Dear Commons Community,

Keisha Lance Bottoms

Dear Commons Community,

Keisha Lance Bottoms, the first-term Atlanta mayor who rose to national prominence this past year, announced on Twitter in a open letter last night that she will not seek a second term in office.

“I have given thoughtful prayer and consideration to the season now before us, it is with deep emotions that I now hold my head high, and choose not to seek another term as mayor.”

The news shocked the political world in Atlanta, the most important city in the Southeast and one where the mayoral seat has been filled by African-American leaders since 1974, burnishing its reputation as a mecca for Black culture and political power.

Though Ms. Bottoms did not say why she was leaving office, she did rattle off a list of challenges she had faced, along with her accomplishments. And 2020 unquestionably took a toll on mayors nationwide. It was one of the most tumultuous years for American cities since the 1960s, with the social and economic disruptions of the coronavirus pandemic as well as racial justice protests that sometimes turned destructive.  As reported by the Associated Press.

“Bottoms, who narrowly won a runoff election four years ago, pushed backed against any questions about whether she could have secured a second victory later this year. She noted a reelection fundraiser she held with Biden’s support and said polls showed her in a strong position.

“‘Is she afraid of the competition?’ NEVER,” Bottoms wrote.

Bottoms’ tenure has been a mix of rough-and-tumble City Hall politics and an ever-brightening national spotlight for her beyond the city.

She was among Biden’s earliest endorsers, taking a risk early in a crowded Democratic primary campaign. She was later rewarded as one of the women Biden considered to be his running mate, though he eventually chose another Black woman, Kamala Harris, the former California senator who is now the first woman to hold the national office.

Bottoms nonetheless watched her profile rise during the coronavirus pandemic and with the renewed attention on policing in the United States after George Floyd’s killing by a white Minneapolis officer last spring.

She drew plaudits for a nationally televised news conference in which she chided protesters to “go home” while noting her own experiences as a mother of Black sons to empathize with citizens distraught over police violence. She pledged to review Atlanta’s police procedures in the wake of Floyd’s killing.

Yet Bottoms met criticism herself just weeks later when an Atlanta police officer shot and killed Rayshard Brooks. The officer, Garrett Rolfe, was fired last June, a day after he shot the Black man in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant. Rolfe was later charged with murder.

The Atlanta Civil Service Board on Wednesday reversed the firing, finding that the city did not follow its own procedures and failed to grant Rolfe due process. Bottoms said then that Rolfe would remain on administrative leave while criminal charges against him are resolved.

The mayor did not mention Floyd or Brooks in her announcement letter, focusing instead on having giving the city’s police and firefighters raises and alluding to a “social justice movement (that) took over our streets….and we persisted.”

Bottoms came to the mayor’s office as an ally of her predecessor, Kasim Reed, whose endorsement proved critical in her campaign. But she sought to establish her own identity, in no small part because of a long-running FBI investigation in City Hall contracts and finances during Reed’s tenure.

The “far-reaching and ever-growing” investigation, she said Thursday, “consumed City Hall, often leaving employees paralyzed, and fearful of making the smallest of mistakes, lest they too be investigated, or castrated on the evening news.”

Bottoms has never been implicated.

Early in her term, Bottoms eliminated cash bail in Atlanta and ended the city jail’s relationship with federal immigration enforcement agencies, joining big-city mayors around the country in criticizing then-President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies. Her administration navigated a cyberattack on the city’s computer systems early in her tenure.

She helped renegotiate the long-term redevelopment of “The Gulch,” part of the city’s old railroad footprint downtown. But the city did not score the biggest potential prize for the location: the second Amazon headquarters that instead is being built in northern Virginia, outside Washington, D.C.

An Atlanta native and graduate of Florida A&M University, a prominent historically Black college, Bottoms is just the second Black woman to lead the city. She joined Shirley Franklin, who served two terms from 2002-2010. Bottoms noted her family’s deep ties to the city and surrounding region whose history traces Black America’s arc from slavery and Jim Crow segregation to the ongoing legacy of institutional racism.

