July 16, 2020

By Thomas A. Parham

Ph.D., President of California State University

Dominguez Hills

 

“Education is the passport to the future; for, tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” These verbal stylings of the late Malcolm X have often served as a mantra for young African American boys, girls, women and men alike, who navigate the challenges of primary, secondary, and higher education in pursuit of their academic dreams and aspirations, as well as careers filled with promise and possibility.

Well, sometimes those dreams do come true, even when one had not planned on a specific outcome. EXTRA, EXTRA: read all about it. Michael Drake, M.D. has just been appointed by the UC Regents to be the next president of the University of California system. His appointment will be effective August 1 of this year. Drake will become the first African American head of the UC system in its 152-year history.

That’s a lot of glass to break in that ceiling, but the shattering of that threshold has reverberated throughout the higher education community, and certainly here in California. I want to join the chorus and shout with joy, even as I bear witness to similar Black excellence continuing to shine in California, and other parts of the nation as well.

Dr. Drake, The Man

Michael Drake is an accomplished physician by training, specializing in Ophthalmology.  He holds an undergraduate degree from Stanford University, and a medical doctorate from UC San Francisco. He is an accomplished scholar and National Academy of Sciences physician, and seasoned administrator.

He is the former vice president for Health Sciences and Health Affairs at the UC Office of the President, former chancellor at UC Irvine, and most recently president at The Ohio State University. But while the degrees and awards speak loudly about what he has done in a stellar career, they do not tell the whole story about who he is.

Dr. Drake is a very principled and transformative leader who is selfless, values driven, personable, politically savvy, visionary, and collaborative. He is constantly in pursuit of excellence, but unlike many institutional leaders, is not moved simply for metrics and ratings sake.

 

Rather, he expects the outcomes produced by the people in the institutions he leads to enhance the quality of people’s lives and experiences. He is a family man who partners with his wife Brenda in everything he does. Her support in turn, is anchored in an intellectually gifted mind, giving and loving heart, and very personable demeanor that is nurturing and caring.

 

Both Brenda and Michael come to this work of facilitating student’s personal and intellectual growth and development with a cultural consciousness that is keenly focused on the legacy they were blessed to inherit, the landscape they have had to navigate to achieve the level of prominence and accomplishments they have, and a broad base of experience that provides the teachable moments that new generations of students, faculty, staff, and senior executives learn from. Indeed, Michael Drake is a renaissance man who is as comfortable in the executive suite as he is a clinical operatory; as composed in a faculty senate meeting as he is delivering a classroom lecture; as sensitive to Black Lives Matter as he is to African American heritage that necessitates his respect for the dignity and humanity of other members of the human family.

Historic Challenges of Black University Leaders

Owing to the belief that increased educational attainment coupled with substantive experience would lend itself to a greater range of choices and options on the educational career ladder, women and men like Michael Drake have engaged in pursuit of higher education degrees and administrative experiences that should position them for higher level positions. Yet, despite the excellence produced, the degrees attained, and the experiences gained, opportunities at the highest level of president, chancellor, and chief executive of colleges and universities have been an elusive prize for all, but a select few over recent decades. That’s what makes Drake’s appointment to lead the entire UC system so remarkable and compelling.

Over a decade ago, research by “Black Issues In Higher Education” in 2007 (Diverse Magazine - https://diverseeducation.com/article/8499/ ), supported this assertion as there were 105 African American presidents at traditionally White institutions, four of whom were about to retire.  As far back as 1996, some ten years earlier, data indicate that the ranks of Black presidents numbered 113. The majority of Black presidents at that time headed two-year institutions, with only thirty-six leading four-year schools. In addition to the chief executives of the 102 historically Black institutions (most of whom are Black), that means approximately 200 institutions out of the roughly 3,800 colleges and universities in the nation — both two-year and four-year — were headed by African Americans.

Unquestionably, data at that time and since then has shown there is plenty of room for improvement in diversifying the ranks of executive leadership. A survey of 1,662 U.S. colleges several years ago found only 6 percent were led by Black presidents, despite the fact that 13.3 percent of the U.S. population is African American. These results mirror findings of a 2012 survey from the American Council on Education (ACE) which was sent to public and private colleges and universities across the U.S., including two-year programs. More recently, in a 2017 study by the American Council on Education, researchers found that individuals who identified as something other than white held just 17 percent of college and university presidencies in 2016, while representing 42 percent of students enrolled in 2015. Among the presidents of color, 36 percent led two-year associate, or two-year, colleges; only 5 percent identified as women of color.

