 All right, well, I have the top of the hour. So let's begin. Let me welcome everybody. Welcome to the Future Trends Forum. I'm glad to see you all here today. We have a terrific guest with a great topic and I'm really looking forward to our conversation. We have right now for several years in a forum been exploring race and racism on American campuses. We've been hosting a whole series of great faculty, staff, scholars to discuss this issue. One aspect that we haven't really focused on enough is the experience of students, specifically minoritized students on campus. This is why I'm really grateful to introduce you all to Professor Antar Tijaba Kunda. From Cincinnati, he's a professor who specializes in education and his most recent book is a deep dive into how black students on majority white campuses succeed, how they thrive, how they survive, what kind of worlds they create, and that is a subject for this week's conversation. So without any further ado, let me welcome Professor Tijaba Kunda to the stage. Greetings, Cincinnati. Hello from Cincinnati. Thank you for having me. Thank you everyone for tuning in. I'm super excited to chat. Well, I'm really, really grateful to welcome you and I'm really looking forward to our conversation. Antar, we were talking about this earlier. The way we usually ask people to introduce themselves is to describe what they're gonna be working on for the next year. So what are the big projects? What are the classes? What are the ideas that are really gonna be top of mind for you for the next 12 months? Such a great question. And I mean, first and foremost, I'm like, okay, one of the things I'm working on is trying to center joy, right? Like I'm wearing this black joist skirt and I think it's super important we center joy right now in these times, right? These continued unprecedented times, right? So as often tell my students, you're not good if you're not good. So I wanna make sure that I'm good taking care of myself. But as far as like academic endeavors, I'm really interested in extending this work on black student life and thinking more about labor. Thinking more about labor on campuses. One of the things that I've noticed in my work, I often say, yeah, I'm here to support black students and black communities at these predominantly white institutions, right? But I noticed in some of my writing, after I did a little more reflecting, I'm like, whose voices are absent, right? I've talked to administrators, I've talked to faculty, I've talked to staff, I've talked to students. And I was like, am I talking to the custodians? Am I talking to the people who are at the CAS registers and the cafeteria? I'll talk to them in general when I'm on campus, but I mean, what do they have to say about campus life at university? And I know we can learn a lot from them. So I would love to do some of that work, especially where I'm at, right? Like, if I'm looking at the black community at UC, a large part of the black community are people who make the university run, right? So I think about labor, the labor that they do, especially thinking about essential workers, right? Who are the essential workers on campus? I know that's a really fraught term, but really kind of digging into that. And also think about the labor black students do. So the labor of creating a black student union. Oftentimes it's unpaid, right? Most of the time it's unpaid. People say that, oh, this is a black student group. You should want to do this. Or even like black fraternities and sororities, you should want to do this, right? And for those of you who are here who work at institutions, it's not uncommon to tap those black student leaders to talk to prospective students, talk to prospective black students, right? What thanks do they get for that? They get a thank you. They get that feeling of doing something for the community. What if we compensated them, right? So one of the things that I'm arguing in a little bit in my book, but I want to really dig into later, is I think a lot of black students who are doing, they're doing the diversity work for campus. And until we pay them, we are exploiting them. So I really want to dig into labor as like kind of like my next project. That's a great, great idea. And you've got some support in the chat already where people are recommending this. And I think that would be terrific. And that's a population that got hit very, very hard in the past two years. In terms of just suffering from the pandemic and losing jobs and all that would be terrific. Well, well, I'm really looking forward to that book. Once you get that done, good luck with it. But we'll bring you back. So friends, if you're new to the forum, this is a place for all of you to ask your questions. And I'm gonna start off with a couple just to get the ball rolling in case you haven't had a chance to read Professor T. Chabukun's book. And as he speaks, think about how the connects with your own experience at your own institutions or at other institutions. And now is the time to start forming up your questions and your thoughts. I'm just, I'm very, very curious in doing all this work and looking at the experience of black students and predominantly white institutions. What are some of the most standout results of your research? What are some of the major findings either that you think are the most salient or that were the most surprising? So, I mean, one thing I think about is group work. I'll talk about two things. I could talk hours about this. But one thing I want to talk about is group work. The other thing I'll talk about is kind of like the blues, right, the blues. So group work, I just have to say this, right? Professors oftentimes think group work is, you know, this is a creative way that I can engage students. You know, it seemed as like, okay, this is a useful pedagogical tool. Let's do some group work. What I found, you know, in my book, I look at black engineering students, right? So I found that this institution, which I call West Side University, black students were such a marginal population that oftentimes they were the only black student or their major in that class, right? So obviously there may be some overlap, but oftentimes it's easy. It's not uncommon for them to be the only black student in all of their engineering classes. What does that have to do with group work? When it's time to group work, split up into partners, oftentimes I heard from black students that they would get picked last, they wouldn't get picked at all, or when they did join the groups, they made the experience for lack of better words, hellish for the black people, especially black women. I found there at least three students, three black women who opted to do group work by themselves rather than work in the groups with other people. So you think about that, right? Like you have people who are literally working twice as hard, doing group work individually because they'd rather do that than deal with the massage and war, the gendered racism from black women, that they would incur in that group, right? And there was oftentimes