The art department of Texas Southern University, my alma mater, has been one of the institution's centers of excellence. Over the years under the leadership of Dr. John Biggers, a world renown painter, students and faculty painted a series of African American history themed murals in Hannah Hall, the administration building. For almost a half century the murals were a source of pride and inspiration for those of us who love the University and appreciate the positive role it played in our growth and development. That pride was severely compromised recently when the current president,John Rudley,had the murals painted over because he found the titles of the murals embarrassing. Apparently he did not consult any of the interested constituencies, not students, not faculty, not alumni, before ordering workers to paint over the murals.
This episode is simply the latest evidence that of all the problems that bedevil HBCUs, leadership selection and ascension are primary. How could someone with such limited imagination and seemingly unlimited ignorance be appointed president of any university? What criteria do trustees and governing bodies use in the selection of HBCU presidents? And above all, who actually makes the decision?
Check out the story below from the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, September 30, 3010.
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Controversy at Texas Southern University Over the Destruction of Two Murals
John Rudley, president of historically black Texas Southern University in Houston, ordered workers to paint over two murals that had been created over 40 years ago in the Hannah Hall administration building. The murals were painted in 1970 and 1971 by Harvey Johnson, who was a student at Texas Southern at the time and subsequently taught at the university for 34 years before his retirement in 2007. Johnson was devastated when he heard the news that his murals had been destroyed.
One mural was called “Dere’s a Han’ Writin on de Wall.” President Rudley reportedly objected to poor spelling. He told the Houston Chronicle, “When I bring dignitaries to campus, I can’t have them seeing that kind of thing. All art isn’t good art.”
After student and faculty protests, President Rudley announced that he was earmarking $50,000 to hire a conservator who will review the remaining murals and will develop a plan for their restoration, preservation, and conservation.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
TEXAS SCHOOL BOARD AND AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM
Last week the Texas School Board revised its State Social Science Curriculum to reflect the idea of American exceptionalism, i.e., the notion that the American people and the culture and institutions they have created are superior to those other countries and cultures. The idea of American exceptionalism, of course, is not new to American political discourse. For a long time, Americans have been socialized to believe that they are exceptional, a breed apart from the rest of the world. However, thanks to the Texas Board, this notion has now moved from popular folklore and become an element of public policy. Texas teachers will be required to teach it and publishers will be required to include it in text books. Given this new reality perhaps it is time to pause and ask what is so exceptional about America, its history, culture and political system.
What is exceptional about the history of the United States? Does its history of genocide of the Native American population and the centuries of enslavement of African people make it exceptional? How exceptional was the slaughtering of the indigenous population, the trail of tears, and the creation of concentration camps euphemistically called reservation? How exceptional was the use of slave labor to build the infrastructure of the country? And when the enslaved people won their freedom, how exceptional was it to release them without property to sustain themselves or political power for their protection?
Moreover during the era of enslavement, the virulent ideologies of white supremacy and Black inferiority were concocted to justify what was and continues to be one of the most sordid chapters in human history. These ideologies remain major currents in American culture and confound efforts to use government as a tool for creating a more just and egalitarian society. How exceptional is that?
And speaking of government, the American political system was never the exceptional democratic institution the Texas State Board imagines it to be. The Constitution of 1789 actually created a system of government designed to serve the interests of the propertied classes while minimizing the prospects for majority rule. Of the four political structures created by the Constitution--the presidency, the Senate, the Supreme Court and the House of Representatives-- only members of the House were to be chosen by popular vote, and even that vote was constrained by property qualifications established by most of the states. Senators were to be elected by state legislatures and the president was to be chosen by electors selected by rules established by state legislatures. Supreme Court judges were to be appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate (but not the House). Moreover, members of the House were to be elected every two years while senators served six year staggered terms. These arrangements made the House of Representatives, the people’s chamber, a junior partner to the other three political institutions. And even though the president and senators are now chosen by popular vote, the non-democratic character of the system prescribed by the Constitution still endures because senators who represent only a small fraction of American voters can easily stifle the majority.
This is so because of the way senate seats are apportioned and the rules established by the Senate itself. Each state without regard to population size has two senators. This means that the 544,270 people of Wyoming have the same weight as the 36,892,663 Californians. For ordinary matters, a simple majority of the 100 senators is necessary to pass legislation. Thus 52 senators from the smallest 26 states with a combined 17.7 per cent of the population can impose their will on the Senate and the country. Under other circumstances, senators can filibuster to prevent senate action with sixty votes being necessary to end a filibuster. In such instances, 42 senators from the smallest 21 states with 11.4 per cent of the population can prevent the senate from acting.