“My ancestors, direct descendants of the once enslaved, traveled by horse and buggy from the cotton fields of east Georgia in search of a better life for themselves and their children in Atlanta,” she wrote. “I have carried their belief for a better tomorrow in my heart, their earnest work ethic in my being, and their hopes for generations not yet born on my mind, each day that I have been privileged to serve as the 60th Mayor of Atlanta.”

The mayor is expected to have a press conference this morning.”

It is my impression that we have not seen the last of Ms. Bottoms!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article this morning reporting that some colleges are considering new work schedules for faculty and employees that will allow them to continue to work remotely full-time or part-time after the pandemic is over.  Faculty and others who have learned and even mastered teaching and working remotely are finding that they are as productive if not more so than in face-to-face mode.  For example, in a recent survey, nearly three-quarters of Duke University faculty and staff members said they wanted to work remotely three to five days a week, citing the lack of a commute and higher productivity as key benefits. In response, committees are forming at Duke and many other colleges that are evaluating what the work schedules will look like for their faculty and staff in the future. 

For those of us who have been teaching online or in blended learning environments especially at colleges with large commuter populations, this was inevitable before the pandemic.  Covid-19 has sped up the timeframe.

The entire article is below.

Tony

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The Chronicle of Higher Education

At Some Colleges, Remote Work Could Be Here to Stay

By Lindsay Ellis

For months, colleges have weighed the risks and rewards of bringing students back to campuses disrupted by Covid-19. Now they’re considering what to do about their employees.

Committees at colleges and universities across the country are evaluating the future of work, asking to what extent staff and some faculty members could remain virtual and what that would mean for life on campus and off. There are broad implications, for example, for recruiting and campus density.

Before the pandemic, many colleges had remote-work policies, with arrangements often negotiated for individual employees. Colleges that closed during the pandemic had to not only move their entire student body online, but also train many employees on how to use remote technology. Meetings migrated to Zoom, and office chatter moved to Microsoft Teams. In-person welcome receptions became virtual meet-and-greets.

Now some campuses are surveying employees on what they want once the risk of Covid-19 abates, and the results are loud and clear. Nearly three-quarters of Duke University faculty and staff members, for example, said they wanted to work remotely three to five days a week, citing the lack of a commute and higher productivity as key benefits.

Some campus leaders now believe that flexible work-from-home policies will make or break their future hiring and retention efforts, particularly in competitive fields like technology. Campuses that don’t embrace those policies may “suffer,” losing talent to other campuses and to the private sector, said Andy Brantley, president and chief executive officer of the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources.

“If we’re going to continue to attract and retain the greatest talent,” remote work “can’t be so exceptional anymore,” said Helena Rodrigues, vice president and chief human-resources officer at the University of Arizona. There is greater competition from private industry on benefits packages, she said. “It has to be part of our norm, for sure.”

Arizona had flexible-work agreements for employees before Covid-19, said Chanté C. Martin, an assistant vice president for human resources at the university. But after more than a year of working remotely, more campus staff members may recognize benefits to working at home, and she said she expects more employees to consider it. It will be up to supervisors to decide what work arrangements make sense for their employees.

A one-size-fits-all approach wouldn’t make sense, Rodrigues said. While some campus jobs — think student-facing positions, for example — require an in-person component, other teams may have different needs or cultures, which may tilt the scales toward on-campus or remote work.

But the case-by-case basis of those decisions raises questions about unfairness, Martin said. Consultants from Arizona’s human-resources division will discuss remote-work decisions with supervisors across the campus, she said. In a meeting this week, she added, supervisors will talk about remote work and scenarios they might face.

At Duke, it will be impossible to adopt a single approach, said Kyle Cavanaugh, vice president for administration. “We are a collection of dozens if not hundreds of different cultures,” he said. “What works for one of our schools may not be applicable to another.”

Having part of the work force continue remotely could cut costs for an institution. If parking needs are projected to flatten or decrease, Duke may not need to build an expensive garage, Cavanaugh said. At Arizona, Rodrigues said, the university has decided to let real-estate leases lapse because fewer on-site employees need offices. When they do come to campus, she said, they can work in common spaces.