no thoughts from the professor about making sure that these groups were friendly or inclusive, right? So that's one thing I'll say group work. To what extent do black students in engineering, but also other classes and disciplines, how do they have access to fair group environments? There's another student, another black woman who did everything right, right? She was a mechanical engineer. She was in the extracurricular groups. She was representing the Caldwell, the School of Engineering, right? She did everything right. She had friends, but she was a junior in college and she still didn't have a steady group, a steady study group to work with. And that wasn't for lack of trying, right? She did everything. Oh, like get to know people this time the third. But I have evidence of like students just not responding to black students for, you know, hey, are you all meeting later, right? Like, as soon as the screen shot these messages and be like, yeah, this is a day in the life, like no one wants to work with a black student, you know? So group work is one thing that I'll mention that I was like, I've never thought about related to that, also cheating. Cheating, no one wants to talk about that. As soon as cheating, you know? And I think we need to also think about what we mean by cheating, right? Is cheating just collaboration, right? But things that professors would think is unsavory or they wouldn't want, oftentimes students would do. And it would, from my experience in studying these students, a lot of this like unorthodox study practices or, you know, what is it? You know, test banks, they were divided either by like engineering, society or fraternity or by race, you know? So you have a lot of the white students sharing, you know, grouping up, a lot of the South Asian students grouping up. And if black students wanted to group up, it was just that one black student. So literally you have other students cheating to get a better grade, messing up the curve while the black student is forced to do the right thing, right? So literally working twice as hard to get half as far while people are cheating. That's the one thing I was very surprised. Another one I was really surprised at the other thing that I'll stop. I mentioned the blues, right? In other readings of this book in the draft phases, like my advisor and other people were like, it seems kind of sad, you know? Like these experiences, like they're not getting into groups and all that, like they're being pushed out. But there was so much more to the sadness. There was also life. There was resilience. There was this type of portitude that black students had in life that they made, right? And there was this acceptance. Like, hey, people may not wanna work with me, but I'm still gonna do the best that I can. And I'm gonna make a life within this black engineering association, NSBE, the National Society of Black Engineering Students. So they made a life within that chapter, within that black space. And, you know, it was a dynamic life of beautiful lives that they made, right? But it was all within that context of this kind of anti-black racism. So I found the answer in the blues as far as reconciling the tension between, you know, racism that did exist and shake their lives, but also their persistence and their unwillingness to be defeated by it, right? And their living out loud, you know, succeeding, thriving in spite of it. So those are the two things that I'll stop there. Well, those are fantastically important findings. And the first ones are especially daunting and frustrating. I mean, especially just thinking about being that marginalized and that alone, but then at the same time, doing what you said in the second part of being able to make a vibrant and beautiful life at the same time, I'm curious. As you were doing all of this work, this was done in the past few years, right? A lot of their field work on this? Yes. How did the huge wave of racial reckoning or the Great Awakening impact this? Or did that happen too late in your writing process? Yeah, so this was, I mean, this was done during, I think like between 2016 and 2018, right? So this was before what was in the 2020, you know, reckoning, right? It's like a reckoning after reckoning after reckoning. At what point is it just like, I don't know, the mundane, unfortunately. But this was after what students called the campus climate era. So if you all remember in like 2015 or so, there was the Concerned Student Movement, Concerned Student in 1950 at Mizzou, right? Where you had these students who came together. One student led a hunger strike as well. And that kind of really, it was almost a domino effect of other institutes, other student activists, predominantly black, but also across racial lines who list out these demands, right? So my study kind of happened at the heels of this campus climate era, if you will. So it was, you know, temporal moment matters. So this was at the, you know, right at the end of that, or right after, I should say, a lot of these protests and movements were happening nationwide on college campuses. Okay. So, I mean, so the campus climate language will still be a- Oh, definitely, yeah. In the chat, Tom Hames notes, he's a government professor, and he notes that this sounds disturbingly like the situation or Jim Crow, where African-Americans are forced to essentially construct their own parallel society. Friends, I have all kinds of questions for our guests, and I would, but I would much, much rather hear from you. What are your questions about his research? What can you ask or comment on based on your own experience? What would you like to ask him? So as people are, you know, you can start to see the smoke coming out of people's ears, as they're trying to figure out what to ask. Let me follow up with another one. How have institutions best supported black students? I mean, but here are these other predominantly white institutions. What are the most effective and powerful things they've done to help address the kind of problems you're talking about? That's a good question. And I think often, I mean, just in the discipline that I'm in, I'm very good. We're socialized, if you will, to discipline to look for problems, right? Less often are we tasked with finding solutions. True. But I would say one is, you know, creating black spaces, black places and supporting them or can provide them with a requisite infrastructure, right? So you have black cultural centers and you have, you staff these centers. It's still not enough, but that's something I think that creates a measurable difference for black students on campus. You have black residence halls, right? And you invest in that. You have different types of supports. I'm really big on like, how are you investing in black student life, right? But those are, I think, to what extent can you invest in, you know, black places on campus and also black student groups on campus? Black students, if you're leading Nezvi, the National Society of Black Student Engineering, you shouldn't have, these students in these chapters shouldn't