Given the nature of American politics, powerful interests can and often do have their way by cultivating influence with senators representing only a small fraction of the American population. Recently we saw this at work in the struggles for reform of the health care and financial systems. For example, the House of Representatives, consistent with public opinion, passed a public option health care provision but it was quickly buried in the Senate. How exceptional is that?
Finally, the claim of American exceptionalism is rendered suspect by a host of unexceptional currents in the American political culture. How exceptional is it, for example, when “spinning” becomes a standard part of American political practice and discourse? In contemporary American politics, political actors routinely appear in the media to spin, i.e., give self-serving interpretations of events purposely designed to obscure rather than clarify matters in question. Spinning is an acceptable and accepted practice and the media dutifully reports it as such. How exceptional is that?
Only if we conceptualize exceptionalism as a continuum ranging from exceptionally commendable at one extreme and exceptionally deplorable at the other does it make sense to talk about American exceptionalism. We can then decide where America ranks along the continuum of exceptionalism. I will not attempt to pre-judge the answer to that question but I do know where I would rank the Texas State Board.
Last week the Texas School Board revised its State Social Science Curriculum to reflect the idea of American exceptionalism, i.e., the notion that the American people and the culture and institutions they have created are superior to those other countries and cultures. The idea of American exceptionalism, of course, is not new to American political discourse. For a long time, Americans have been socialized to believe that they are exceptional, a breed apart from the rest of the world. However, thanks to the Texas Board, this notion has now moved from popular folklore and become an element of public policy. Texas teachers will be required to teach it and publishers will be required to include it in text books. Given this new reality perhaps it is time to pause and ask what is so exceptional about America, its history, culture and political system.
What is exceptional about the history of the United States? Does its history of genocide of the Native American population and the centuries of enslavement of African people make it exceptional? How exceptional was the slaughtering of the indigenous population, the trail of tears, and the creation of concentration camps euphemistically called reservation? How exceptional was the use of slave labor to build the infrastructure of the country? And when the enslaved people won their freedom, how exceptional was it to release them without property to sustain themselves or political power for their protection?
Moreover during the era of enslavement, the virulent ideologies of white supremacy and Black inferiority were concocted to justify what was and continues to be one of the most sordid chapters in human history. These ideologies remain major currents in American culture and confound efforts to use government as a tool for creating a more just and egalitarian society. How exceptional is that?
And speaking of government, the American political system was never the exceptional democratic institution the Texas State Board imagines it to be. The Constitution of 1789 actually created a system of government designed to serve the interests of the propertied classes while minimizing the prospects for majority rule. Of the four political structures created by the Constitution--the presidency, the Senate, the Supreme Court and the House of Representatives-- only members of the House were to be chosen by popular vote, and even that vote was constrained by property qualifications established by most of the states. Senators were to be elected by state legislatures and the president was to be chosen by electors selected by rules established by state legislatures. Supreme Court judges were to be appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate (but not the House). Moreover, members of the House were to be elected every two years while senators served six year staggered terms. These arrangements made the House of Representatives, the people’s chamber, a junior partner to the other three political institutions. And even though the president and senators are now chosen by popular vote, the non-democratic character of the system prescribed by the Constitution still endures because senators who represent only a small fraction of American voters can easily stifle the majority.
This is so because of the way senate seats are apportioned and the rules established by the Senate itself. Each state without regard to population size has two senators. This means that the 544,270 people of Wyoming have the same weight as the 36,892,663 Californians. For ordinary matters, a simple majority of the 100 senators is necessary to pass legislation. Thus 52 senators from the smallest 26 states with a combined 17.7 per cent of the population can impose their will on the Senate and the country. Under other circumstances, senators can filibuster to prevent senate action with sixty votes being necessary to end a filibuster. In such instances, 42 senators from the smallest 21 states with 11.4 per cent of the population can prevent the senate from acting.
Given the nature of American politics, powerful interests can and often do have their way by cultivating influence with senators representing only a small fraction of the American population. Recently we saw this at work in the struggles for reform of the health care and financial systems. For example, the House of Representatives, consistent with public opinion, passed a public option health care provision but it was quickly buried in the Senate. How exceptional is that?
Finally, the claim of American exceptionalism is rendered suspect by a host of unexceptional currents in the American political culture. How exceptional is it, for example, when “spinning” becomes a standard part of American political practice and discourse? In contemporary American politics, political actors routinely appear in the media to spin, i.e., give self-serving interpretations of events purposely designed to obscure rather than clarify matters in question. Spinning is an acceptable and accepted practice and the media dutifully reports it as such. How exceptional is that?