‘Old-School Thinking’

As they consider what campus work will look like in the future, colleges will have to wrestle with questions of equity. Are those who are allowed to hold remote jobs more likely to be white? Who has the space and technology to work effectively from home? Can expanding where people are permitted to work broaden access to employment opportunities?

At a town hall on April 14, leaders of the University of California at Los Angeles discussed the possibility of filling some remote jobs with people who live out of state or even in another country. That could expand recruitment, said Lubbe Levin, associate vice chancellor for human resources, noting the high housing prices in Los Angeles. (Levin, co-chair of the Re-Inventing UCLA Workplace of the Future Working Group, was unavailable for an interview, a spokesman told The Chronicle.)

Such practices raise questions about taxes and employment law, and human-resources officials should be prepared to work through those issues, Allison Vaillancourt, a vice president and senior consultant at Segal, previously told The Chronicle. Employee-leave laws, for example, vary by state. There’s also the question of whether staff members should be paid at the market rate of their campus or where they live. (The UCLA spokesman said that the university was committed to complying with all income-tax withholding and reporting requirements, and that employees must update their addresses if they leave the state.)

Boston University released a survey this week that asked staff and some faculty members about how productive they have felt working remotely and how well communication has been conducted during the pandemic. A committee aims to set new policies on remote work and flexible schedules.

“Even prior to the pandemic, more and more candidates for jobs were asking in interviews, ‘Do you have a flexible work policy?’” said Natalie McKnight, dean of the college of general studies and a co-chair of the committee leading that review. Expecting people to sit in traffic for two hours each day, just to come to an office and check email on a computer, she added, is “very old-school thinking.”

Such discussions have forced colleges to ask questions about their culture and the extent to which in-person operations are crucial to it. Colleges also make decisions slowly and deliberatively. They’re not technology companies, several of which this spring have outlined plans for long-term remote-work options.

Georgetown University’s senior leaders told the staff that this coming academic year would be “transitional,” with employees expected to work within commuting distance of their office. But after the 2021-22 academic year, human resources will add “mode of work” to job descriptions, “based on what we learn about the most effective ways to conduct our work,” the university’s administrators wrote last week.

Some departments may offer their own flexibility. Think of the registrar’s office. Graduate students at Lewis & Clark College — some of whom work day jobs — may prefer to meet with a registrar or adviser virtually and in the evening, said Scott Fletcher, dean of the Oregon college’s graduate school of education and counseling and chair of a task force on post-Covid work.

Perhaps, then, one out of three people in that office could work remotely and in alternative hours, he said. “From the outside that office will look the same.”

No matter what form work will take in the future, employees’ expectations must be evaluated alongside the institution’s identity and students’ desires, said Lisa Brommer, associate vice president for human resources at Wesleyan University, in Connecticut. “We’re first and foremost a residential campus.”

“That’s always the tension, for every employer on the planet — the needs of the institution and the needs, desires, and expectations of the employees,” she said. “That’s not new just because of the pandemic; that’s always there. This conversation about remote work has really been elevated for employers because of the pandemic.”

Dear Commons Community,

A new analysis from the Rockefeller Institute of Government provides an assessment of the higher education-related policies, proposals, and appointments that occurred in the first 100 days of the Biden administration and offers a perspective on those that might yet come.

The COVID-19 pandemic placed considerable financial strain on colleges and universities. While the dire predictions about widespread college closures have not come true, the pandemic is an inflection point for higher education. As vaccination rates climb and the nation begins to move forward, federal higher education policy will play a critical role in determining the future of colleges and universities.

The analysis by Rockefeller Institute Nathan Fellow Rebecca Natow examines the actions taken by President Biden to advance a realigned policy agenda for higher education, including executive orders, presidential appointments to federal agencies, directives to the US Department of Education, requests in the annual budget, and legislative proposals, including the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act passed in March and two proposed infrastructure spending plans.