Signs of Progress

 

 

That all seems to have changed of late as major research and regional comprehensive institutions have broken through and continued to shatter their own glass ceilings of racial and ethnic diversity progress that extends beyond student demographic percentages on college and university campuses. Evidence of that phenomenon can be seen among the nation’s largest public university system, as the California State University system, comprising 23 campus, now boasts three African Americans, of which I am blessed to be one who leads the Dominguez Hills campus.

Dr.’s Soraya Coley at California Polytechnic University Pomona, and Tom Jackson at Humboldt State University are the other African American presidents, and one systemwide executive Dr. Loren Blanchard, who serves as executive vice chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs for the CSU system. However, we are not the first Black presidents by any means in California, though our presence in positions of the highest levels of executive leadership has been sporadic at best.

In the California State University (CSU) system for example, which is the largest system of public higher education in the nation, the color line of Black excellence was broken some forty-one years ago, when Dr. James Rosser was appointed president of California State University Los Angeles in 1979. Within the CSU system, which educates nearly 485,000 students each year across its 23 campuses, there were other African American presidential appointments that followed at CSU Stanislaus (Marvelene Styles Hughes), CSU Northridge (Blenda Wilson), CSU Fullerton (Jewell Plummer Cobb, Milton Gordon), CSU Bakersfield (Horace Mitchell), and CSU Dominguez Hills (Herb Carter, Boyce Bowman, James Lyons, Willie Hagan).  In the domain of private colleges, we can point to John Slaughter becoming president of Occidental College in 1988, and Linda Oubr’e being named president of Whittier College in 2018.

Fifteen years ago, it was Dr. Michael Drake who broke the barrier in California’s public research 1 institutions by becoming the first African American to permanently lead a University of California institution when he was appointed Chancellor of the Irvine campus in 2005. He served as Irvine’s chief executive for nine years. Subsequently, he became the first African American appointed to be the President at The Ohio State University, where he served from 2014 until his short-lived retirement in June of this year. In between those years, the UC System chronicled two more milestones, appointing Dr. Gary May as Chancellor of the University of California Davis, and Dr. Michael Brown to serve as systemwide executive vice president and provost under president Janet Napolitano. Well, the UC system has hit the lottery again as the Regents voted this week to name Michael V. Drake, M.D. as its new president.

Across the country, the recent appointment of Darryl Pines to the University of Maryland College Park’s chief post brings to three the number of African American presidents serving the state’s University of Maryland system (Freeman Hrobowski at University of Maryland Baltimore County, and Heidi Anderson at The University of Maryland Eastern Shore (excluding presidents at HBCU’s). In nearby Virginia, the recent appointment of UC Irvine’s Dean of the Samueli School of Engineering Dr. Gregory Washington as President of George Mason University becomes a historic achievement as he in the first African American to hold that post in that university’s history. The naming of Jonathan Holloway to the presidency at Rutgers University New Brunswick becomes a historic first as well, and recently Dr. Lori White (the oldest daughter of famed Black psychologist Dr. Joseph L. White) as the first African American and woman at Depauw University in Indiana follows that trend.

Recent appointments of African American men and women as president, and other senior administrative positions points to an inclination that Boards of Trustees and Regents have begun to initiate a change in their hiring practices. While it is difficult to make precise attribution about why, I suspect that more diverse board compositions, confronting and relaxing unconscious biases, student protests and demonstrations, congruent matches between a candidate's background and an institution’s need, and public pressure may in part account for the trends higher education is now witnessing. It is also worth noting that these individuals identified above are exceptionally well qualified, and bring to their roles as president an impressive blend of academic, co-curricular, and administrative experience. Whatever the reason for the explosion of appointments, it seems clear that the landscape of higher education is changing, becoming more culturally rich, and decidedly Black.

Looking Beyond Desegregating the Presidency

Beyond the historic implications of many of these appointments the nation is now witnessing, higher education has done itself a great service by further opening-up these doors of opportunity for Black people. Indeed, beyond being the beacons of intellectual enlightenment, scientific discovery, knowledge acquisition, innovation, and co-curricular learning, these colleges and universities provide a platform from which African American chief executives can demonstrate their visionary, intellectual, administrative, fiscal, student centered, athletic, and fundraising leadership. These supremely gifted men and women are more than just a single variable increase of a frequency distribution. They allow for an infusion the culturally rich values that characterize a worldview that is often different than their White counterparts bring to their roles.

Expect the presidents/chancellors chronicled above to provide that necessary texture to the policies and practices of the institutions they now lead, and to higher education more broadly. Also, expect Michael Drake’s influence to penetrate throughout the entire 10-campus UC system, as he continues to make his mark on the world of higher education. He is that good; he is that respected; he is that determined, and he is that culturally conscious.

