Higher Education Leaders Urged To Recognize U.S. Disparities, Their Impact on the Academy: WASHINGTON – Barack Obama’s presidential election may have convinced some Americans that they’re living in a post-racial society, but societal disparities persist between racial groups and are accentuated in American higher education, said Dr. Ramon Gutierrez, a University of Chicago historian and expert on race, during a keynote address at the annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges and Universities.
Gutierrez’s address, “Talking About Race and Ethnicity in a Post-Racial America,” emphasizing the turbulent history of race relations between the U.S. Supreme Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896 and the Kerner Commission Report of 1968, helped set the tone for the three-day meeting, which has attracted more than 1,800 attendees. With this year’s theme, “The Wit, the Will, and the Wallet,” a number of conference sessions delved into how U.S. higher education confronts social inequities. The Washington-based American Association of Colleges and Universities champions the cause of undergraduate liberal education.