“This thorough review of the president’s higher education moves in his first 100 days is essential reading for those who are interested in understanding the higher education agenda being established by the Biden administration,” said Laura Schultz, executive director of research at the Rockefeller Institute. “The actions taken suggest the administration is prioritizing more funding for colleges and universities, especially for community colleges, strengthening Title IX and immigration policies, and focusing on making higher education more affordable.”

The president’s day one executive orders included the revocation of President Trump’s executive order banning certain kinds of diversity training for federal contractors. Other executive orders include recognizing gender identity and sexual orientation as protected classes under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and a mandate to “preserve and fortify” the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program which provides protection from deportation to undocumented young people who came to the US as children, many of whom enroll in colleges and universities.

The analysis provides an overview of the legislative proposals put forth by President Biden. The proposed $1.8 trillion American Families Plan includes more than $290 billion for higher education, including $109 billion to cover tuition for students attending community college, and $80 billion to increase the maximum need-based Pell Grant award from $6,495 to $7,895. The $2 trillion American Jobs Plan would also make significant investments in technology, infrastructure, research and development, and workforce training.

Readers interested in higher education policy will find this report illuminating.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The editorial board for the conservative Wall Street Journal took aim at the GOP Tuesday for its infighting over the 2020 election and criticized the party’s effort to oust Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) for “daring to tell the truth” about it.

Republicans have been trying to remove Cheney, the third-ranking Republican in the House, from her leadership position because she refutes former President Donald Trump’s lie that the election was rigged. She was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for inciting the violent Jan. 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol.

Her refusal to get in line has rankled Trump and other Republicans. On Wednesday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was caught on a hot mic complaining that “I’ve had it with her” and saying that “someone just has to bring a motion, but I assume that will probably take place.”

“But Mr. McCarthy knows Ms. Cheney is right,” the Journal’s editorial said. “The election wasn’t stolen, yet Mr. Trump wants an endorsement of his stolen claim to be a litmus test for every Republican candidate.”

“She may be ousted because she is daring to tell the truth to GOP voters,” the editorial added, “and at personal political risk.”

The Journal’s editorial board said that purging Cheney for her honesty would diminish the party and called on Republicans to find a way to speak the truth to voters in the 2022 midterm elections.

“Republicans will look foolish, or worse, to swing voters if they refight 2020 in 2022,” it said.

It is heartening that the Wall Street Journal, which generally supports conservative Republican Party positions, is taking this stance.

Tony

Richard Cordray

Dear Commons Community

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona on Monday named Richard A. Cordray, a former attorney general of Ohio and the first head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to lead the Office of Federal Student Aid. The announcement is a win for Democrats pushing for student-loan forgiveness and stronger oversight of for-profit colleges.

Cordray is expected to play a key role in several major policy decisions, including how the administration will forgive student loans, and by how much. President Biden has said that he will not consider forgiving more than $10,000 in student loans for each borrower, and that he prefers it be done by congressional action. However, Cordray is seen as a strong ally of Sen. Elizabeth A. Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, who is pushing the administration to use its executive authority to forgive $50,000 in loans per borrower.

Cordray “was a fearless and effective leader at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where he held big banks accountable and forced financial institutions to return $12 billion directly to the people they cheated,” Warren said in a news release. “I’m very glad he will get to apply his fearlessness and expertise to protecting student-loan borrowers and bringing much needed accountability to the federal student-loan program.”

Cordray is also an outspoken critic of for-profit colleges, and his appointment is the latest sign that the administration will push strong accountability measures for those institutions.

“It is critical that students and student-loan borrowers can depend on the Department of Education for help paying for college, support in repaying loans, and strong oversight of postsecondary institutions,” the education secretary, Miguel A. Cardona, said in a news release.

The New York Times had an article of Cordray’s appointment in yesterday’s edition.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Michelle Goldberg has a column this morning entitled, Why the Right Loves Public School Culture Wars, takes on the latest Republican attacks on Democrats for “subverting American history and indoctrinating children to forms of Marxism.”  A major reason for these attacks is because “it [the right] can’t whip up much opposition to Joe Biden’s agenda.”  Biden’s spending plans are much more ambitious than Barack Obama’s were, but there’s been no new version of the Tea Party. Voters view this president as more moderate than Obama. Republicans have groused about how hard Biden is to demonize. They need a more frightening, enraging villain to keep their people engaged.  Enter critical race theory and culture wars.