have to beg the university for money, right? The least the university can do is make these pathways for students to get money to, you know, feed engineering students who come to these meetings. That should be the least of their worries, right? So I think about how universities can invest in these student groups, invest in black student spaces. And, you know, I think critical mass helps, right? At the end of the day, if you have a 2% black population at a school of engineering, regardless of what you do to support those 2% of black engineers, I can't understand that school as anything but anti-black, right? It's 2%. You're not doing the work to get black students at these schools, right? And we know it's not because it's not a pipeline issue, you know, that there are, you know, yeah, it's not a pipeline issue. I think it's a will issue. So I think about critical mass, what are universities and what are, you know, high schools doing to ensure that black students can go to these institutions or support black students at these institutions. So I'll say about critical mass and enrollment, but at the end of the day, it's perhaps a more tangible thing. I think invest in black students, you know, and I mean invest not just with, you know, you know, oh, we appreciate you not just during Black History Month, pay black students, you know, like how are you helping them with tuition? How are you helping them with books? I really think about reparations, right? So what does that look like on the college level? And another thing that I think will be great in the future, like I said, if you lead a black student organization, I don't think you should pay tuition on campus because it is a job, right? A job different from like, you know, NCAA basketball football players, you are doing work for the university. So I think that would be another way to aid in black student engagement and support black students. Is anybody doing that right now? I know of one school that pays all kind of like their student leaders. They're recognized by the university, but I don't think so. Well, this would, and it would be for a campus, for a college university, it would be a trivial amount for their budget. But this could really make a huge difference in people's lives. I was gonna ask more questions, but already the questions have started coming in. And I wanna give people their chance to do this. So first of all, this is Sarah. And Sarah, if I mispronounce your name, I'm sorry. I don't recognize the spelling. I wanna make sure I get it right. She asks, what motivated or encouraged you, you to continue studying despite these racialized circumstances? Very personal question. Thank you. Yeah, so I mean, for me, I'm very interested in, you know, black student life. I went to a predominant institution myself. I was at Brown University. The time I went there, it was 6.4% black, I believe. So, you know, and I remember reading a lot of the research around black students, you know, and if you read a lot of the research around black students, pretty much a lot of, you see a lot about how black student life is agonizing, right, and how black students are other and have a little sense of belonging, you know, how they're victims of microaggressions and other types of racism. All these things are true, right? But what I didn't see in the research was like how black students are agintic, you know, having a new agency come together and create beautiful environments and experiences for themselves, right? I'm thinking about that kind of note in the chat about, you know, Jim Crow kind of separate societies, right, on campus. I think a lot of that's happening, like even at the school that I'm at, like it's in social world, the social circles are very much segregated, but there's just as much life in these black social worlds and that's what I wanted to highlight in my work, you know, just kind of highlighting that agency, that creativity, the ingenuity, and yeah, just the life that is there. And I think by studying what black students are already doing to support themselves, we can at the very least make sure institutions get out of black students' way or, you know, figure out a way to support what they're already doing. Well, and this sounds like this was a way that you proceeded yourself in your own career. Definitely, definitely. Well, thank you for that answer and Sarah, thank you for the question. And if you're new to the forum, that's an example of using that Q&A box just by pressing on that question book and typing it up. We have another question from Lynn Sibolski and we flashed this on the screen too. Schools located in predominantly white areas, even if the campus is safe, you have to leave campus sometime, what kind of steps can schools take to make their communities safer and more attractive? Yeah, that's a great question. I'm automatically thinking about, I'm thinking about the University of Cincinnati, where I'm at now, right? I'm also thinking about University of Southern California where I did my studies. And oftentimes there's this antagonistic relationship between the university and the community, right? I don't know, it's like representatives or orientation almost speak about the community in hushed tones, right? Oh, yeah, people from the community, you know, and you're like, oh, what do you mean by that? Are you talking about black and brown people? Like, what are you saying? And these feelings of antagonism are created, I think, by universities, right? Universities kind of making it more expensive to live in these areas, you know? So you have people, you have a lot of disgruntled folks in the neighborhood, right? People in the neighborhood who've been there for years or generations. So I think that's a task for you. It's a big task. So I think it's a task for universities to think about how they can reach out and do a better job of, you know, serving the communities in which they're housed in, right? You're not only serving the students, right? If you put up a wall, if you put up a fence, you're signaling to the community, I don't want you here, right? So it's only universities to be creative and, okay, what can we do for our image, but also materially for people in like, you know, whether it's a two or three mile radius, what can we do to make sure that they feel welcome here too? Because then I feel like there's less of that antagonism, right? I think it's a beast of an issue, right? It's not just all universities, it's for, you know, you think about the under-resourced neighborhoods in general, it's on cities too, right? To support and provide equitable access to different neighborhoods, especially neighborhoods surrounding a lot of these cities in urban environments. But I do think, I don't think putting up walls is the, and obviously that's not the question, but I see a lot of universities kind of doing that. I don't think that's a useful answer or approach. Thank you for the question. Oh, it's a fantastic question. And thank you for that very, very rich and nuanced answer. You've run through once of one college, which I won't name, which