President Ronald Mason Jr., the UDC Board of Trustees and the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) held the CAS Reads Big Spring 2022 lecture on April 7 with Adam Harris to discuss his book, “The State Must Provide: Why America’s Colleges Have Always Been Unequal—and How to Set Them Right.” The event was held at the Van Ness campus’ Student Center.
Harris is a staff writer at the Atlantic, where he covers education and national politics. He was previously a reporter atthe Chronicle of Higher Education, where he covered federal education policy and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). Before joining The Chronicle, he worked at ProPublica and has been a National Fellow at New America. He was named to the 2021 Forbes 30 Under 30 list, and his writing has appeared on the BBC, Bleacher Report and EBONY Magazine.
“It is a really great time to talk about HBCUs because there is a reinsurance of attention to these institutions,” Harris said. “It’s always interesting to come to one and meet with students, faculty, staff and general members of the community about how to move education forward.”
Harris’s book is often been described as “the definitive chronicle of higher education’s failed attempts at equality.” Told through a vivid cast of characters, “The State Must Provide” examines why “higher education remains broken today.”
“CAS Reads Big was excited to partner with the Office of the President and University Board of Trustees to welcome Adam Harris to UDC,” CAS Dean Dr. April Massey said. “Mr. Harris engaged attendees in a timely and comprehensive discussion of the historic and systematic underfunding of the Nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Weaving personal history with detailed research captured in his book, Mr. Harris described the impacts of over 150 years of financial inequities, the implications of those funding deficits on the success and viability of our institutions and the sustainability of our campuses as resilient and nurturing communities of possibility despite this.”
Harris sheds a spotlight on Black Americans who fought hard for an education, such as Lloyd Gaines, who was denied admission to the University of Missouri School of Law in 1936. Gaines ultimately took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court and became a prominent civil rights figure before mysteriously disappearing in 1939. A decade later, Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher became the first Black student to be admitted to the University of Oklahoma law school in 1949. She would go on to graduate and become a lawyer, but only after challenging the state’s segregation laws.
During the lecture, Harris spoke about how throughout much of the 20th century, presidents of all-white universities did everything in their power alongside lawmakers to keep segregation alive, sending Black students to neighboring states to finish their education instead of educating them at home. In 1935, Missouri paid to send 32 Black students across state lines for graduate and professional experience. A year later, Kentucky appropriated $5,000 to send Black graduate students out of state, cutting funding to one of its Black colleges to make up the difference.
Several audience members had follow-up questions and comments for the author, including Brent Thigpen, a UDC engineering student. Thigpen asked how he could help make UDC a stronger institution. Harris advised him to become a staunch advocate.
“The more people advocate for the institution, the more it will help. Find the things that set your university apart and publicize that,” Harris said.
Thigpen, a sophomore, stated that he would never consider attending another university. “Being a student at UDC feels like home,” he said. “It just feels right—it feels like I belong. I can be myself here, and I want to help in any way I can.”
Harris can relate to Thigpen. His family attended an HBCU, as did he, having attended Alabama A&M.
“I loved attending a historically Black university,” Harris said. “There is so much diversity within these schools, which is important, too. Grouping together out of desire rather than necessity is a very different thing.”
According to Harris, “Black colleges, many of them public, remain woefully underfunded. Even though they account for 3% of all four-year institutions, they educate 80% of Black judges, 50% of Black lawyers and doctors and 25% of Black science, technology, math and engineering graduates. State governments and the federal government have a responsibility to fix this inequity.”
When asked whether he’s optimistic about the future of Black education, Harris said that he must be.
“As the father of two young children, the optimist in me wants to believe,” he said. “There have been consistent knocks on the doors generation after generation. The optimist in me wants to believe that these doors will eventually be knocked down.”
Celebrating more than a decade of welcoming authors to the University, CAS Reads Big brings contemporary voices on issues of education, health, history, culture, economics, and politics to our campus and invites University students, faculty, staff and community partners to engage with them in intimate conversations that honor diverse expertise and perspectives.
To learn more about Adam Harris’s work, including his second book, “Is This America?” visit his website.