Only if we conceptualize exceptionalism as a continuum ranging from exceptionally commendable at one extreme and exceptionally deplorable at the other does it make sense to talk about American exceptionalism. We can then decide where America ranks along the continuum of exceptionalism. I will not attempt to pre-judge the answer to that question but I do know where I would rank the Texas State Board.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Integrity of Southern University Presidential Search Challenged
In a previous post I suggested that leadership and leadership ascension were critical problems facing HBCU. I argued that governing authorities (boards of trustees, boards of supervisors, etc.) arbitrarily select presidents and other academic leaders without substantive input from other constituencies and stakeholders and without a thorough vetting of candidates. The recently concluded Southern University presidential search and selection process dramatizes the problem and validates my concerns. On April 30, 2010, following an extended search by the Southern University System Board of Supervisors (SUBUS) selected Dr. Ronald Mason, the sitting president of Jackson State University (JSU), as the new Southern University System president. However, days before the announcement was made, the search process and the already anticipated appointment of Mason were challenged by two prominent members of the University Presidential Search Committee and a SU faculty member.
Before examining the issues raised by the three challengers, a brief history of the search process might be helpful. The SUBUS launched the search in July 2009 when it appointed a 15 member search committee that included representation from each of the systems three campuses, the alumni federation, faculty senate, students and the Baton Rouge business community was formed. The search committee retained a presidential search firm to help it identify and recruit qualified candidates. In February 2010, the search firm presented the search committee with a list of thirteen finalists who were brought to the campus for preliminary interviews. Following the preliminary interview process an additional name, Dr. Ronald Mason, was added to the list. Shortly after the addition was made public, rumors began circulating that a deal had been struck and that Mason would in fact be the next SU president. Leaving nothing to chance, however, a group of Jackson State University alumni reportedly organized a pray-in to implore the supreme deity to make sure that Mason got the SU presidency so that JSU would be free of him. Other Jackson State, stakeholders including the Mississippi Black Legislative Caucus, the student body, and faculty Senate had all excoriated Mason for what they perceived to be his duplicity in first opposing and then supporting the governor’s plan to merge the state’s three black colleges. When the Supervisors announced on April 14th that Mason was one of three finalists, the alumni group celebrated the success of their pray-in.
At any rate, it is the question of the integrity of the search process that demands our attention. Professor Albert Samuels writing to the SUBUS a week before the official announcement was made argued that the “so-called head hunting firm” had presented the search committee with a sorry field of candidates several of whom, he alleged, had been rejected, fired or forced to resign by their previous employer. He argued further that some of the candidates had glaring disqualifying characteristics that could be uncovered by a simple Google search. Samuels cited two in particular; Dr. Carolyn Meyers who was leaving the presidency of Norfolk State amidst a scandal and Dr. Robert Jennings, who was let, go after a short and tumultuous tenure as president of Alabama A & M University. Samuels also strenuously opposed the by then widely anticipated appointment of Mason because of his duplicity in the campaign to merge the three Mississippi HBCU.
Samuel’s reservations were shared by Donald Wade, past president of the SU Alumni Federation and member of the search committee. In an open letter to Friends of Southern University dated April 26, Wade suggested that the search process had been a case of the tail wagging the dog with the search firm exercising too much control over the search process. Search committee members, he reported, had not been allowed to ask their own questions but rather the search firm had provided individual committee members with questions to be asked. Fundamental questions about the role of the president in university affairs or the land grant mission of the university, according to Wade, were never even discussed. He also noted that search committee members as a group were not allowed to participate in the final scoring and ranking of candidates. He asserted that “At no time was there a meeting of the whole and an OPEN tally of the points awarded by committee members to candidates conducted”.
Another member of the University Search Committee, Dr. Sudhir Trivedi, president of the SU Faculty Assembly, sent a letter to the supervisors complaining about undue secrecy of the process and noting that there were several important questions that he would have liked to have asked the candidates but that there was no opportunity to do so. For example he said “I would have liked to ask the question why the faculty senate at JSU expressed a vote of no confidence in Mason or if Haynes could tell us three things he accomplished with respect to academic standards and faculty matters during his tenure as Southern provost.” Trevedi echoed Wade’s complaint about the lack of transparency in the evaluation process. He also lamented the fact that the search firm discouraged committee members from asking the candidates tough questions.
None of the complaints mattered, however. The co-chair of the Search Committee, Murphy Bell, intimated that the complaints were suspect because they were raised at the last minute, apparently forgetting that Mason had been added to the list of candidates at next-to-the last minute.
So what do we make of all of this? It reaffirms our position that the selection and elevation of leadership at our colleges is a critical but critically flawed process. The governing authorities in conjunction with presidential search firms are accountable only to themselves. Those concerned with the future direction of HBCU must organize to, first of all, influence the selection of supervisors and trustees and develop structures and processes to hold them accountable.
Now is a good time to start.