Ms. Goldberg’s entire column is below.  It is an excellent analysis of the right’s fixation with culture wars, much of it fueled by the likes of Fox News.

Tony

———————————–

The New York Times

Why the Right Loves Public School Culture Wars

Michelle Goldberg

May 4, 2021

There is a quote from Ralph Reed that I often return to when trying to understand how the right builds political power. “I would rather have a thousand school board members than one president and no school board members,” the former leader of the Christian Coalition said in 1996. School board elections are a great training ground for national activism. They can pull parents, particularly mothers, into politics around intensely emotional issues, building a thriving grass roots and keeping it mobilized.

You could easily write a history of the modern right that’s about nothing but schools. The battles were initially about race, particularly segregation and busing. Out of those fights came the Christian right, born in reaction to the revocation of tax exemptions for segregated Christian schools. As the Christian right grew, political struggles over control of schools became more explicitly religious. There were campaigns against allowing gay people to work in schools and against teaching sex education and evolution.

Now the Christian right has more or less collapsed as anything but an identity category. There are still lots of religious fundamentalists, but not, post-Donald Trump, a movement confidently asserting itself as the repository of wholesome family values. Instead, with the drive to eradicate the teaching of “critical race theory,” race has moved back to the center of the public-school culture wars.

I put critical race theory in quotes because the right has transformed a term that originally referred to an academic school of thought into a catchall for resentments over diversity initiatives and changing history curriculums. Since I first wrote about anti-critical race theory activism in February, it’s become hard to keep up with the flurry of state bills aimed at banning the teaching of what are often called “divisive concepts,” including the idea, as a Rhode Island bill puts it, that “the United States of America is fundamentally racist or sexist.” “We will reject Critical Race Theory in our schools and public institutions, and we will CANCEL Cancel Culture wherever it arises!” the irony-challenged Mike Pence tweeted last week.

As The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel pointed out, Glenn Youngkin, a candidate in Virginia’s Republican primary, recently released four anti-critical race theory videos in 24 hours.

Part of the reason the right is putting so much energy into this crusade is because it can’t whip up much opposition to the bulk of Joe Biden’s agenda. Biden’s spending plans are much more ambitious than Barack Obama’s were, but there’s been no new version of the Tea Party. Voters view this president as more moderate than Obama, a misconception that critical race theory scholars would have no trouble explaining. Republicans have groused about how hard Biden is to demonize. They need a more frightening, enraging villain to keep their people engaged.

Critical race theory — presented as an attack on history, a program to indoctrinate children and a stealth form of Marxism — fits the bill. The recent elections in Southlake, Texas, show how politically potent the backlash to critical race theory can be.

In 2018, the affluent Texas suburb was in the news for a viral video of a group of laughing white students shouting the N-word. Black residents told reporters about instances of unambiguous racism, like a sixth grader joking to a Black student, “How do you get a Black out of a tree? You cut the rope.” The video, reported NBC, “seemed to trigger genuine soul-searching by school leaders,” and they created a diversity council of parents, teachers and students to come up with a plan to make their school more inclusive. The council, in turn, created a document called the Cultural Competence Action Plan.

The reaction from conservative parents was furious. A PAC formed to fight the plan. At a contentious school board meeting, The Dallas Morning News reported, a Black student on the diversity council “was booed after testifying: ‘My life matters.’” Two school board members who supported the plan were indicted on charges they violated Texas’ Open Meetings Act, merely because they texted about the plan before a board meeting. The conservative radio host Dana Loesch, who lives in Southlake, appeared on Tucker Carlson to denounce “very far-left Marxist activists” trying to “implement critical race theory education.”

