College Presidents and Black Student Protests: A Historical Perspective on the Image of Racial Inclusion and the Reality of Exclusion

From complacency to criticality: Envisioning antiracist leadership among white higher education administrators.

“…Patton offered three propositions that explicitly name the ways in which white supremacy underwrites educational inequity: (a) the establishment and development of U.S. postsecondary education is intimately linked to white supremacy; (b) U.S. higher education is linked to systems of imperialism and capitalism that result in the intersections of race, property, and oppression; and (c) U.S. institutions of higher education serve as sites that reproduce racist ideas, beliefs, and logic. Although the purpose of this article is not to relitigate the racist history of higher education (see Cole, 2018;Patton, 2016;Wilder, 2013), we posit that antiracist leadership cannot effectively develop in the absence of such a historical analysis.…”

“…This understanding requires an awareness of historical exclusionary practices as well as tensions between administrators and students that have resulted from racial unrest. Cole (2018) documented the ways in which discourses of racial harmony and inclusion for Students of Color at Predominantly White Institutions (PWI) in the 1960s functioned to mystify the realities of racism on campus. We concur with the calls for a woke academy (2018 Association for the Study of Higher Education conference theme) that challenges distorted, selective understandings of our institutional histories.…”

Demanding attention: An exploration of institutional characteristics of recent student demands.

“…Cole and Harper’s (2017) examination of college presidents’ responses to racist incidents found campus leaders rarely connect persistent incidents with systemic issues at their institutions. This ongoing disconnection between presenting campuses as welcoming and inclusive while not addressing systemic racism is not a recent occurrence (Cole, 2018), and provides important context for students’ activism as they often demanded their institutions to address their legacy and current reality of campus racism (Chessman & Wayt, 2016; Ndemanu, 2017).…”

"I can't give it my all if my heart isn't in it”: Understanding Black undergraduate students’ development of Black Racialized Critical Consciousness at two historically and predominantly white institutions

“…College students are also defending ethnic and cultural studies programs and departments and identity-based cultural centers from legislative attacks, creating new-more intersectional-caucus spaces, and building the coalitions they need to thrive on their respective campuses (Fausset, 2015;George Mwangi et al, 2018;Jaschik, 2016;Johnson, 2019;Lundgren, 2019;Miraglia & Rubio-Licht, 2019;Muller, 2017;Musil, 2016). Black college students have taken up the mantle of resistance and are building upon the legacy of Black student activism, which has existed throughout history (Benson, 2015;Biondi, 2014;Cole, 2018;Morgan & Davis, 2019;Rogers, 2012;Rojas, 2007;Wheatle & Commodore, 2019).…”

“…Higher education institutions should instead, as Dortch (2016) suggests, "move toward complete equity-minded cultural shifts that include equity-minded transformations (meaning, deepening commitments to equity through inquiry and practitioner knowledge; justice as fairness-equal distribution of resources among equals and providing greater distribution to racially marginalized students; enacting justice as care-freedom from oppression, see Dowd & Bensimon, 2015)" (p. 110). These moves also require that historically and predominantly white institutions reckon with their histories of violence as many benefit from their direct and indirect involvement in chattel slavery (i.e., the enslavement of African peoples, the sale of enslaved peoples, the donation of monies generated from or bequeathed in the estates of enslavers and companies dependent upon the exploitation of labor from enslaved peoples) and colonization (i.e., the attempted genocide and forced dispossession of Indigenous peoples from lands they cultivated and lived upon for centuries; Biondi, 2014;Cole, 2018Ladson-Billings, 2006;Lee & Ahtone, 2020;Morgan & Davis, 2019;Patton, 2016;Rogers, 2012;Rojas, 2007;Wheatle & Commodore, 2019;Wilder, 2013). Institutions must also account for and adjust their contemporary practices wherein the expansion of their campuses-including for research parks, athletic facilities, and other purposes-often destroys communities and displaces Black, Brown, and low-income peoples Ehlenz, 2019;Jackson, 2014;Keston et al, 2017;Patton, 2016;Silverman et al, 2019).…”