Before examining the issues raised by the three challengers, a brief history of the search process might be helpful. The SUBUS launched the search in July 2009 when it appointed a 15 member search committee that included representation from each of the systems three campuses, the alumni federation, faculty senate, students and the Baton Rouge business community was formed. The search committee retained a presidential search firm to help it identify and recruit qualified candidates. In February 2010, the search firm presented the search committee with a list of thirteen finalists who were brought to the campus for preliminary interviews. Following the preliminary interview process an additional name, Dr. Ronald Mason, was added to the list. Shortly after the addition was made public, rumors began circulating that a deal had been struck and that Mason would in fact be the next SU president. Leaving nothing to chance, however, a group of Jackson State University alumni reportedly organized a pray-in to implore the supreme deity to make sure that Mason got the SU presidency so that JSU would be free of him. Other Jackson State, stakeholders including the Mississippi Black Legislative Caucus, the student body, and faculty Senate had all excoriated Mason for what they perceived to be his duplicity in first opposing and then supporting the governor’s plan to merge the state’s three black colleges. When the Supervisors announced on April 14th that Mason was one of three finalists, the alumni group celebrated the success of their pray-in.
At any rate, it is the question of the integrity of the search process that demands our attention. Professor Albert Samuels writing to the SUBUS a week before the official announcement was made argued that the “so-called head hunting firm” had presented the search committee with a sorry field of candidates several of whom, he alleged, had been rejected, fired or forced to resign by their previous employer. He argued further that some of the candidates had glaring disqualifying characteristics that could be uncovered by a simple Google search. Samuels cited two in particular; Dr. Carolyn Meyers who was leaving the presidency of Norfolk State amidst a scandal and Dr. Robert Jennings, who was let, go after a short and tumultuous tenure as president of Alabama A & M University. Samuels also strenuously opposed the by then widely anticipated appointment of Mason because of his duplicity in the campaign to merge the three Mississippi HBCU.
Samuel’s reservations were shared by Donald Wade, past president of the SU Alumni Federation and member of the search committee. In an open letter to Friends of Southern University dated April 26, Wade suggested that the search process had been a case of the tail wagging the dog with the search firm exercising too much control over the search process. Search committee members, he reported, had not been allowed to ask their own questions but rather the search firm had provided individual committee members with questions to be asked. Fundamental questions about the role of the president in university affairs or the land grant mission of the university, according to Wade, were never even discussed. He also noted that search committee members as a group were not allowed to participate in the final scoring and ranking of candidates. He asserted that “At no time was there a meeting of the whole and an OPEN tally of the points awarded by committee members to candidates conducted”.
Another member of the University Search Committee, Dr. Sudhir Trivedi, president of the SU Faculty Assembly, sent a letter to the supervisors complaining about undue secrecy of the process and noting that there were several important questions that he would have liked to have asked the candidates but that there was no opportunity to do so. For example he said “I would have liked to ask the question why the faculty senate at JSU expressed a vote of no confidence in Mason or if Haynes could tell us three things he accomplished with respect to academic standards and faculty matters during his tenure as Southern provost.” Trevedi echoed Wade’s complaint about the lack of transparency in the evaluation process. He also lamented the fact that the search firm discouraged committee members from asking the candidates tough questions.
None of the complaints mattered, however. The co-chair of the Search Committee, Murphy Bell, intimated that the complaints were suspect because they were raised at the last minute, apparently forgetting that Mason had been added to the list of candidates at next-to-the last minute.
So what do we make of all of this? It reaffirms our position that the selection and elevation of leadership at our colleges is a critical but critically flawed process. The governing authorities in conjunction with presidential search firms are accountable only to themselves. Those concerned with the future direction of HBCU must organize to, first of all, influence the selection of supervisors and trustees and develop structures and processes to hold them accountable.
Now is a good time to start.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
HBCU Clearing House and Quest for Relevance
Self-assessment and self-criticism are necessary steps for institutional growth and development. HBCUs need to create structures through which such assessment and criticism can be done. I suggest creating a clearing house that would serve as a source and repository for data that could be used to describe and evaluate HBCUs and make recommendations for improvement. The recommendations would be based on ideas generated by conferences and symposia sponsored by the clearing house. The clearing house would be designed by HBCU personnel and stakeholders and used by them for self-criticism and advancement. After due deliberations, those working under the aegis of the clearing house could develop hypothetical models of effective HBCUs and use the models as tools to describe and evaluate existing institutions.
The clearing house would hold regularly scheduled conferences where participants present papers on their research and conduct round tables on the state of HBCUs. Deliberations at the conferences would identify best practices, delineate ongoing and emerging problems facing the colleges and universities, and provide a forum for debating proposed solutions. The clearing house and the conferences, above all, would create a sense of community and confidence among HBCU faculty and staff and encourage them to take the lead in developing plans for continued growth and development. One key to such a plan would include recruitment of young African American Ph.D. and attracting a representative share of high achieving students.
