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The Enduring Importance of Richard Wright --- For a century or more, a general boycott prevailed whereby America’s great colleges and universities refused to even consider the appointment of a black person to their faculties.

More Blacks Are Competing in Advanced Placement Programs, But the Racial Scoring Gap Is Widening --- The number of blacks taking academically challenging Advanced Placement courses in high school has surged in recent years. The bad news is that the racial scoring gap on Advanced Placement tests continues to be large and in fact has increased in recent years.

Barack Obama is the Superior Choice for African-American Voters --- For the first time in the history of our country, a black man has a credible chance of becoming president of the United States. (Downloadable PDF)

JBHE’s Annual Citation Rankings of Black Scholars in the Social Sciences and the Humanities --- For the fourteenth consecutive year, JBHE publishes its citation rankings of black scholars in the social sciences. Once again, as has been the case in each of our previous surveys, the black scholar with the highest citation count in social science journals is Harvard’s University Professor William Julius Wilson. But David R. Williams of the Harvard School of Public Health and Claude Steele of Stanford University are closing the gap. This year they finished just behind Professor Wilson. In the humanities rankings, Yale’s Paul Gilroy is the most cited scholar for the third time in four years. This year Professor Gilroy led by a large margin.

High-Ranking Colleges and Universities Strengthen Financial Aid --- A large number of selective colleges and universities have beefed up their financial aid budgets. It remains to be seen if these changes will result in the admission of more low-income and black students.

Black Colleges and Universities Show Impressive Endowment Growth --- College endowments on the whole experienced an average increase of nearly 17.2 percent in the July 1, 2006 to June 30, 2007 period. Traditionally, the endowment funds of black colleges and universities tend to lag the performance of their predominantly white peers. But in the latest reporting period several of the nation’s black colleges and universities beat the national average. Several black colleges even bested the performance in the growth of the behemoth endowment of Harvard University.