillary the presidency, it will do little to destroy controlling images of women as extensions of male desire and ambition.

Contrary to what Hillary has said, this is the real glass ceiling that women must crack.

•  from “Renowned Princeton Professor Cornel West Assesses the Democratic Presidential Field,” on DemocracyNow.org. Cornel West is the Class of 1943 University Professor of Religion at Princeton.

 …I think Hillary Clinton has a long way to go, because she’s carrying a baggage, as it were, of the kind of neoliberalist—the neoliberal project of her husband.

• Shelby Steele on MSNBC’s Hardball, December 7, 2007. Click here to listen to an audio clip. Shelby Steele is the Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

…she’s doing very well with the Black vote because she identifies with people like Al Sharpton. She identifies with people who African Americans are very comfortable with. In many ways she’s Blacker that Barack Obama is. His primary appeal is still with whites.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

2007 may be remembered as the year that intra-racial diversity finally hit the news. From college dailies to academic weeklies to mainstream newspapers, reporters rushed to Harvard and other selective college campuses to address what has been portrayed as the overrepresentation at such schools of the children of Black immigrants and the underrepresentation at those same institutions of the descendants of U.S. Blacks. In so doing, they exposed the failure of college and university admission offices to understand the vast diversity that exists within Blackness, noting that, at Ivy League institutions in particular, outreach and recruitment efforts created in response to the lasting effects of slavery and Jim Crow upon Blacks of U.S. were disproportionately benefitting students of African descent whose parents were born outside of the U.S.

The downside of this reporting is that it could fan the flames of intra-diasporic competition and dissension. The upside is that it underscores the wide range of nationalities, ethnicities, and cultures that constitute the Black population of the United States. As diverse our ethnicities may be, however, we — the Black people of the U.S. — seem to be of one mind (or maybe two) when it comes to choosing a graduate program.

A recent report in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (JBHE Weekly Bulletin for 12/17/07) revealed that more than 50 percent of all Black graduate students are enrolled in either business or education programs. This follow passage from the JBHE Bulletin explains the current trend:

A new report from the Graduate Record Examinations Board and the Council of Graduate Schools finds that among all black graduate students, 31 percent were enrolled in graduate education degree programs. Another 22 percent were enrolled in graduate business programs. No other graduate field had more than 10 percent of black graduate students.

These statistics reveal a key tension in Black students’ pursuit of higher education. It is the tension between Black America’s belief in the value of education and Black America’s general ambivalence toward the notion of learning for learning’s sake.

Do not misunderstand where I am going with this assertion. I do not believe that Black people are resistant to or opposed to higher education. In fact, I vehemently reject the accusation by John McWhorter, Bill Cosby, and other prominent Black voices that African Americans somehow associate good grades and the pursuit of education with “acting white.” Indeed, people who pay attention to what African Americans express about their beliefs (as opposed to the insults that angry teens might hurl at their schoolmates) understand that U.S. Black people believe deeply in education — as a ticket to upward mobility, as a stamp of legitimacy necessary for success in a white-dominated workplace, and as a profound rejection of the subordinated status that Euro-dominant mainstream has encouraged us to occupy for so long.

When I say, then, that many Black Americans feel a general ambivalence toward the notion of learning for learning’s sake — toward the acquisition of knowledge undertaken solely for the purpose of knowing and, similiarly, toward undertaking the pursuit of a line of scholarly inquiry as one’s life work — I mean that for many U.S. Blacks the pursuit of higher education is tantamount to upgrading life’s toolkit for success. Education is undertaken pragmatically, and it is embraced as the key which will open the door to post-graduate stability and prosperity.

At the undergraduate level this means that Black business and economics majors outnumber Black science and math majors; Black journalism and communications majors outnumber Black English majors; and history, philosophy, language, music, and art majors are rare or even non-existent.

At the graduate level, business and education are the fields of choice; and thus the cycle is perpetuated. As long as African American graduate students flock to business and education, and as long as they underenroll in other disciplines, there will continue to be a dearth of Black professors in medicine, in law, and in most academic fields. Black students need Black mentors in all fields, to inform them of the possibilities for post-graduate study in those fields, and to help them understand the important links between undergraduate disciplinary studies in English, history, philosophy, and modern languages and success in careers like advertising, law enforcement, politics, and public policy, or to advise them in some of the important ways that majoring not only in the sciences and social sciences, but in the humanities and arts as well can lay a strong foundation for graduate study in medicine, law and — yes — even business.