How to attract and retain young African American professors is a critical issue. Given the fact that the more prestigious flagship American universities actively recruit among the relatively limited pool of African American Ph.D., HBCUs must develop a special strategy to attract its fair share. To do so, they must develop recruiting packages that include competitive salaries and working conditions featuring reduced teaching loads and greater research opportunities. I believe that there are bright committed young scholars who would be willing to consider careers at HBCUs and work on problems especially critical to Black life and culture if they could be assured of adequate funding and a supportive and rewarding intellectual environment. Rather than being part of a Black dream team at traditionally white universities, being part of a pioneering research center at, say, Howard, the Atlanta University Center, or the Southern University System may have special appeal to young race conscious scholars. A center focusing on the education of Black youth may be an ideal place to start.
I suggest this because the achievement gap between African American and other students continues to be a universally recognized problem. Fifty years after the Brown decision the gap remains in spite of reams of studies and scores of public policy initiatives. This is so in spite of the progress that Blacks have made in infiltrating the education bureaucracies at the local, state, and national levels. There are more than 1800 African American school board members and according to the Alliance of Black School Educators there are more than 250 African American School superintendents including 133 of them who head urban school districts. One in four African American students studies in districts with a Black superintendent. Thus, as a nation, African Americans are clearly in a position to impact the quality of education made available to our youth. We need only put a system in place for doing so and HBCUs are ideally situated to play a lead role in such an endeavor. An HBCU or a consortium of HBCUs could make transforming the education of Black youth a top priority. Working in tandem with political forces, the universities could establish a research center and policy institute dedicated to transforming the education of Black youth. That would be in keeping with the Du Boisian dual mission of the Black college and it could become the sorely needed beacon to show us the way to the next stage.
What we need are enlightened leadership and a commitment to transformation and relevance.
The clearing house would hold regularly scheduled conferences where participants present papers on their research and conduct round tables on the state of HBCUs. Deliberations at the conferences would identify best practices, delineate ongoing and emerging problems facing the colleges and universities, and provide a forum for debating proposed solutions. The clearing house and the conferences, above all, would create a sense of community and confidence among HBCU faculty and staff and encourage them to take the lead in developing plans for continued growth and development. One key to such a plan would include recruitment of young African American Ph.D. and attracting a representative share of high achieving students.
How to attract and retain young African American professors is a critical issue. Given the fact that the more prestigious flagship American universities actively recruit among the relatively limited pool of African American Ph.D., HBCUs must develop a special strategy to attract its fair share. To do so, they must develop recruiting packages that include competitive salaries and working conditions featuring reduced teaching loads and greater research opportunities. I believe that there are bright committed young scholars who would be willing to consider careers at HBCUs and work on problems especially critical to Black life and culture if they could be assured of adequate funding and a supportive and rewarding intellectual environment. Rather than being part of a Black dream team at traditionally white universities, being part of a pioneering research center at, say, Howard, the Atlanta University Center, or the Southern University System may have special appeal to young race conscious scholars. A center focusing on the education of Black youth may be an ideal place to start.
I suggest this because the achievement gap between African American and other students continues to be a universally recognized problem. Fifty years after the Brown decision the gap remains in spite of reams of studies and scores of public policy initiatives. This is so in spite of the progress that Blacks have made in infiltrating the education bureaucracies at the local, state, and national levels. There are more than 1800 African American school board members and according to the Alliance of Black School Educators there are more than 250 African American School superintendents including 133 of them who head urban school districts. One in four African American students studies in districts with a Black superintendent. Thus, as a nation, African Americans are clearly in a position to impact the quality of education made available to our youth. We need only put a system in place for doing so and HBCUs are ideally situated to play a lead role in such an endeavor. An HBCU or a consortium of HBCUs could make transforming the education of Black youth a top priority. Working in tandem with political forces, the universities could establish a research center and policy institute dedicated to transforming the education of Black youth. That would be in keeping with the Du Boisian dual mission of the Black college and it could become the sorely needed beacon to show us the way to the next stage.
What we need are enlightened leadership and a commitment to transformation and relevance.
Friday, April 23, 2010
HBCUs and the Problem of Leadership Selection
Perhaps more so than any other time in their history, Black colleges need visionary leaders who understand and are committed to the dual role of HBCUs as institutions of higher education and as critical agents in the struggle for racial equality. Leaders with such an understanding would work to create an academic and intellectual environment conducive to the development of curriculums that would give students not only technical skills required to negotiate the job market and climb career ladders but also a critical understanding of the reality of power and racial domination, both domestically and internationally. The leadership selection process for most HBCUS does not elevate persons so inclined. Rather than selecting leaders who are immersed in the history and culture of Black education and the role of HBCUs as critical agencies in the struggle for racial equality trustees seem to move in the opposite direction. Candidates who have had only limited connections to Black higher education or those who may have had some connection but who believe that Black colleges should only aspire to be swarthy versions of idealized majority white institutions seem to be favored in presidential sweepstakes.