built a three-dimensional virtual reality replica of their entire college. And they carefully kept the surrounding town off. It was just blank, and there was a sign of it. They had to go to great lengths to make that happen. Yeah, that says a lot. Yes, it does. We have more questions flooding in, which is terrific. So let me just put this one up on stage. From Kerry Watkins, hello Kerry. What role do faculty mentoring, sponsoring, advising play in helping black students in majority white schools? And how has that helped or exacerbated issues? I'm loving all the questions, y'all. Thank you so much. But as far as a faculty, when I was studying this, the university for my book, when I wanted to interview faculty, right? I was doing kind of like cold emails. And there were like three people that responded very quickly. And these three faculty members were the ones that always show up to the NESB events, the SWE events, Society of Women in Engineering, the SHIP events, Society of Hispanic Professionals, Engineering, all of these. So these are like the three, almost like diversity professors, right? It was two white men, one black man, right? And they were pretty much taps because they had the will to do so. They're going to all the events for the student organizations. They're the ones on the diversity board for the School of Engineering. So in response to that question, I think, I just want to say oftentimes faculty, those faculty who care about equity, who care about identity, inclusion, and black students in particular, they're oftentimes taxed in a unique way, right? And they become the go-to people for all things, diversity. When we need to think about how faculty are socialized or disciplined. So supporting students across the race, and advising students across the race in a meaningful way is supported and rewarded as much as getting that NSF grant, right? When you make mentoring and advising black students as, when you reward that to the same level, you reward a grant or publication, then I guarantee you will see a difference in how people approach advising and mentoring. Level of a grant or a publication, wow. That would be a big change. What a great question. What a clear and inspiring answer. Thank you. And gosh, I was gonna give you values people to ask more questions and now I can't stop it from happening. We have another one coming from Ann Fensey at University of Maine, hello Ann. And she asks, what should faculty know about your research? What recommendations do you have for faculty to create more inclusive classrooms? And did you find different experiences when participating in online classes? Those are three different and great questions. Yeah, so I'll start at the end. I'll bring it back up on the stage too so you can see it. I appreciate it, yes, I'll start at the end. I didn't do any, when I was studying there wasn't the online class, that aspect wasn't there. So I mean, also I can give suppositions to it, right? But I do wanna say the virtual environment plays a big role in student life. One of the things that I noticed that a lot of these places of congregation for black students and also other students in general it was just through group, right? It was through, it was through Twitter, it was through Instagram. So the virtual, even before the pandemic's onset plays an important role in student life. But otherwise to faculty in creating more inclusive equitable environments, like I said about group work, do not assume that group work is equitable. As a matter of fact, I would probably suggest this to opposite. Think about what scaffolding, do you have to think about scaffolding? How can you scaffold group work so that people interact in like a collegial, like not anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-classist way, right? And that's a tall order when you really think about it. How can you create that environment? So I said to say we need to faculty across disciplines but especially in the sciences it might be useful for them to have classes on teaching, classes on creating, welcoming, safer environments, right? No environment can be completely safe but how can you work towards it? So that might be useful to think about the disciplining of faculty. But at the very least, what are you doing as a faculty member to engage with or look out for those who are minoritized in that classroom, right? Are you spotlighting them? Are you making a comment when they aren't in class? Like, oh, Chris, I noticed you weren't in class yesterday and they're the only black men, right? That can be a little awkward. But it's different if you're taking time to get to know that student, inviting that student to your office hours, right? And I think just taking that little extra effort for that individual student is helpful if you can't or don't have the bandwidth to try to create a more welcoming, or you don't even feel like you have the tools to create a welcoming environment. The least you can do is reach out to those students and let them know that you're there and that you want to know about the experience in their class, right? So what is it, can we give students a voice in the class? Let them know that their feedback really matters and that we as professors will try to make changes to make their experience better. I think that's something tangible that faculty can do. What a fantastic question. And that was a small book of an answer right there. Just one quick question of my own to build on that. Do you have any advice for faculty who are adjunct versus faculty who are tenure track? Because I think their capacity may be very different. Yeah, for sure. And you know, I'm always, like I said, I'm interested in labor. So I'm always wary of giving too much labor to people I know who are already overworked, right? Especially adjuncts, you know, and I think a lot of us are overworked to underpaid and that comes to light, especially with folks who are adjuncts and their relationship to the university. But you know, I think it goes the same route, right? To what extent can I am I making sure that I know the names of those students who may be minoritized in that place? And I always say, well, what's the least you can do, right? And I think about going back to my book, there was one student who reported that she was getting working in a group, a black woman, working in a group full of white men and that the people in her group, the other people in her group took credit for her work and said she didn't do anything. If this student, this black woman didn't have like record of it in Google Docs, she would have got like a failing grade. So she spent time putting together like a response and showing itemized how she actually did all the work. And the back to the professor was like, okay, thanks. That was it. And that's not how you go about it, right? I mean, there has to be some type of recourse to the student or at the very least, hey, can I meet with you ex-student? I'm so sorry that happened to you. What can I do to make this better for you? I said that very least it's honoring the experiences