In my life, it was my direct classroom contact with African American English professors Dorothy Denniston and Michael Harper that made real to me the possibility that my passion for this subject could become a viable career. On the other hand, the absence at my undergraduate institution of Black art professors conveyed to me a completely different message about my other great love, the visual arts. As far as I could see, unless I was wealthy and white, there would be no real work for me as an artmaker; there was no point in even enrolling in a course in that department. Since that time I have, of course, learned differently; and even though I am very happy in my career as a literature professor, I cannot help but wonder how different my life might have been if I had had personal contact with even one Black art professional.

I was lucky. Although I was turned off from pursuing one of my great pleasures, I have found great satisfaction and joy in the pursuit of another of my fields of choice. But how many budding painters, engineers, surgeons, archivists, and legal scholars of African descent will be turned off by the absence of Black mentors and role models in their areas of interest? How many great Black artists or physicists, philosophers or historians put these passions aside in favor of those career paths that appear to be more welcoming to Black people?

Until Black students enroll in medical, law, and Ph.D. programs with the same enthusiasm that they undertake studies toward the M.B.A. and the Ed.D., institutions will have to develop innovative strategies for introducing Black students to the possibilities that exist for success, fulfillment, and career satisfaction beyond the fields of business and education.

As I close this post, I cannot help but think of how much it meant to me to encounter real live Black professors of English. The experience of studying with people of African descent who shared my passion for reading, writing, and thinking about literature was transforming. More than any diploma, award, or academic honor, their reflection of my academic interests and passions validated my pursuit of literature study, during my undergraduate years and for many years after.

I feel great sadness for those Black students who will never have a similar experience. I trust in their capacity to find validation for their interests and affirmation of the possibilities available to them as scholars without the benefit same-race role models; but I still look ahead to the day when no African, African American, or Afro-Caribbean student at any institution will have to wonder whether or not Black folks can succeed. I look ahead to the time when the presence of Black men and women, as full-time, tenure-track faculty in all disciplines, at all institutions will make such questions obsolete.

[digg=http://digg.com/political_opinion/In_Higher_Ed_There_s_More_Than_One_Kind_of_Diversity]

Posted by Ajuan Mance

Wealth-building is the cornerstone of true upward mobility in the United States. When I speak of true upward mobility, I mean the type of financial security that can be transferred to future generations. When I speak of true upward mobility, I mean the type of upward mobility that is characterized by the transmission of the parents’ economic gains to their children  and their children’s children. When I speak of true upward mobility, I mean the type of financial security that has, for the most part, been elusive to African Americans.

The 2/7/08 edition of the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education weekly news bulletin has confirmed one of my main concerns regarding the fallout of the subprime lending crisis, that the epidemic of foreclosures that has plagued the U.S. over the past year, one that has disproportionately impacted African Americans and Latinos, may jeopardize African Americans’ access to higher education. JBHE bulletin describes a recent study that explores the impact of the subprime crisis on African American wealthbuilding:

Now a new report from the United for a Fair Economy, a Boston-based nonprofit organization dealing with the issue of economic inequality, estimates that the subprime mortgage crisis [will] result in a loss of wealth for black families of between $71 billion and $122 billion. According to the report, titled Foreclosed: State of the Dream 2008, the subprime mortgage crisis will cause the largest loss of African-American wealth in the history of the United States. The authors of the report state that 40 percent of the losses accrued by blacks are a result of aggressive and unethical mortgage practices by subprime lenders.

JBHE concludes that, “This vast loss of wealth by black families will make it more difficult in the years to come for many African-American students to afford the cost of higher education.”

Which Black families will be hardest hit, and where? And what is the potential effect of this crisis on the future of Black higher education in those areas?