The fact that presidential candidates have no or only limited experience in Black higher education seems to enhance their qualifications to direct HBCUs. Frequently the new presidents come to the job with little respect for those already at the institutions and proceed to fill critical positions such as provost and vice president for academic affairs with persons who share their limited exposure to and understanding of the history and culture of the institutions over which they rule.
This results in presidents who pontificate about the special role of Black colleges in serving those who have been disadvantaged by the existing system without developing any particular plan or program or allocating significant resources to insure that Black colleges perform this special role.
Indeed some may argue that the governing boards themselves are part of the leadership problem. In some instances where state supported HBCUs have their own governing boards, as is the case with institutions such as Southern University, Alabama A & M, Texas Southern University and others, all too often board positions are political plums used by dominant political forces (usually white ones) to reward their supporters and pay off political debts. Accordingly, board membership may change in tandem with change in the governor’s mansion. This has resulted in boards populated by persons are who are ill equipped to offer the broad oversight and guidance expected of trustees. Rather then offering such oversight, board members come with narrow personal and political agenda and interpose themselves in the minutiae of university business. As one wag observed, under such circumstances everything becomes a matter of board policy, from hiring secretaries to allocating seats in the sky boxes at football games. It is said that at least one president lost his job because he resisted efforts of board members to involve themselves in scheduling football games.
The quality of leadership exercised by governing boards over HBCUs that are part of state-wide or regional systems is equally problematic. The criteria used to identify candidates for the presidency are not transparent but there are ample reasons to believe that criteria used in the selection of HBCU presidents are not the same as those used at other institutions in their respective systems. And once a president has been selected governing boards are much more indulgent of bizarre presidential performance and behavior than they might be at other state supported institutions. I am aware of numerous instances when faculty and other stakeholders have presented such boards with compelling evidence of indefensibly unacceptable presidential behavior only to be ignored by the board.
Thus the selection of HBCU presidents is a critically important function crying out for serious analysis and investigation. In my forty years of service to these institutions I have observed sufficient anecdotal evidence to suggest that it may be the primary problem to be confronted. For example, a few years ago a major land grant HBCU selected its new president from a list of three finalists all of whom had been let go by their most recent employer. After three tumultuous years, the new president was fired from his new job for cause. But as I write this (April 2010), this same often-fired individual has surfaced as one of three finalists in a search for a chancellor at another prestigious HBCU land grant institution.
It appears that university search committees increasingly rely on the assistance of a few executive search firms to identify candidates. Apparently a core group of candidates routinely apply for all openings and their names are recycled from search to search. University search committees make little or no effort to conduct their own vetting but are content to rely on data provided by the search firm and the candidates performance at the job interview session. As a consequence they are surprised when the performance their new president turns out to be substandard when even a cursory Google search would have forewarned them.
Returning to the issue of presidential performance and leadership, HBCU presidents are quick to take credit for admitting youngsters who otherwise might be denied access to college and turning them into competitive polished graduates. However, except for having virtual open admission policies, few systemic initiatives are undertaken at the level of top academic leadership to insure the desired outcome. No critical systematic assessment is made of the preparedness of the students and little is done to insure the appropriateness of the various curriculums for the student population being served. Departments and individual faculty members are left to devise ad hoc methods to try to produce competitive graduates. In this vacuum occasioned by inept academic leadership some faculty respond by simply reducing the rigor of their courses in order to accommodate the perceived academic deficiencies of their students while others teach at what they believe to be the appropriate level for college instruction and routinely fail as much as half of their students. The disproportionately high failure rate is then offered as a sign of their commitment to rigor and excellence.
To be sure there are many departments and scores of faculty members who have developed their own systems for helping students overcome their prior deficiencies and leaving as competitive graduates, but they do so in spite of rather than because of top level leadership at their institutions.
If HBCUs are to continue to admit students with demonstrated deficiencies, and I think they must, academic leadership at the top level in conjunction with the faculty should mandate the development of a plan and curriculums designed to address the problem. Given the myriad duties incumbent on presidents, giving the academic vice president or provost responsibility for insuring that such systems are developed and implemented would be a logical thing to do. There is no readily available evidence, however, that this has been done.
Moreover, the selection of chief academic officers is also a matter of concern. The leadership ascension process does not favor the elevation of persons who have been immersed in Black higher education and who are, therefore, in a position to lead efforts to enhance the quality of education made available to our students. Indeed the problems attendant to the selection of presidents may be even more acute at the level of the selection of chief academic officers.
