At many U.S. universities, the tendency to self-segregate has become a familiar and accepted occurrence, evident in a wide array of college settings including housing and social gatherings, classes and training events, protests, and grievance sessions, and even separate commencement events. In many ways, this trend represents a return to the…

In the middle of the 20th century, trustees, elected officials, and others in the southern United States required black and white institutions to forfeit academic freedom protections when faculty research and teaching threatened to undermine white supremacy. In the early 21st century, faculty who critique white supremacy are facing similar attacks…

Despite efforts to redress racial grievances, American's most progressive institutional sector, higher education, suffers racial incidents with disturbing frequency. We hypothesize that one explanation lies in the bureaucratization of higher education. Various trends have led to what Benjamin Ginsberg calls "the fall of the faculty" and…

Justice Goodwin Liu reexamined seminal affirmative action in higher education legal cases beginning with the landmark 1978 case, "Regents of the University of California v. Bakke" and leading up to the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 decision in "Gratz v. Bollinger." Liu argued that the "Bakke and Gratz" lawsuits were…

After decades in the political wilderness, school integration seems poised to make a serious comeback as an education reform strategy. A growing number of parents, university officials, and employers want elementary and secondary schools to better prepare students for the increasingly racially and ethnically diverse society and the global economy.…

Drawing on recent theories of boundary processes, status and ethnicity, I investigate processes of group-making in the post-Civil War era (1865-1905) when Americans were faced with two daunting political projects: rebuilding the nation, and creating a new racial order to replace the abolished system of bond slavery. Although scholars have…

This article highlights the many challenges and obstacles that limit and undermine higher education's capacity to eradicate the negative consequences associated with race. Before discussing these challenges, the author addresses why it makes sense for colleges and universities to play a central role in addressing problems associated with race. The…

This report outlines the procedures used for experimentally testing the effectiveness of a sensitivity group model in reducing racial prejudice among both black and white college students. The proposal is designed to explore the assumption that increasingly effective racial relations follow from increased understanding, acceptance, and tolerance…

Any form of separatism on college campuses, such as separate student unions for blacks and whites, can only lead to more hostility. (HS)

This is the report of a conference held by the Southeast Regional Council of the American Association for Higher Education to discuss the future of higher education in that region: to identify major problems, state goals, and suggest means of achieving these goals. The 32 conferees were divided into 3 discussion groups and each of the groups…

This paper, by the former president of West Virginia State College (WVSC), responds to criticisms that racial integration following the Brown decision has had a negative impact on the quality of the school. Statistics are presented to show that West Virginia State's enrollments were declining seriously at the time of the Brown decision, and that…

This paper uses an anthropological framework to examine the social interactions of black faculty in predominantly white colleges and universities with their white and black colleagues. Joking, formal, and avoidance relations are examined among a regional sample of professors, with particular emphasis on Black Studies faculty. (Author)

Considers the way in which White teachers and students make sense of "race" in a multiracial college. Argues that there are two ways of comprehending race within White cultural forms, "nationalistic" and "liberal." States that both are interrelated and that the liberal form serves to sustain White racism. (Author/GEA)

This paper provides an anecdotal account of racial relations and integration efforts in West Virginia before and after the Brown decision, from the perspective of the publisher of the "Charleston Gazette," The struggle for racial equality in West Virginia has been filled with contradictions. The first legal action taken in West Virginia…