One of the things that reporters have to do is rebuild that trust with the institutions and with the sector. I really wanted to dig in and do some of that interrogation to understand the root and how we got to this point of broad inequity in the higher education system.ĪCW: What are some of the challenges higher ed reporters might encounter reporting and writing about HBCUs?ĪH: For so long, the only time people went to talk to people from HBCUs, whether that be the president, students, alumni, the board, etcetera was when there were crises and so that inherently made people kind of distrust the media. The other institution, The University of Alabama – Huntsville, was about 10 percent black. The city of Huntsville is about 30 percent black. I went to Alabama A&M University and there was a college, literally ten minutes down the road, that had a larger endowment and many fewer black students.
Photo credit: Tim CoburnĪCW: Did your personal experience with HBCUs also inspire you?ĪH: I’ve been covering HBCUs for a while and having gone to an HBCU myself I had firsthand experience with some of the inequity. I started to think about what it would look like at a grander scale to do an interrogation of the state of higher education in America. There were still six states that hadn’t proven to the federal government that they desegregated their higher education systems, and some of the states that had, including Mississippi, had very clear issues with equity in their higher ed systems. It was one of the longest-running civil rights cases in American history and sought to figure out what it means to desegregate higher education.Īfter I finished that piece, there were a couple of things still there. This interview has been edited and condensed.ĪCW: What inspired you to write this book?ĪH: In 2018, I’d written a story for The Chronicle (of Higher Education) that looked at the legacy of underfunding at HBCUs in Mississippi. Walker speaks with Harris about his book, his thoughts on current higher education coverage, and what education journalists can do to improve their coverage of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
Adam Harris, a staff writer at the Atlantic, examines the history of discrimination against Black students and the higher education institutions that enroll them in his new book, “The State Must Provide: Why America’s Colleges Have Always Been Unequal – and How to Set Them Right.”
0 kommentar(er)