The fact that presidential candidates have no or only limited experience in Black higher education seems to enhance their qualifications to direct HBCUs. Frequently the new presidents come to the job with little respect for those already at the institutions and proceed to fill critical positions such as provost and vice president for academic affairs with persons who share their limited exposure to and understanding of the history and culture of the institutions over which they rule.
This results in presidents who pontificate about the special role of Black colleges in serving those who have been disadvantaged by the existing system without developing any particular plan or program or allocating significant resources to insure that Black colleges perform this special role.
Indeed some may argue that the governing boards themselves are part of the leadership problem. In some instances where state supported HBCUs have their own governing boards, as is the case with institutions such as Southern University, Alabama A & M, Texas Southern University and others, all too often board positions are political plums used by dominant political forces (usually white ones) to reward their supporters and pay off political debts. Accordingly, board membership may change in tandem with change in the governor’s mansion. This has resulted in boards populated by persons are who are ill equipped to offer the broad oversight and guidance expected of trustees. Rather then offering such oversight, board members come with narrow personal and political agenda and interpose themselves in the minutiae of university business. As one wag observed, under such circumstances everything becomes a matter of board policy, from hiring secretaries to allocating seats in the sky boxes at football games. It is said that at least one president lost his job because he resisted efforts of board members to involve themselves in scheduling football games.
The quality of leadership exercised by governing boards over HBCUs that are part of state-wide or regional systems is equally problematic. The criteria used to identify candidates for the presidency are not transparent but there are ample reasons to believe that criteria used in the selection of HBCU presidents are not the same as those used at other institutions in their respective systems. And once a president has been selected governing boards are much more indulgent of bizarre presidential performance and behavior than they might be at other state supported institutions. I am aware of numerous instances when faculty and other stakeholders have presented such boards with compelling evidence of indefensibly unacceptable presidential behavior only to be ignored by the board.
Thus the selection of HBCU presidents is a critically important function crying out for serious analysis and investigation. In my forty years of service to these institutions I have observed sufficient anecdotal evidence to suggest that it may be the primary problem to be confronted. For example, a few years ago a major land grant HBCU selected its new president from a list of three finalists all of whom had been let go by their most recent employer. After three tumultuous years, the new president was fired from his new job for cause. But as I write this (April 2010), this same often-fired individual has surfaced as one of three finalists in a search for a chancellor at another prestigious HBCU land grant institution.
It appears that university search committees increasingly rely on the assistance of a few executive search firms to identify candidates. Apparently a core group of candidates routinely apply for all openings and their names are recycled from search to search. University search committees make little or no effort to conduct their own vetting but are content to rely on data provided by the search firm and the candidates performance at the job interview session. As a consequence they are surprised when the performance their new president turns out to be substandard when even a cursory Google search would have forewarned them.
Returning to the issue of presidential performance and leadership, HBCU presidents are quick to take credit for admitting youngsters who otherwise might be denied access to college and turning them into competitive polished graduates. However, except for having virtual open admission policies, few systemic initiatives are undertaken at the level of top academic leadership to insure the desired outcome. No critical systematic assessment is made of the preparedness of the students and little is done to insure the appropriateness of the various curriculums for the student population being served. Departments and individual faculty members are left to devise ad hoc methods to try to produce competitive graduates. In this vacuum occasioned by inept academic leadership some faculty respond by simply reducing the rigor of their courses in order to accommodate the perceived academic deficiencies of their students while others teach at what they believe to be the appropriate level for college instruction and routinely fail as much as half of their students. The disproportionately high failure rate is then offered as a sign of their commitment to rigor and excellence.
To be sure there are many departments and scores of faculty members who have developed their own systems for helping students overcome their prior deficiencies and leaving as competitive graduates, but they do so in spite of rather than because of top level leadership at their institutions.
If HBCUs are to continue to admit students with demonstrated deficiencies, and I think they must, academic leadership at the top level in conjunction with the faculty should mandate the development of a plan and curriculums designed to address the problem. Given the myriad duties incumbent on presidents, giving the academic vice president or provost responsibility for insuring that such systems are developed and implemented would be a logical thing to do. There is no readily available evidence, however, that this has been done.