of students who are minoritized in your classroom, whether they're, you know, it's a black person in predominantly white classroom, whether they're a trans person in a predominantly cis classroom, what can you do to make sure when they voice the concern that you're hearing them? Thank you. That was a really, really good answer to my peremptory question waiting in. Thank you for going back to the question of labor. We have a couple of people who want to join us on stage and I want to welcome Katie Evans, who is just north of you. She's coming from Bowling Green, so we bring her up on stage. And hello, Katie. Hi, can you hear me? I can. In fact, I can hear you so well. I'm going to do a fancy display. Check this out. Good to see you. Thank you, yeah. So I'm doing a master's thesis right now in terms of, you know, similar topics in some senses, but thinking about senior leaderships involvement and in particular in these conversations and that like students have been advocating, right? For decades for some of the same, the same things to change on campuses. And I know within like a student affairs context, we have conversations about how we can better educate the next generation of student affairs practitioners, but that's on one side of often not as powerful on campuses, even on one side of the house. And so I'm just thinking about, and I'm in public administration, that's my program, but I'm just thinking about how we can extend this beyond certain academic disciplines that are thinking about this and like health equity research, but what about departments that aren't as oriented to think through race and racism as central components to most research or central components to how we structure curriculum or how we do faculty onboarding and employee evaluations or all of these other aspects of campus? Awesome, thank you for the comment and the question. And you know, that's a lot of the thesis and the project, that's what's up. So I'm gonna try to engage with it. If I'm off basis, just let me know. But again, kind of like what I said earlier about how we can, a lot of it depends on what universities and institutions value, right? So it becomes a value thing. As you stated already, a lot of this work, this advocacy, this agitation has been ongoing for years upon years upon years upon decades even. So what can we do that's different? One of the things that I'm kind of thinking about now in my work is why do we expect, and I'm saying like, the proverbial we, right? But why do we expect universities to be different, right? I'm thinking about writing a paper. I just started writing it just a little bit, but it'll be called Shame on Us, right? So Fool Me Once, Shame on You, Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me, right? But as I read, folks, people who have been in the Academy for a while or who studied the Academy, we know this is part of the course for universities as they stand, right? This is what they do. And we try to shame universities, try to shame the devil, if you will, right? Like, hey, you say you're for public good, like what's going on? What you're doing is diametrically opposed to it. And we see that that isn't working and it hasn't worked for decades. So one, I think, I'm interested in critical race theory. Derek Bell, in particular, his work. And one of the things he put forth is the idea that racism is permanent and, you know, it's not going anywhere. And some people saw that as defeatist, but he saw a lot of opportunity in that kind of acceptance. So I want, and he said that we should get real about racism. And once you understand that racism is permanent, it opens up a different set of strategies. So I think we need to get real about universities as they stand, right? I think there's possibility for, you know, another university, right? Like, I have this book right here, right? Like the third university is possible. I'm not sure yet. So another university is possible. But as it stands, I think we need to get real about what this university is capable of. Given that we know that the public good isn't oftentimes in the, you know, the interest of a lot of universities and that they act more as hedge funds than, you know, things of public goods, what does that mean that we do, right? So how can we create alternative ranking systems? And I think, right? Or alternative ways of showing value. So one of the things that I was thinking about, and I think, like, what would it look like for, you know, there's US News, US World News Report, whatever, all the top universities, right? What would it look like if faculty or, you know, faculty, staff, whoever come together and rank universities about like, who has, you know, the least amount of hate crimes, right? And that would be its own thing. So we're saying, okay, you have US World News Report or whatever, here's our own thing. Like here's our own value system. And here's us ranking universities on this than the third. And you know, and obviously that's not perfect. But I'm thinking, you know, how can we, I think when we get, when we are more, and again, this could be a defeatist attitude, but I think when we're more realistic about what the university will and will do and what they respond to, then our strategies can and should change. Even if that means exiting, right? I think right now we're seeing people exit the university. I mean, it seems like every other day, someone's telling me, yeah, I'm trying to work in tech, right? Or I'm moving to this, I'm moving to this nonprofit. And, you know, sooner or later, I think the university will respond because it's going to start hitting the pocketbooks differently. So I think exit is also a useful strategy. Thank you for the question. And I hope that kind of gets at what you were saying. Definitely. Thank you. Oh, Katie, thank you for the question. Thank you very much. And again, Antar, what a fantastic essay of an answer. Thank you. If you're new to the forum, friends, that's the video question. So if you just want to follow Katie and be on stage face-to-face, please just click that raised hand button and we'll put you up online. We also have another question. In fact, I think I'm gonna do this as a video question just because I'm on fire about that. We've got, let's see, we have Anne, let me see if I have her name right, Anne Fensig, and I had a question she wanted to ask in. Hello, Anne. Hi, how are you? Good, good to see you again. Yeah, you actually addressed my question because you read it before about what faculty can do. And so I really, I'm always looking for low hanging for the little things that we can do because I feel completely overwhelmed with how am I gonna change the world? Like it's so, racism is just so systemic that how could I possibly make a difference? And so one of the things that wasn't striking to me after reading from equity talk to equity walk, they really emphasize desegregating data. By race and ethnicity, I would also suggest desegregating it by other social identities as well. But then someone else brought up in the chat too about be ready for what you find out