In recent days syndicated columnist Walter E. Williams has questioned whether historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have outlived their usefulness and viability.
While desirous of affording Mr. Williams all due respect, please let me – as a veteran HBCU faculty member and, now, president – respond. Simply ridiculous.
Mr. Williams focuses his essay on a series of columns written by Bill Maxwell for the St. Petersburg Times in spring 2007. In them, Mr. Maxwell, who is a very well-regarded journalist and social critic, expressed his shock at experiences he faced during a temporary period of teaching at Stillman College.
Here’s what I think happened. In common with many others and very understandably, Mr. Maxwell’s perspective arose from his own college experiences during the 1960s. The institutions he attended during that tumultuous era nonetheless remained for the most part calm.
Since then, students have changed. Students virtually everywhere did. Sometime in the 1980s, attitudes shifted. The millennial generation now demands greater engagement of faculty and often refuses to afford faculty members the automatic deference and respect they previously had enjoyed.
Ask any experienced educator anywhere in the country about this. The problem was that Mr. Maxwell was a distinguished journalist rather than an experienced educator.
As students changed, so, too, did the world of HBCUs. Perhaps most fundamentally, integration of previously all-White institutions sapped HBCUs of many top-level students, academically as well as athletically. Those schools could offer far more financial aid and, perhaps, an easier introduction into White-oriented circles than could an HBCU.
