Multiculturalism at Historically Black Colleges & Universities

Alcorn State University, the Southern Education Foundation, the Association of American Colleges and Universities and other partners hosted the inaugural National Leadership Institute on Multiculturalism at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) recently. Participants discussed the challenges and opportunities inherent in increasing racial and ethnic diversity, multiculturalism, and internationalization on campuses originally created to educate African Americans.

Dr. Clinton Bristow, Jr., president of Alcorn State University explained that the convening is important not only because of the judicial fiats, but also because, “our colleges and universities must prepare students to work and live in this globally independent world.” Attorney Lynn Huntley, executive director of the Southern Education Foundation, a project partner, agrees. Said Huntley, “In order to prepare students to live in a new world of diversity wrought by globalizing economies and the revolution in technology, our nation's colleges and universities must themselves become models of inclusion, and intergroup and international understanding and learning.”

The goals of the National Leadership Institute are: (1) to begin developing new knowledge and understanding by opinion makers, policy shapers, senior executives and other stakeholders about the unique role HBCUs play in the national effort to foster and reap the educational benefits of diversity; (2) to identify and promote policies and practices that will strategically position HBCUs as foremost free-standing, mission-based higher education institutions and as pipelines through which students attending two-year Hispanic Serving Institutions, Tribal colleges and other two-year institutions can complete a four-year baccalaureate degree at moderate and low-cost institutions; and through which historically and predominately white institutions can secure a “critical mass” of multicultural, academically well prepared students for graduate and professional schools; and (3) to lay the foundation to formulate, disseminate and promote the use of “Principles and Standards of Good Practice to Maintain Multiculturalism at HBCUs.”

“AAC&U is especially pleased to be a co-sponsor for the upcoming National Leadership Institute at Alcorn State University,” remarked AAC&U president Carol Geary Schneider. “We all recognize that higher education still has much work to do in expanding educational opportunity, teaching all students about America's struggles for democratic inclusion and justice, and providing all students with the intercultural skills they will need in a diverse and still fractured world. Historically Black Colleges and Universities and other minority serving institutions have always played a pioneering role in American society. It is especially appropriate, then, for HBCU's to take the lead in shaping new forms of intercultural learning. This important meeting promises to be a landmark event,” added Schneider.#