The disproportionate impact of the current mortgage crisis on Black families has influenced the geography of this trend. Consider the following. Forbes magazine recently identified the following as the 10 housing markets hit hardest by the current mortgage crisis. In order of ascending order, based on the severity of the impact on housing prices, they are:

Atlanta, GA (prices down 7.1%)

Detroit, MI (prices down 7.7%)

Jacksonville, FL (prices down 8.7%)

Phoenix, AZ (prices down 9.5%)

Miami, FL (prices down 10.6%)

Los Angeles, CA (prices down 10.7%)

Tampa, FL (prices down 11.7%)

San Diego, CA (prices down 17.1%)

Las Vegas, NV (prices down 17.2%)

Sacramento, CA (prices down 18.5%)

Most of the cities hit hardest by the subprime crises have considerable African American populations; and cities like Atlanta, Jacksonville, Detroit, and Sacramento count among their citizens Black families most whose net worth is concentrated in a single real estate holding, the family home. The loss of that home has the capacity not only to destabilize the immediately financial health of a household, but to derail short- and long-term plans for upward mobility and increased economic prospects. Among those long-term strategies jeopardized by the loss of a family’s primary investment (the family home) is college education for the children.

Consider the state of Florida, for example, the location of three of the cities hit hardest by the current forclosure crisis. Each of those cities has a considerable Black populations. According to the U.S. Census, African Americans make up 26.1 percent of the population of Tampa (about 79,000 people), 29 percent of the population of Jacksonville (about 227,000), and 20.2% of the population of Miami (about 485,000). The number of Florida families impacted by this crisis is unclear, as is the specific number of Black families. It is reasonable, however, to imagine that Black college students and Black college bound high school students will be (and already are) disproportionately hurt by the current economic conditions.

It has already been established that the subprime and foreclosure crisis is having a disproportionate impact of families of color. Given that home equity is one of the more common funding options available to familites seeking to finance a college education (like federal student loans, the interest is deductible, but unlike a student loan, there is no income ceiling; students from middle and even upper middle class families have access to this type of financing), we can expect to see greater and greater numbers of Black students either postponing college or opting to begin their post-secondary educations at their local community college. Similarly, we are likely to see greater attrition rates among students from the Black middle class, the demographic most likely to rely on home equity funding for college expenses.

A number of sources have reported that children born into the Black middle class are considerably less likely to reach their parents’ level of prosperity than are their white counterparts. Reports on Black downward mobility have appeared in USA Today, AlterNet, The Washington Post, and a number of other mainstream and alternative news sources. “The American Dream, or a Nightmare for Black Americans,” a recent article by AlterNet’s Joshua Holland, makes explicit the relationship between Black upward mobility, Black net worth, and higher education. He explains that when comparing Black and white families, “[t]he differences in accumulated wealth — in net worth — are far greater than the differences in income, and that impacts black families’ prospects of moving up in a big way.” Holland continues:

In Being Black, Living in the Red, Dalton Conley, director of NYU’s Center for Advanced Social Science Research, showed that white families, on average, had eight times the accumulated wealth of black families who earned the same, and that remained true even when you adjust for education levels and savings rates. It is, as Conley told me in an interview last year, “the legacy of racial inequality from generations past.”

Crucial to understanding how that impacts economic mobility is the concept of “intergenerational assistance.” That’s just a fancy way of saying that your chances to advance economically are very much impacted by whether your family can help with tuition payments, a down payment on a house or seed money to start a business. Conley compares two hypothetical kids — one from a family with some money and the other without. Both are born with the same level of intelligence, both are ambitious and both work hard in school. In a true meritocracy, the two would enjoy the same opportunity to get ahead. But the fact that one might graduate from college free and clear while the other is burdened with $50,000 in debt makes a huge difference in terms of their long-term earnings prospects.

Home equity allows parents to take on their children’s debt as part of a forward-thinking, tax-exempt strategy for upward mobility, one that considers the college education of a family’s children a key component in building intergenerational economic growth and financial security.

The current mortgage crisis will only increase this gap between white parents’ capacity to transmit wealth to their children through the funding of their college educations and Black parents’ capacity to do the same. In the case of Florida, I will be keeping an eye out for any initiatives that the state’s colleges and universities adopt to respond to the changing economic fortunes of those students impacted by their families’ short sales and foreclosures. I am especially interested in seeing how the state’s HBCUs –Bethune-Cookman, Florida A&M University, Edward Waters College, and Florida Memorial College– deal with the impact of this statewide financial crisis on their applicants and enrolled students.

