Six Months Later, Questions of Justice Haunt the Jelani Day Case →

February 24, 2022 in Commentary

When she heard about the body in the river, Dr. Diane Jeanne Blakeney-Billings knew in her gut it was Jelani Day.

She wanted to be wrong. How could her former student—the brilliant, kind leader, the one who helped quieter students find their voice—suddenly be dead? Day was only 25 years old, one week into classes as a speech pathology graduate student at Illinois State University. Blakeney-Billings had written his recommendation letter for entry into the program.

Dr. Charles H.F. Davis III regularly writes about and provides expert commentary on various racial and educational justice issues. His work has been published by or featured in the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Minneapolis Star, The Chronicle, Inside Higher Ed, Diverse Issues in Higher Education, and other media outlets.

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Dec 2, 2021

Racialized Policymaking in Higher Education

Dec 2, 2021

Current popular policymaking theories, however, are inadequate to understand this phenomenon, as they under-theorize the role of racialized power in policymaking – e.g., the racialized network of policy elites and their core beliefs. In this chapter, we endeavored to bring together existing theory, research, and contemporary policymaking examples to offer a framework of racialized policymaking that explicitly describes the lack of progress for racial equity in higher education.

Dec 2, 2021

Mar 25, 2021

Hope, Resistance, and Transforming Higher Education

Mar 25, 2021

Ty’Ron Douglas and colleagues’ recent book Campus Uprisings broadly considers the practical possibilities for creating inclusive campus cultures amid the persistent and troubling racial realities on college and university campuses in the United States. As the editors of this volume suggest in the introduction, racist incidents have garnered increasing attention in national and local news.

Mar 25, 2021

Mar 16, 2021

Racial Justice Demands Broad Student Debt Cancelation

Mar 16, 2021

Today, more than 44 million Americans owe more than $1.7 trillion in student loan debt—the largest source of debt next to home mortgages nationally. Contrary to President Biden’s recent statements in response to a town hall question about his plans for student debt relief, this burden is not exclusively attributable to privileged graduates of America’s wealthiest colleges.

Mar 16, 2021

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Nov 7, 2023

The Israel-Hamas War Is Escalating. Colleges Are Caught in the Middle.

Nov 7, 2023

To Davis, the statements from faculty and administrators supporting Israel or condemning pro-Palestinian protests have helped to create a “volatile” and “polarizing” campus climate. Many of the statements have a “complete and utter disregard” for how Palestinian people have been treated for the past 75 years, Davis said. This can be especially problematic for colleges with large populations of Palestinian and other Arab students, he said.

Nov 7, 2023

Oct 20, 2023

What’s Different About Student Activism Over the Israel-Hamas War

Oct 20, 2023

A wave of student activism has spread across the country this month following the onset of the Israel-Hamas war. And more activity is likely in the coming days, with the national Students for Justice in Palestine group issuing a second call to action for its campus chapters this week.

The demonstrations and the reactions to them stand out in the long history of campus protests, experts say. Students are more skeptical, more influential, and simultaneously more vulnerable than ever.

Oct 20, 2023

May 25, 2023

Why Didn't Colleges Rein In Their Police

May 25, 2023

Three years after George Floyd’s murder, campus safety hasn’t changed much. George Washington University’s police department will begin arming some officers this fall for the first time. Portland State University quietly moved away from a 2021 policy change that had restricted its officers’ ability to patrol with weapons. Dr. Davis said the backpedaling on reform efforts “communicates a lack of political commitment” to the racial-justice priorities colleges identified in 2020. Davis served on the aforementioned Michigan task force.

May 25, 2023