Despite U.S. higher education facing a wave of retirements by older baby boomer and World War II-era born professors, there remain large pockets in the academic work force, such as life science faculties at research universities and humanities/social science faculties across all of academia, where tenure-track jobs are scarce and the market is…

As director of the Lawyering in the Digital Age Clinic at the Columbia University Law School, law professor Conrad Johnson knows that digital technology has the power to highlight and amplify social justice concerns and to enable people to take direct action. Under Johnson's leadership, the clinic has developed and maintained the Columbia-hosted…

Documenting that there are 62 U.S. colleges and universities where the six-year graduation rates for Black undergraduate students have recently outpaced those of their White peers, the report by the Washington, D.C.-based Education Sector, an independent education policy think tank, has pointed out that schools where underrepresented minorities…

In recent years, corporate executives and local bar association officials have increasingly questioned why so few of the nation's elite corporate law firms can claim significant racial and ethnic diversity among their partner or upper management ranks. Some organizations have even pledged to reward law firms that ensure high-level assignments for…

Introducing the "Champions of Diversity" in the Academic Kickoff issue proved a timely reminder of the mission of Diverse during the lead up to the 25th anniversary of Cox, Matthews and Associates, the founder of the former Black Issues in Higher Education and publisher of Diverse. In this edition, the editors at Diverse unveil its second slate of…

In this article, the author describes the Science Diversity Center (SDC), a Web-based portal that has consolidated information on all the federal research funding targeted to faculty members at minority-serving institutions, or MSIs. Developed with backing from the National Science Foundation, the SDC has been unofficially up and running since…

Scholars who have examined the Black presence in elite colleges and universities have reported that 41 percent of Black freshmen at 28 selective schools identified themselves as immigrants, children of immigrants or mixed race. While schools have not yet clarified their position on affirmative action with regard to native Black American students,…

After more than a decade of steady enrollments and degree completion rates by underrepresented minorities, public schools, colleges, advocacy groups and government agencies still face a daunting task in helping bring Blacks, Latinos and American Indians into the engineering profession in numbers reflecting their growing ranks in the American…

Race-conscious affirmative action in higher education survived a close challenge in 2003 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that race was a valid academic admission criteria in the "Grutter v. Bollinger" case. Two years later, a number of "pipeline" programs to help under-represented minorities gain admission to and complete graduate school have…

Many major corporations and national organizations have been pointing to the need for improved K-12 and collegiate opportunities for minorities since the early 1970s. They have argued that such an infrastructure would be necessary to provide Blacks, Hispanics, American Indians and others with the background to enter the science and engineering…