Stay tuned.

Click here to read the full text of the 2/7/08 edition of the JBHE bulletin.

Click here to read the full text of the Forbes article, “America’s Free – Falling Housing Markets.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

From “Obama Wins Mock Election,” by Vanessa Rozier, The Hilltop, Howard University, 2/6/08

Howard University College Democrats President Debauch Ward believes Obama is the right choice for college students
“I generally thought that the Howard University support would be with Barack Obama because I feel that he represents a lot of the ideals that we embrace here,” he said. “We live by Leadership for America and the global community, and Sen. Obama exemplifies that motto.”

…

Chigozie Onyema, a senior African studies major, supports Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio).

“Kucinich was my candidate and still is my candidate,” Onyema said. “But if I had to pick, I would certainly pick Obama before Clinton. Her stand on the war was a bit more conservative. I’m a bit more optimistic about what Obama represents because Clinton is a more polarized figure.”

From “Vote on Issues, Not Race, Gender,” by The Editorial Board, The Famuan, Florida A&M University

This year’s presidential race is sure to make history, with democratic front-runners Clinton and Obama.

We shouldn’t focus on the race or gender of the two candidates, but instead on what political issues he or she stands for.

Americans have to be educated on the political status of our country and keep abreast on which candidate could possibly best turn the nation around.

The race shouldn’t be about blacks sticking with whom they know and therefore voting for Obama. And it shouldn’t be about whites or women voting Clinton.

A different type of president will be in the White House when everything plays out, but instead decisions should be made based on issues and facts.

From “Politics Begins at Home,” by Layla Brown, Campus Echo, North Carolina Central University

Remember, our political potential is much greater than voting once every four years.

Our power is based in community activism, starting with your local and then state elections.

Those who choose to only engage in politics on a national scale, without paying attention to local issues, are simply underachievers who seldom realize their potential.

From “Why Can’t I Vote for Hillary Clinton?” by Randol G. Davis, The Maroon Tiger, Morehouse College

Why can I not say that without sparking an argument with one of my friends from Morehouse? Why is not acceptable for me, a black woman, to support the Senator from New York in her increasingly successful presidential campaign? Why does the fact that I share the same race with Barack Obama obligate me to vote for him?

…

Now, Obama often calls for change, but can he really bring true change? Male leaders tend to think of everything in terms of their ego and domination, while women think of think of things in regard to logistics. A prime example of this male personality complex is George Bush. After 9/11, he wanted to show everyone what a powerful man he was and now we’ve ended up in Iraq.

Electing Hillary Clinton, a woman, can take us away from a policy dominated by the inclination towards military action instead of diplomacy. Now, some may start yelling that Hillary helped put us in Iraq by voting for the war. If we want to be honest, Hillary likely voted for the war because she-like everyone else in the country-wrongly thought that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

When it comes to mainstream reporting and research on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, it seems that the rules are the same as for mainstream reporting on Black people: take anecdotal accounts of failure and incompetence, and extrapolate to the rest of the group.

OUPblog, maintained by Oxford University Press USA, points this out in “Historically Black Colleges: Anecdote Doesn’t Equal Evidence,” an entry published on January 29, 2008. Written by Dr. Marybeth Gasman, an Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania, this entry explores some of the history of selective reporting and research on Black colleges, tracing the phenomenon to Christopher Jencks and David Riesman’s “The American Negro College,” a tragic masterpiece of faulty and anecdotal research that appeared in 1967, in the Harvard Educational Review:

Having taken on a variety of social ills before, the two Harvard University scholars [Christopher Jencks and David Riesman] decided to embark on an exposé of America’s colleges. When it came to Black institutions, though, the pair didn’t bother to check facts. Based largely on anecdote and hearsay, they presented a scathing document that has been a blight on Black colleges’ reputations—and fundraising efforts—ever since.

OUPblog highlights the reality that all Black bloggers know — indeed, the very reality that compelled many of us to begin blogging in the first place — that mainstream coverage of Black topics has little investment in presenting any perspective on our communities, cultures, institutions, and issues that challenges prevailing notions of race and power in the U.S. OUPblog reaches beyond many treatments of anti-Black media bias by highlighting its relationship to similar issues within academic research.

