WASHINGTON — Though the discourse of diversity on campus has been subsumed by a “bigger political landscape” as of late, America’s colleges and universities must still fight to make the nation’s professoriate more reflective of the nation as a whole.

That was one of the key arguments that UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski III made Tuesday as he spoke to attendees at the annual conference of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, or NADOHE.

“I want you to keep in mind that the reason we’re doing this work is not to give a person of color a job,” Hrabowski said during the keynote speech at the conference as he lamented how the professoriate is 85 percent White and not reflective of American society.

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Stylistically and politically, Robert P. George and Cornel West don’t have much in common. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, is one of the country’s most prominent conservative intellectuals. West, a professor of the practice of public philosophy and African and African-American studies at Harvard University, is a self-described “radical Democrat” who, in addition to many books, once released a spoken-word album.

So when George and West agree on something and lend their names to it, people take notice — as they did this week, when the pair published a statement in support of “truth seeking, democracy and freedom of thought and expression.” It’s a politely worded denunciation of what George and West call “campus illiberalism,” or the brand of thinking that led to this month’s incident at Middlebury College, where students prevented an invited speaker from talking and a professor was physically attacked by some who were protesting the invitation.

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The Trump administration has made numerous proclamations about recapturing or preserving traditional manufacturing jobs in an effort to shrink the US trade deficit and make America great again. Most are populist cries to bolster old industries, such as automobile manufacturing, that purportedly have been ravaged by unfair global competition. It’s too bad we romanticize businesses lost to progress and ignore vibrant sectors in which the US is still justifiably great and even dominant. “Like what?” you may ask. How about higher education?

While American colleges and universities are often vilified as hotbeds for liberal elitism, we forget that our 8,000 learning institutions constitute an enormous economic engine. US manufacturing has been declining in importance since the 1970s, but higher education has countered that trend dramatically. Our postsecondary schools will generate more than $550 billion in revenues in 2017, growing to $700 billion by 2024—a multiple of the American automotive industry’s contribution to the economy. The 4.1 million people working at colleges and universities—from teachers and scholars, to administrators, to food service professionals, to engineers and construction workers—is roughly the same number as those employed directly and indirectly in the US auto sector.

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Here is a fascinating paradox: in the abstract, most people believe that sexual violence is a bad thing. We largely agree that victim trauma is severe, that perpetrators should be punished and that our communities would be better places if we could somehow eliminate this evil. Yet, when we examine specific cases, that consensus unravels.

Adjudication is comparatively straightforward when the alleged perpetrator is a stranger. If the “bad guy” is an outsider, literal or figurative, we have no trouble bringing down the hammer and the full weight of the criminal justice system. But when the alleged perpetrator is an insider, or a person with whom we feel some sort of affiliation or reverence, it becomes difficult to label him as someone who would do such a thing. We start to make excuses and bend over backward to deny the plausibility of the victim’s experience.

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When San Francisco announced in February that it would make community college tuition free for all city residents, regardless of their income, it joined a multitude of cities and states that are doing something similar. According to the most recent count from the College Promise Campaign, an initiative tracking these numbers, nearly 200 states and localities have initiated “College Promise” programs.
Promise programs make tuition free for students attending two- and, in some cases, four-year schools. Some tie program participation to GPA, or limit it to recent high school graduates, while others, like San Francisco, are open access. Such programs have seen a surge in support across the country, and as their number continues to grow, have evolved into what might be termed a movement.

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After years of bad news about sexual harassment and assault involving professors within the University of California, its Board of Regents voted this week to strengthen the systemwide Faculty Code of Conduct’s policies against such behavior.

Specifically, regents approved an amendment to the code making sexual harassment and assault violations of faculty responsibilities. Previously, sexual misconduct did not explicitly constitute a violation.

The board also clarified the deadline by which campus chancellors must initiate disciplinary proceedings against a faculty member accused of misconduct, putting it at three years. It also eliminated any timeline for making reports of harassment and assault involving faculty members.

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If we want to make a positive difference for the future of America, change begins with education. Emphasis must be placed on inclusion of all students, regardless of gender, ethnicity or economic status. Diversifying our nation’s elite colleges would be a step in the right direction. Increased number of college graduates from top universities equates to a more educated, skilled and productive workforce for our country.

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Women earn 60 percent of baccalaureate degrees and 46 percent of doctoral degrees, excluding professional programs, according to 2015 data from the National Science Foundation, yet they’re still underrepresented in many disciplines. Why? A new study points to segregation by gender based on field of study and what it calls program prestige.

“Prestige segregation is weaker than field segregation but substantively important,” the paper asserts. “On average, between 11 and 13 percent of female doctoral students would need to ‘trade’ programs with men in order to eliminate prestige segregation.”

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This essay is the first of two in which I will provide advice on getting research funding in graduate school. Here, I outline how disparities in graduate funding are deeply racialized and how that connects to racial issues in higher education more generally.

Let’s first take a brief look at the history of higher education in the United States. American colleges and universities were founded as white organizations. Part of their intellectual mission was to further the ideology and material practices of white supremacy. Profits from slavery, the exclusion of people of color and complicity in scientific racism were much more than unfortunate footnotes to an otherwise noble system.

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A federal appeals court ruled Thursday to keep in place a temporary restraining order barring the Trump administration from enforcing an executive order banning entry into the U.S. for nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries.

The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which came in a lawsuit filed by the states of Washington and Minnesota, is a defeat for the Trump administration, which is expected to appeal it to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The unanimous decision by a three-judge panel specifically said that Washington State and Minnesota had legal standing to challenge the travel ban in part because of the impact on students and faculty members at public universities. The decision said that the states “allege that the teaching and research missions of their universities are harmed by the executive order’s effect on their faculty and students who are nationals of the seven affected countries. These students and faculty cannot travel for research, academic collaboration, or for personal reasons, and their families abroad cannot visit. Some have been stranded outside the country, unable to return to the universities at all. The schools cannot consider attractive student candidates and cannot hire faculty from the seven affected countries, which they have done in the past.”

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