because especially if you ask your students, what is your experience like in my class? How could I make this better for you? Be ready for what people are saying and so how as a very white person in a very white state, I'm in Maine, how do I and other faculty ready ourselves for the kinds of answers that we're going to hear? And how do we take the little steps to make real differences? Now that's a great question and I'm engaged with it to the best extent that I can. And obviously, thank you for the work that you're doing out there in Maine. I don't know if that's snow in the background but sending you warmer thoughts from Cincinnati. But yeah, I think that's it. I mean, I often think about what's within my locus of control, right? And there's but so much we can do but it's like that doesn't mean we, that doesn't alleviate us from not doing anything, right? What I think is the point that you're getting at but even if it's, I'm going to try my best to make this classroom as safe as possible. Even if it's, I'm going to work on reading, do this reading group with some faculty and we'll read two books a year, right? And we'll come up with action items for ourselves, right? I mean, obviously that's not, and I think it's useful to be real about what we're doing, right? I'm often like, my hoodie says Black Joy is revolutionary, right? I don't necessarily think it's revolutionary. I think it's important but I think it's important to think about our words, right? Because when we say everything is revolutionary or radical, then everything, I mean, then nothing is revolutionary or radical. When we know a revolution or radical thought implies a complete shift in thinking and acting and a whole lot of action. So I think it's useful to think about what we can reasonably do. So I like the way you are approaching that. But other things could be like, yeah, what can I do on a personal level? Even if it's, at the beginning of our class we're going to talk about pronouns, right? And we're going to at least mention our pronouns at the beginning of class and I'm going to say why it's useful to talk about pronouns, right? And regardless of what class I'm teaching, whether it's Equine Diversity in Higher Ed, whether it's Seminar in Higher Ed, or sociology of education or qualitative methods, right? I often say, look, in this class, I mentioned pronouns but I also mentioned like, look, we're not going to use any racial slurs. I don't care if you're reading or what. I don't care if you're of that. If you're a Black person too, I'd rather you not say the N word, even if you're reading it in like a text or something, right? Another reason why I do it is just because you never know how other people want to respond to that. And that's one little thing, right? That could, you know, just in saying that and letting folks know, hey, we're not going to do that because we want to be mindful of how people react to that. That's one thing that's also going to let people know what type of space we're in. And you know, never know the type of discomfort hearing that can do to another student. I also start my classes with the same refrain, right? And I know some of us may not be able to start classes in a similar way given our relationship to the university, right, and who has potentially more security or less. And I often start my classes saying like, hey, regardless of what the class is, right? You have nothing, I think everything has to do with race, but it can happen like nothing in writing to do with race. But I'll say, hey, in this class, right? Like I think I approach my work saying like racism matters. I actually think racism is permanent. If you, if you're in this class you think race doesn't matter, you know, class doesn't matter, you know, discrimination, prejudicial beliefs aren't a thing. You know, I suggest you drop this class, you know, and I've had students drop the class. But it's just letting them know this is how I approach my work. And I think just in signaling that, students see me as someone that they can talk to, or they feel like it's just that much safer, right? So just little things like that can matter. But again, like you already mentioned, a lot of this is self-work, you know? And it's on all of us. One of the things I often think about this book that I read, Some Men by Michael Mezner, he's looking at men with like progressive masculinities, right? Who want to be like feminist allies? And one of the participants he interviewed said that, you know, at every, he's like, you don't just become an ally, right? He's like, every day like I have to earn my ally card, right? So it's, and I just think about that, like as it's allyship or solidarity work, it's a process, right? And every day we're working on it. So to the extent that we can be intentional about that work, as faculty, as staff, allies, you know, what have you, co-conspirators, whatever language you want to use, it requires work and it's a process rather than a destination. So I hope that kind of gets that. Oh, absolutely. There was a lot of really great suggestions about, being authentic and not being afraid to just address these issues and instead of just assuming that they don't exist, especially in a place like where I am, where I have such a little exposure to what a lot of students experience because we're such a, you know, not a diverse place, but I can't pretend that it's not there. Yeah. So I think to the extent that you can get in front of it, I think it's helpful. Yeah, thank you for your comments. Yeah, thank you. Well, thank you, Anne. And stay warm. Thanks. And what a, again, this conversation is terrific. And we have another question coming in. Actually, Leslie Harris had a couple. So I have to pick which one I want her to ask. So I'll pick this one because it's longer. Do you think there is hope in educating those students who say things like, I am colorblind. Can they learn the role that race plays in our society or do you think their minds are too closed? That's a great question. You hear me saying, I'm like, ooh, no. So I do think, I do think there is hope in engaging with those students, right? I think everyone to an extent should be willing to learn a lot of these things if you teach it in a right way, right? And I think it takes time. It takes effort, it takes a lot of patience. It takes a lot of patience. And I don't think a lot of that work can happen in a classroom. And I'll tell you, if I'm teaching a student like that, one of the things that I try to do, I say, let's focus on the readings. Let's focus on, I don't care about what you necessarily think for this. I want you to get into what ex theorist would say about this, right? So even if you disagree with it, you're gonna know how Kimberly Crenshaw views intersectionality, right? You should be able to do that. So I said to say, it's not hopeless, but I think it requires a great deal of work and self-work and it's more than just providing useful evidence. It's more than providing counter evidence, right? It takes a lot of intentional work, self-work, and maybe that one-on-one work. I'll