A lot has changed in the 40 years since Jencks and Riesman’s poorly researched smear of Black colleges and universities, but not so much that OUPblogs’ take home message is rendered irrelevant. OUPblog reminds us that a bias against both Black involvement in education and even the very existence of Black colleges and universities is woven inextricably into the fabric of both media reporting and academic practice. As critical readers and thinks we must remember this truth integrate it into our engagement with all mainstream reporting and research on HBCUs and other aspects of Black life and Black community in the U.S.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

Tuesday, January 21, 2008: Bloomberg.com’s top U.S. stories included this report on a recent change in Dartmouth ‘s financial aid policy:

Dartmouth College, following moves by Harvard and Yale universities to make their schools more affordable, said students from families earning $75,000 or less won’t have to pay tuition, starting in the next academic year.

Dartmouth, the smallest Ivy League institution, will also eliminate loans from aid packages, replacing them with grants, the Hanover, New Hampshire, school, said in a statement today. Besides the tuition breaks, students in the $75,000-or-under category may receive scholarships for room, board and other fees, the school said.

—Matthew Keenan for Bloomberg.com

This spells good news for African Americans, since financial hardship is one of the major contributors to the relatively high attrition rate among Black undergraduates. High school guidance counselors and others who advise college-bound students should take notice of these profound shifts in the financial aid paradigm. Although Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth are three of the most expensive institutions in the United States, their shift from loan aid to grant aid, and their practice of waiving tuition for many middle- and low-income students makes an Ivy League education (at least at these three schools) equally or even more affordable, compared to a bachelor’s degree from a public institution. It is my hope that news of this generous new funding structure will trickle down from the admission offices and administrative corridors where these policies are created to the aspiring students who need this information the most.

I have always maintained that students from marginalized backgrounds have more choices than they are aware of. Such students are often unaware of the range of opportunities available to them, largely because too much of the information about the how, where, and why of college admission and financial aid remains inaccessible to those whose future depends on it most heavily. That Dartmouth’s new financial aid policy has made the top U.S. headlines on Bloomberg.com and Google news is a good first step. Hopefully, momentum will carry, beyond web-based newsites and into high school lunch rooms and hallways, the message that college costs to the student may be very different (and considerably lower) than the advertised “sticker price.”

Posted by Ajuan Mance

History and Overview: Cornell University was founded in 1865, the same year that the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ended slavery in the United States. Located in Ithaca, New York, Cornell first awarded a bachelor’s degree to a Black student in 1897. In 2005, just under 5% of Cornell’s 13,000 undergraduates were Black studentss.

Black Milestones at Cornell University:

• 1892 — Edward Brooks completes a law degree and becomes the first African American to earn a diploma from Cornell University.
• 1897 — Sarah Winifred Brown becomes the first African American to earn a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University.
• 1899 — Nancy Brown, sister of Sarah Winifred Brown (above) becomes the first African American legacy student to graduate from Cornell University.
• 1906 — Alpha Phi Alpha, the first fraternity for Black men, is founded on the campus of Cornell University.
• 1921 — Thomas Wyatt Turner completes his doctorate at Cornell, becoming the first African American in the U.S. to earn a Ph.D. in Botany.
• 1925 — On September 26 of this year Elbert Frank Cox becomes the first Black man at Cornell and in the U.S. to earn a Ph.D. in Physics.
• 1932 — Frederick Douglass Patterson completes his doctorate at Cornell, becoming the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in bacteriology.
• 1936 — Flemmie Pansy Kittrell completes her doctorate at Cornell, becoming the first African American in the U.S. to earn a Ph.D. in nutrition.
• 1961 — Sadie Gasaway completes her doctorate at Cornell, becoming the fifth African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics.
• 1966 — The Afro-American Society (AAS) is founded at Cornell University.
• 1972 — Ujamaa Residential College, a Black themed living community, is formed.
• 1981 — Mae Jemison graduates from Cornell Medical School. She would go on to become the first African American woman astronaut and the first Black woman in space.

Posted by Ajuan Mance