This edited volume explores and deconstructs the possibilities of higher education beyond its initial purpose. The book contextualizes and argues for a more robust interrogation of persistent patterns of campus inequality driven by rapid demographic change, reduced public spending in higher education, and an increasingly polarized political landscape. It offers contemporary views and critiques ideas and practices such as micro-aggressions, implicit and explicit bias, and their consequences in reifying racial and gender-based inequalities on members of nondominant groups. The book also highlights coping mechanisms and resistance strategies that have enabled members of nondominant groups to contest primarily racial- and gender- based inequity. In doing so, it identifies new ways higher education can do what it professes to do better, in all ways, from providing real benefit to students and communities, while also setting a bar for society to more effectively realize its stated purpose and creed.
Kenneth R. Roth is a Research Associate with the CHOICES program at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA, where he examines access and equity issues in higher education, with particular emphasis on the challenges and paths to graduation experienced by students of color, particularly Black males.
Felix Kumah-Abiwu is the Founding Director of the Center for African Studies and Associate Professor in the Department of Africana Studies at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, USA. His research focuses on African American males/public education, the politics of development, political leadership, African security issues, elections and democratization in Africa, foreign policy analysis, and global narcotics policy.
Zachary S. Ritter is Vice President of Leadership Development at the Jewish Federation in Los Angeles. Prior, he was Interim Associate Dean of Students at California State University, Dominguez Hills, USA. He also teaches social justice history at both California State University, Dominguez Hills, USA, and University of California, Los Angeles, USA.
