Leadership

Harvard Names Dr. Claudine Gay to Presidency →

December 16, 2022 in Commentary

Dr. Claudine Gay is making history.

Gay, dean of Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, will succeed current Harvard President Dr. Lawrence S. Bacow on July 1, 2023. Gay’s appointment marks the first time a person of color will lead the nation’s oldest and one of its most prominent postsecondary institutions.

Deion Sanders Leaves Jackson State for Colorado →

December 05, 2022 in Commentary

Former NFL star and renowned coach Deion “Prime Time” Sanders is leaving his position as head football coach of Jackson State University in Mississippi and is heading to The University of Colorado Boulder (CU). Online, reactions to Sanders's announcement have varied. Some fans were hurt that Sanders is leaving the Historically Black College and University (HBCU) at its peak.

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

In the News

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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