Moreover, the selection of chief academic officers is also a matter of concern. The leadership ascension process does not favor the elevation of persons who have been immersed in Black higher education and who are, therefore, in a position to lead efforts to enhance the quality of education made available to our students. Indeed the problems attendant to the selection of presidents may be even more acute at the level of the selection of chief academic officers.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
THE BLACK COLLEGE IN THE 21st CENTURY
A NEED FOR RECLAMATION, TRANSFORMATION AND RELEVANCE
This is a call to arms, a call to arms for those who share my view that the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) have been and must continue to be viable instruments in the struggle for racial equality in America. It is a call for us to make a systematic assessment of the current state of HBCUs and devise plans to transform them into institutions to better serve our needs as we navigate the perils of the 21st century. In every historical moment, beginning with the decades immediately proceeding and following emancipation and continuing to the present, the Black colleges have been significant community and national resources. They have not only served to make formal education available to many who would not have had access to such services, they have also been important political, social, and economic agencies in the struggle for racial advancement. However, as we enter what some have called the post-civil rights era, the capacity, role, relevance, and indeed the survival of the Black college are being questioned. In recent years a number of privately funded HBCUs have closed and several others are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. The future of state supported HBCUs is also uncertain as calls for merging them with other colleges or eliminating them outright continue to gain traction. In the face of these realities, it is imperative that we launch a national effort to insure the survival of Black colleges as community and national resources and transform them into relevant institutions to meet the challenges of the 21st century. We need a plan to insure survival and relevance.
How do we develop such a plan? A plan, in my estimation, must begin with a thorough and systematic description of the current state of HBCUs on a range of theoretically significant variables. Among other things, the variables or categories would include finances and financial management; leadership selection and performance, including trustees, presidents and other key academic officers; quality and expanse of academic programs; quality and productivity of faculty; student population and performance, and community services. Along with the description, a plan would include a fulsome discussion and explication of the role of the Black college in light of the changed and changing nature and conditions of African Americans in American society. Finally, the plan would include a strategy for transforming the institutions from their current state into one of greater relevance. The development of such a plan would be a challenging but not insurmountable task. We have the necessary human resources and we can raise sufficient funds to make it happen.
We can begin by calling together professors and others who have shown or will express genuine interests in the growth and development of Black colleges. They would be asked to develop a research design for the descriptive study and identify and recruit researchers for its execution. The study would be comprehensive focusing on the state of affairs in the various disciplines as well as individual institutions. The group would also take the lead in organizing symposia and conferences dedicated to discussing the role of Black colleges in contemporary society. The end product of the research and symposia would be a comprehensive document that reflected the objectively collected empirical data and the serious reflections of interested parties on the state of the Black college, their vision of the desired future, and a strategy for getting there.
(The process of leadership selection and the quality of leadership will be critical elements in any descriptive study of the Black colleges. I will comment on them in my next posting.)
This is a call to arms, a call to arms for those who share my view that the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) have been and must continue to be viable instruments in the struggle for racial equality in America. It is a call for us to make a systematic assessment of the current state of HBCUs and devise plans to transform them into institutions to better serve our needs as we navigate the perils of the 21st century. In every historical moment, beginning with the decades immediately proceeding and following emancipation and continuing to the present, the Black colleges have been significant community and national resources. They have not only served to make formal education available to many who would not have had access to such services, they have also been important political, social, and economic agencies in the struggle for racial advancement. However, as we enter what some have called the post-civil rights era, the capacity, role, relevance, and indeed the survival of the Black college are being questioned. In recent years a number of privately funded HBCUs have closed and several others are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. The future of state supported HBCUs is also uncertain as calls for merging them with other colleges or eliminating them outright continue to gain traction. In the face of these realities, it is imperative that we launch a national effort to insure the survival of Black colleges as community and national resources and transform them into relevant institutions to meet the challenges of the 21st century. We need a plan to insure survival and relevance.
How do we develop such a plan? A plan, in my estimation, must begin with a thorough and systematic description of the current state of HBCUs on a range of theoretically significant variables. Among other things, the variables or categories would include finances and financial management; leadership selection and performance, including trustees, presidents and other key academic officers; quality and expanse of academic programs; quality and productivity of faculty; student population and performance, and community services. Along with the description, a plan would include a fulsome discussion and explication of the role of the Black college in light of the changed and changing nature and conditions of African Americans in American society. Finally, the plan would include a strategy for transforming the institutions from their current state into one of greater relevance. The development of such a plan would be a challenging but not insurmountable task. We have the necessary human resources and we can raise sufficient funds to make it happen.
We can begin by calling together professors and others who have shown or will express genuine interests in the growth and development of Black colleges. They would be asked to develop a research design for the descriptive study and identify and recruit researchers for its execution. The study would be comprehensive focusing on the state of affairs in the various disciplines as well as individual institutions. The group would also take the lead in organizing symposia and conferences dedicated to discussing the role of Black colleges in contemporary society. The end product of the research and symposia would be a comprehensive document that reflected the objectively collected empirical data and the serious reflections of interested parties on the state of the Black college, their vision of the desired future, and a strategy for getting there.
(The process of leadership selection and the quality of leadership will be critical elements in any descriptive study of the Black colleges. I will comment on them in my next posting.)
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