A noose was placed over the head of a statue of Homer on the campus of the University of Virginia. Video surveillance revealed that the noose was placed by a White male. Police collected other evidence at the scene but have not revealed further details.
Here is this week’s news of grants or gifts to historically Black colleges and universities or for programs of particular interest to African Americans in higher education.
Stephanie J. Rowley has been appointed the dean of the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia and J. Lin Dawson was named dean of exercise science and collegiate athletics at Saint Augustine’s University in Raleigh, North Carolina.
A long-time educator in several public school systems in Virginia, Dr. Green concluded her career serving as dean at both Virginia Union University and Virginia State University.
Taking on new administrative duties are Toya Corbett at the University of Virginia, Josiah J. Sampson, III at Jackson State University in Mississippi, Manica J. Finch at South Carolina State University, Pierre D. Joanis at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Akirah J. Bradley-Armstrong at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Ava Willis-Barksdale at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.
The researchers sent emails to a random list of 250,000 Americans. When the sender had a White-sounding name, they were 15 percent more likely to receive a response than emails where the sender had a Black-sounding name.
Just as conservatives have mounted attacks on ethnic studies programs, critical race theory, and other subject areas not to their liking, the hiring of diversity officers has also been highly criticized. A new Heritage Foundation report finds what it calls an administrative bloat of diversity officers.
Benevolent sexism is a term that refers to views about women that seem positive but also exhibit a level of inferiority to men based on fragility, a lack of competence or intelligence, or a need for the guardianship of men. A new study finds that benevolent sexism may be more likely afforded to White women than it is to Black women.
Dr. Mickles had been serving as vice president of academics, students, and workforce development at Central Virginia Community College in Lynchburg. She will serve as interim president of Danville Community College while a search for a permanent president is conducted.
Dr. Hutson is currently a tenured professor and director of the Urban Planning Ph.D. Program in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University in New York City. He is also the director of the school’s Urban Community and Health Equity Lab.
LaVonda N. Reed has been serving as associate provost for faculty affairs at Syracuse University. She joined the faculty there in 2006. Professor Reed’s research and teaching are in the areas of wills and trusts, property, and communications regulatory law and policy.
Jeannine Holmes is a 2008 graduate of the University of Virginia, where she majored in English. After studying design in New York City, She moved to Atlanta in 2016 to work in the healthcare field. Later she enrolled in law school part-time at Georgia State University.
Taking on new administrative duties are Robyn S. Hadley at the University of Virginia, Shaun Lewis at Dillard University in New Orleans, Debbi Howard at Tennessee State University in Nashville, and Shajuana L. Dennard at Talladega College in Alabama.
Professor Petrosino was honored for her poetry collection that weaves together a variety of poetic forms – villanelles, a heroic crown and erasure – to explore her Black heritage and larger societal issues with the legacy of slavery and race relations in America.
Dr. Reavis was the pastor of several churches and taught for more than two decades at Virginia Union University. In 2000, he was named president of his alma mater, now called Virginia University of Lynchburg. He served in that role until 2015.
Jim Ryan, president of the University of Virginia, stated that these “actions that will make this place more clearly and obviously welcoming to all, and where all have an opportunity to thrive.”
The suit alleges severe harassment from her superiors, including leaving her out of important meetings, denying opportunities for advancement, being passed over for promotion, and interfering with an attempt to hire a Black student to assist her.
Joanne Bankston, was coordinator of family and consumer sciences, and state specialist for family economics management at Kentucky State University and Valerie Gregory, associate dean of undergraduate admissions at the University of Virginia.
The researchers found that 84 percent of study participants had experienced at least some form of racism. They found there was a relationship between those who had experienced racism with activism aimed at eliminating racism.
A task force proposed “a system in which racial identity neither predicts nor determines one’s access, success, nor influence within the University of Virginia – where people of any racial background have an equal probability of thriving.”
Beginning in 1981, Dr. Paul served at Howard University as a faculty member in the College of Engineering, Architecture, and Computer Science. He remained on the faculty for 38 years. Professor Paul also served as interim associate provost for research at Howard.
In 1953, Walter N. Ridley earned a doctorate from the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. Dr. Ridley holds the distinction of being the first African American to earn a doctoral degree from a historically white university in the South.
A. Benjamin Spencer will be the next dean of the William and Mary Law School in Williamsburg, Virginia. When he takes office on July 1, Professor Spencer will be William & Mary’s first African-American dean. Since 2014 he has been on the law school faculty at the University of Virginia.
Nicole Thorne Jenkins is currently vice dean of the Gatton College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky, where she is also the Von Allmen Chaired Professor of Accountancy. She was previously on the faculty at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and Washington University in St. Louis.
John Merchant, an attorney who taught at both Fairfield University and Sacred Heart University, both in Connecticut, was the first Black graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law.
Dayna Bowen Matthew is currently the William L. Matheson and Robert M. Morgenthau Distinguished Professor of Law and the F. Palmer Weber Research Professor of Civil Liberties and Human Rights at the University of Virginia Law School. She will begin her new duties on July 1.
Mildred Robinson is the Henry L. and Grace Doherty Charitable Foundation Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. Professor Robinson, who specializes in tax law, was the law school’s first African American female tenured professor.
Rita Dove, Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia, served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993 to 1995 and won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1987. She is the only poet to receive the National Humanities Medal and the National Medal of Arts.
The study found that gentrified neighborhoods tended to show a reduction in public school enrollments in the 2000-to-2014 period. But neighborhoods that were gentrified by mostly Black or Hispanic college-educated families showed an increase in public school enrollments.
According to the report, when comparing applicants to the University of Virginia who had similar test scores on college entrance examinations and high school grade point averages, 74 percent of Black applicants were admitted compared to only 30 percent of White applicants.
Protestors have called on the University of Virginia to change the name of the Alderman Library. It is named after Edward Alderman, president of the university from 1905 to 1931. Alderman was a proponent of eugenics and White supremacy.
According to a new study by Dominique J. Baker, an assistant professor of education policy at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, White students who graduated from Texas state universities have a debt-to-income ratio of 68 percent, compared to 117 percent for Black students who graduated from state universities in Texas.
Recipients of the Berlin Prize are awarded a semester-long fellowship in Berlin where they will be provided with the time and resources to step back from their daily obligations to engage in academic and artistic projects they might not otherwise pursue.
Here is this week’s roundup of African Americans who have been appointed to new administrative positions at colleges and universities throughout the United States.
Recently, most of the nation’s highest-ranked colleges and universities informed applicants if they had been accepted for admission into the Class of 2023. Some revealed the racial/ethnic breakdown of their admitted students.
Following the revelation that Virginia Governor Ralph Northam had a photograph of a student in blackface and another student in a Ku Klux Klan costume on his 1984 yearbook page, the Eastern Virginia Medical School announced it would investigate how this could have happened.
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