say for myself, that's not my ministry, right? I'm not trying to convince, I tell people, that's nothing I'd say at the beginning. I was like, I'm not here to convince you that these things matter, right? But we're gonna learn about these forces. So if you try to convince, please drop the class, you know? And I think about bad faith, you know? A lot of people are living in bad faith. They don't want to, there's this quote, I think it was a Lewis Gordon, a black existentialist philosopher who said, like people would rather pleasing falsehood than an uncomfortable lie, right? And for people who have these race neutral, race evasive points of view, who are maybe like white people, right? For them to see the truth in that perhaps they do have a lot of unearned privilege and power in society just based on how they're racialized, that may upset their view of themselves. So in order to protect their view of themselves, they're gonna lie to themselves, right? Because that'll up in their world view and they just can't take it. And oftentimes it takes some type of crisis for them to see otherwise. And we're seeing a lot of that honestly with COVID, right? People on their deathbeds denying COVID because to do so, to engage with its threat would up in how they view themselves, who they view as leaders and their credibility. So rather than that, they would, you have people dying rather than viewing a problem for what it is. So counter evidence isn't always a useful tactic, especially with something as intertwined in our lives as race and identity. Well, thank you. That's a good, I throw a link by the way for Lewis Gordon into the chat, who sounds like another guest we should get on the program. This is Wendy Williams, Chimeson. So that's a really helpful point. We also had a couple other comments. I just want to make sure we saw. Debrisa Dosu recommends that we look at a piece from Inside of Higher Red this morning about super HSI's or Hispanic serving institutions and wondering if there should be something equivalent for colleges and universities that want to better support black students. But then there's also a comment from Jennifer Lee Gagnier. Jennifer, I hope I pronounced that correctly. And she asked, this is again from the chat, so I can't flash it on the screen. I'll just read it out. I'm thinking about how these issues are tied to institutions who are moving towards tech and STEM, no disrespect, she says, and away from the disciplines that were there from the beginning that may have been more connected to these issues, e.g. education. And that was an observation, not a question, but I'm wondering that kind of two cultures divide. Would you like to tackle that? Oh, for sure. I mean, it's gonna be more and more of an issue. Like I'm telling y'all, we see these little Boston, was it Boston Robotics and those little kind of dancing robots? Like I see that, I don't see, oh, this is cute. I see, how are these things going to be weaponized? How are they going to subdue people protesting? Black and brown people protesting? And others, like the cross races, like people who care about justice, how are they gonna be leveraged and used in warfare? And a lot of this because I remember one student said something like, he's a brilliant student, he was an engineering student as well. And he said, it's interesting because some of the best and brightest minds in the black community are being pushed to engineering, which makes sense. It's money right after you graduate or tech right after you graduate. And he's like, but like, I'm using my time to figure out how to make, you know, the algorithm on Amazon more, you know, like better, right? I'm using my time to make Amazon run better or Facebook run quicker. I'm using my genius to help this huge conglomerate, right? So it's almost like this divorcing from like, I don't know, a lot of social needs. And I think there's just a huge need to emphasize social sciences and humanities, even in the students that I have the paper coming out, hopefully in the next month or so, that looked at how students view the general education at the school and they laughed at it. They're like, I was not serious, you know? So what does it mean for folks who wanna be in the super high paying position across race to not be able to or not be taught or have the foundation to think critically about social structures, right? We think about like, you know, the pipeline black students in STEM, right? Do we think about, okay, what about these black students who go into mechanical engineering and who end up working for Boeing and Northrop and Gump? We let you know all these defense agencies, right? Is it useful? Is it an equity based venture to have black people helping to create missiles that are bombing other countries, right? What does that mean? And I think these are the questions that we need to ask. Is this not some like numbers, it's not some numbers, it's not some representation thing. We really need that. And I think more and more, we wanna see the, you know, the problems of students, of institutions not investing in humanities more and more. And I think we're seeing a lot of it with these, what, NFTs and stuff, like what's, I don't know what's going on, but yeah. We've had some sessions on those and we're still trying to figure them out, but this is, but that's a great call. That's a good, it's a nice defined call. Against the marginalization of the humanities and the social sciences. This is terrific. And we're coming close to the end of the hour. And so if you have questions or topics that we haven't brought up yet, that you'd like to, now is the time before we have to go. And we have a question from Richard Wack from Villanova. Let me put this on the screen. If I can press the correct button. With the news of Judge Kintaji Brown Jackson's elimination of Supreme Court and Vice President Kamala Harris's breakthrough position, how can this momentum be built upon to encourage others? So I think that's a national, federal positions. How can that echo down to a college and university level? That's a great question. I'm curious about how sanitized I should be in my response. I think I was hoping that you'd like. If you, if you follow me on Twitter, you may know my response to this, but I recently tweeted like, representation doesn't really matter, right? And that's a, not a, that's perhaps more, I don't know, a controversial statement, but I think representation matters, but to an extent. I think sometimes we overemphasize representation, right? And that's the point that I think I really want to get at. I mean, we have a lot, more and more we're having black representation in high places, right? But if that representation is not aligned with a politics that is supportive of, you know, working class, poor black people, then I don't see much, you know, power in that. You know, we think about what's going on in Chicago and the mayor of Chicago. A lot of activists across race are like, what's going on? You think about DC, right? And just the gentrification that's going on, the displacement of black people