This weekend, in a Southlake election that drew three times the ordinary number of voters, opponents of the Cultural Competence Action Plan dominated, winning two school board seats, two City Council seats and the mayor’s office by about 40 points in each race. Their victories will likely serve as an example to conservative organizers nationwide. The Federalist, a right-wing website, heralded the election as the early stage of a new “cultural Tea Party” marshaled against “critical race theory” instead of government spending.

The Christian Coalition took off during Bill Clinton’s presidency, when the religious right engaged locally because it felt shut out of national power. Clearly some conservatives think that opposition to critical race theory could be the seed of something similar. Telling parents that liberals want to make their kids hate their country and feel guilty for being white might be absurd and cynical. It also looks like it might be effective.

Liz Cheney

Dear Commons Community,

Representative  Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-ranking House Republican, said yesterday that anyone claiming the 2020 presidential election was stolen is “poisoning our democratic system.”

“The 2020 presidential election was not stolen,” Cheney, chair of the House Republican Conference, said in a tweet. “Anyone who claims it is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.”

A Cheney spokesman told NBC News that the congresswoman was responding to Doanld Trump’s statement from earlier in the morning, in which he said: “The Fraudulent Presidential Election of 2020 will be, from this day forth, known as THE BIG LIE!”

Cheney has refused to back down from her criticisms of Trump, despite growing pressure from other Republicans. She was the highest-ranking Republican to vote to impeach Trump for his role in egging on the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and has been at odds with other members of House GOP leadership over embracing Trump and entertaining his election claims since then. She has repeatedly and forcefully rejected Trump’s stolen election lie.

Use of “the big lie” to describe Trump’s false narrative of a stolen election — a reference to a Nazi propaganda strategy — was popularized earlier this year. Soon after a pro-Trump mob attacked the Capitol in an attempt to block Congress from affirming President Joe Biden’s victory, the then-president-elect accused Trump, along with Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who both led objections to certified state vote totals, of perpetuating “the big lie.”

During Trump’s second Senate impeachment trial, which began after the Democratic-controlled House charged him with a single count of incitement of insurrection, Democratic impeachment managers referred to “the big lie” repeatedly to describe Trump’s persistent election untruths.

“The big lie” refers to an idea perpetuated by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, who said if one repeats a significant lie enough, people will start to believe it.

Trump’s attempted commandeering of the phrase to fit his narrative on Monday, similar to his rebranding of “fake news” in the aftermath of the 2016 election, has been echoed by some conservatives. For example, Hawley has referred to “Biden’s big lie about election integrity.”

While Cheney has emerged as Trump’s most powerful House Republican critic, an attempt in February by Trump allies to strip her of her leadership post failed overwhelmingly, 145 to 61.

The lopsided vote came by secret ballot, indicating broad private support for Cheney inside the conference, even though many have been wary of speaking out publicly for fear of igniting the ex-president’s wrath.

Cheney’s position has her at odds with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who has tried to keep his conference aligned with the former president. After initially assigning Trump blame for the riot — though he voted hours after the attack to block the counting of some electoral votes for Biden — McCarthy has worked to get back into the former president’s good graces, including visiting Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

During a House GOP retreat last week, which was organized by Cheney, McCarthy refused to say whether she should remain a part of the House Republican leadership team.

“That’s a question for the conference,” McCarthy told reporters at the Orlando retreat, adding, “I think from a perspective, if you’re sitting here at a retreat that’s focused on policy and focused on the future of making American next century, and you’re talking about something else, you’re not being productive.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., chair of the Republican Study Committee, the largest House conservative caucus, told Axios on Friday that Cheney’s continued criticism of Trump is “an unwelcome distraction.”

Cheney is standing up to a disease in the GOP.  Trump and his supporters are poison to our country.  The sooner the Republican leadership understands that, the better off it and rest of us will be.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Brandon Hogan, director of undergraduate studies and Jacoby Adeshei Carter, chairman of the philosophy department at Howard University, have a guest essay in today’s New York Times explaining the university’s decision to close the Classics Department.  Entitled,  There’s No Classics ‘Catastrophe’ at Howard University, Hogan and Carter comment that “the decision to eliminate the department was the result of an intensive effort to determine how to best allocate the university’s limited resources. Departments were assessed based on student interest, cost and benefit, and overall fit with the university’s mission. No one wanted to eliminate any programs, and none of us cheer the loss of the department, but this change was necessary.”  They further comment that unlike the Ivy League colleges with large endowments, Howard and other HBCUs have limited resources and need to be fiscally careful in how they use them.