in DC. And that, you know, DC is historically led by black mayors, right? And I'm curious about how many mayors actually care about, you know, the black people from DC. They seem to be catering more towards business interests and, you know, people who are coming in who are going to bring in more money, right? So just because we have a black face in a high place doesn't mean that they're on the same, on a politic that it has a larger black interest in mind. And I see that often and often. So when I see that, I think about, yes, it may provide some type of spiritual or more, or, you know, symbolic abstract value, but I'm also thinking about, okay, what, how can we use this at the bank, right? How is this going to provide material impacts for black people? And I know we're running up on time. I think about Derek Bell's work. He used to work on racial symbols, right? Derek Bell, who led a lot, who did so much work on civil rights and civil rights movements and these cases said that at the end of the, he problematized the Martin Luther King holiday, saying that, you know, at the end of the day, you know, this could be understood as a symbol. And he says, when it comes to black people, all most of us got is symbolic in nature, right? It's a promissory note. It's a bad check. We think about Martin Luther King's work, right? We're giving bad checks. So I look at Kamala Harris, I'm looking at this judge and I'm wondering to what extent are they bad checks, right? Because, you know, we can have these, we have Obama in, you know, in office, right? But what was black wealth during that time, right? What did he do when he had the momentum, you know, when he had moment to support black people, he came out with this, an initiative, not a policy, you know? And this is, you know, yes, it is a critique of Obama, but I'm always wary of black representation if the politics, I'm concerned more about the politics than I am about the representation, but I do want to acknowledge, yes, it does matter, it's helpful to see these people in these powerful positions, but I don't want us to get lost in that. Well, that's a very, very rich answer. And please, be as unsanitized as you like. That was very, very powerful. And that echoes your earlier point too about black students ending up making bombs to kill people or making Facebook operate a little more finely. So that's, we welcome the controversy of this. By the way, everyone in the chat was a discussion about getting recordings of this. We have just about every single forum session upon YouTube and people have thrown the links, so here I'll just make sure you can see this. There's the webpage that takes you to the YouTube playlist, so you can see all of that. I say every one of them that we can, just in case every so often we've had a glitch. We are almost, almost completely out of time. I want to make sure people have, I want to make sure everyone gets a chance to ask one question. We've got just about everybody, but I do want to ask one of you, which is if we could follow your advice really, really effectively with plenty of funding, lots of listening and lots of actual action on the ground, what would a college or university that is majority white, what would it look like if it actually served black students really well? How would it look different? What would it, what kind of ideal should we strive for? So one, enrollment, right, it can be predominantly white, but if it has a 2% black population, I'm saying it's, you're not for, you're not serving black students, right? So I think one, enrollment, I think about two, what courses are offered with, you know, is there a black studies program there, an Africana studies program there, right? And three, do you have these black places on campus? Do you have a black cultural center? Do you have a black residence hall? Four, are you supporting black student organizations? And by that, I mean, monetarily supporting them, encouraging, you know, like saying, hey, we're here to support you monetarily, you know, and then I guess five, you know, I'm not sure what my numbers are, I would say them, but I would say, you know, pay black students, you know, I mean, I'm big on, again, reparations, what can we do to lessen the load for black students? I assume that black students are gonna have to deal with some type of microaggressions and on their day-to-day basis, the least we can do is pay them. So I mean, I think it'd be great if we, you know, we pay, if we have, you know, at least a book scholarship for every black student at the institution, we know you're gonna be dealing with wild stuff in class, this is the least we can do, you know? Again, black student leaders, let's pay black student leaders, we know you're gonna be doing a lot of this work for the university, your tuition is paid for this semester, right? I think that's the least we can do in the circumstances. Those are a lot, that's an agenda, that's a, that's a punch list, a set of action items to go, ready to go, and speaking of ready to go, we have just shot past the end of the hour by a minute. So I'm afraid I need to wrap this up, although I feel like, I feel like we could go on for a great deal of time. Totally. Professor, teach them a kundal, what are the best ways to keep up with you besides getting your book? Is Twitter your name? Twitter is good, you can shoot me an email, my university emails would be available online, I've already responded to those, so yeah, Twitter email. Excellent, excellent, and then in the meantime, I hope you stay warm in the middle of Ohio. We'll do it. And I know you can bring all of the passion that you've shown today to your next project on labor, which we really look forward to seeing. Thank you so much for all of your time and all best of luck. Thank you so much, thank you everyone for coming. Well, thank you indeed. But don't go, friends, we just wanna let you know where things are going for the next few weeks. If you wanna keep talking about these issues, if you wanna keep talking about ways of better improving majority of my institutions, look at our Twitter exchanges on using the hashtag FTTE, or you can follow me, your Shindig events right there. If you'd like to talk more about this still, you can go to my blog, bryanelmsetter.org. If you'd like to think about topics that are coming up, we have a whole series, everything from the climate crisis to web three, public higher education, paying for college, transforming the academy, just go to forum.futureofeducation.us to learn more. If you'd like to look back at our archive of previous sessions, which we'll include this one really soon, just go to tinyurl.com.ftfrchive. And above all, thank you for the terrific questions today, thank you for the great conversation. I really appreciate all of you sharing and being bold and thoughtful, listening and speaking. This is a powerful, powerful, deep, deep topic to dig into, and I'm just delighted to be able to do this with all of you. In the meantime, good luck with March. Take care, work hard, and be safe. See you online next time. Bye-bye.