The entire essay is below.

Howard University’s decision  to close an academic department is playing itself out throughout much of American higher education as colleges and universities struggle for fiscal resources especially now during the pandemic.

Tony

——————————————————————————–

The New York Times

There’s No Classics ‘Catastrophe’ at Howard University

Brandon Hogan and Jacoby Adeshei Carter

May 3, 2021

Cornel West and his co-author made a common mistake when they wrote a recent essay in The Washington Post chastising Howard University for eliminating its classics department. Reducing the decision to a “spiritual catastrophe,” they overlooked a deeper and more urgent problem: the financial constraints facing historically Black colleges and universities, and the inequality that underlies them.

Our approach to this issue is based in our perspective as philosophy professors at Howard who have reverence for the classics. Our department offers seminars on Plato and Aristotle alongside mandatory courses on the history of Africana philosophy. Classical texts have left an indelible mark on modern philosophy and there’s no question that, in an ideal world, Howard would have a large, thriving classics department.

But departments aren’t free.

The decision to eliminate the department was the result of an intensive effort to determine how to best allocate the university’s limited resources. Departments were assessed based on student interest, cost and benefit, and overall fit with the university’s mission. No one wanted to eliminate any programs, and none of us cheer the loss of the department, but this change was necessary. Anthony K. Wutoh, the university’s provost and chief academic officer, has explained why that is, but we’d like to offer additional insight.

Pronouncements from the ivory towers of predominantly white institutions about what Black colleges should do may score political points and draw public attention. But only those of us who research and teach at historically Black colleges and universities, known as H.B.C.U.s — unlike Dr. West, who has primarily worked at institutions with huge endowments — have the kind of understanding that comes from experience.

To put things in perspective: Harvard’s endowment is $42 billion, Yale’s is $31 billion, and Princeton’s is $27 billion. Howard’s is only $712 million. There are reasons for this discrepancy. Almost all Ivy League institutions were founded before the Revolutionary War, while H.B.C.U.s did not get into full swing until well after the Civil War.

These institutions were established to educate Black Americans, most of whom, before 1865, could not so much as dream of receiving any formal education. America’s oldest universities were able to begin to build wealth much earlier than that. And as the historian Craig Steven Wilder has documented, many of America’s most storied predominantly white institutions directly or indirectly profited from slave labor.

Unsurprisingly, public and private H.B.C.U.s remain underfunded relative to their predominantly white counterparts. Just this year, Maryland reached a settlement agreement in a federal lawsuit that accused the state of discriminating against and underfunding its four H.B.C.U.s.

Fortunately, Howard is doing relatively well for an H.B.C.U., but not so well that it doesn’t have to make hard decisions. While the university did eliminate the classics department, it did not gut the humanities. Howard recently designated philosophy, English and history as “core investment” departments that “constitute the foundation of every great university.” The university recognizes the value of humanistic inquiry.

Let’s be clear: Howard students are reading Parmenides, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau along with Angela Davis, Charles Mills and Frantz Fanon. Students will continue to read Shakespeare and Walt Whitman alongside Toni Morrison and James Baldwin. In short, Howard students read the texts required at predominantly white institutions plus the Black stuff.

There is no spiritual catastrophe unfolding on Howard’s campus. Quite to the contrary, our campus, students and faculty are in the midst of a Renaissance replete with all the accompanying spiritual and intellectual affirmations. The administration decided to eliminate the classics department, but it also started majors in interdisciplinary humanities (which incorporates classical studies courses), bioethics, international affairs, and environmental studies.

While the top predominantly white institutions rarely need to consider eliminating departments, the top H.B.C.U.s struggle to do everything that they wish to do for their students. That is the real spiritual catastrophe.