Cautious Reflections

But, being African American in these positions of power and influence, while a celebratory moment for us all, presents challenges of their own, many of which are unique to Black people. The seminal scholar, Asa G. Hilliard III, argued that there was something wrong with an educational system that leaves Black people strangers to themselves, aliens to their culture, oblivious to their condition in America and around the world, and inhuman to their oppressors. And, in the wake of the George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Aubrey murders, Black Lives Matter advocacy, and universities looking to reconcile their contemporary image with a new found recognition of a racist and oppressive past, the burden for addressing those issues in higher education will fall squarely on the shoulders of presidential leaders like President Drake and others. Don’t expect him to flinch.

Ironically, while we celebrate these milestones in Black achievement here, many university African American chief executives will be perceived as “too Black” for some in their institutions and communities, or “not being Black enough,” at some moment in our careers for other cohorts of colleagues and students who expectations about what should change and the pace at which that change should occur will be a point of contention. Added to that will also be the usual issues of shared governance, union demands, budget and fiscal issues, questions of police reforms, enrollment challenges, free speech debates, athletics, faculty recruitments and retention, research productivity, development and fundraising, and adaptations to a health crisis and global pandemic that is changing the landscape of how universities function in this virtual reality.

Each president, including Dr. Drake, will also have to confront the internal dissonance of managing their cultural selves in the midst of institutional legacies and academic cultures that are more Eurocentric in orientation, and oftentimes less supportive of different cultural worldviews. Indeed, I have argued in my previous writings that the central identity question that must be asked and answered is: how does one maintain a sense of cultural integrity in a world that does not support or affirm your humanity as a person of African descent? That can sometimes be a delicate dance for many, but less so for people used to navigating the waters of higher education’s executive suite.

CLOSING

The passport to Michael Drake’s future has been stamped with a measure of intellectual and emotional fortitude, parental love and support, and an uncommon sensibility and personal agency to turn a personal dream into reality, while being comfortable to accept unexpected opportunities that came his way. That allowed him to navigate the terrain of undergraduate education, medical school, residency in ophthalmology, a senior executive position in the University of California system office, a chancellorship at UC Irvine, a presidency at Ohio State, and now being named president of the UC System.  Indeed, his passport book has certainly seen a full range of university experiences, but this latest stamp may be his crowning achievement.

In that way, his journey, while filled with both joy and pain, is a symbol of possibility and potential for so many others who are ready to seize the moment when opportunity presents itself. For now, we welcome him and his spouse and partner, Brenda, home and back to California where opportunities abound and new challenges await. Let’s make sure that he has the support he needs from the community. Afterall, our children’s futures are at stake and he is exactly the right man for the job. Amid the tensions of the moments and the adversities of the day, I suspect that the ancestors and elders are smiling today at Michael Drake’s appointment. We all should be smiling as well.

July 16, 2020

LAWT New Service

 

Congresswoman Maxine Waters (CA-43) issued a statement on Donald Trump’s failure to address the deadly surge in coronavirus cases and invoke the Defense Production Act (DPA) to provide adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers and vulnerable communities: 

“As coronavirus cases and deaths in the United States surge and California, Florida, and Texas emerge as the deadly epicenters of this crisis, it is blatantly obvious that Donald Trump has failed this country in every way possible.

“This week, Los Angeles County set a record for the number of new coronavirus cases in one day – 4,244 – and it’s been reported that California, Texas, and Florida represent one in five of all new coronavirus cases worldwide. Doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers have been sounding the alarm for months about the dire need for N-95 masks, gowns, gloves, and other personal protective equipment (PPE).

Our nursing homes – which represent more than 40 percent of all COVID-19 deaths – have yet to receive the N-95 masks or adequate PPE replenishments that they were promised by the Trump administration months ago, and we have now learned that 20 percent of these facilities have less than a week’s worth supply of PPE. Hospitals in states across the country are running out of emergency room beds and ventilators, and we still don’t have adequate testing.

Now, in the midst of a deadly surge in coronavirus cases, we’re learning from news reports that the Strategic National Stockpile and the Federal Emergency Management Agency have fewer than 900,000 gloves in reserve, which is only 30 percent of the amount requested by state, local, and tribal governments. 

“Instead of a real president, the American people are left to suffer through the repeated failures of an impeached criminal who lacks the knowledge, experience, or common human decency to provide the leadership that our country needs to survive this public health nightmare. Donald Trump is too much of a coward to use his authority to fully invoke the Defense Production Act (DPA) in order to meet the PPE and medical device needs of our healthcare industry and communities.

He’s too insecure to respect the life-saving guidance of Dr. Anthony Fauci, our top infectious disease expert whose approval and trustworthiness ratings are greater than his in the eyes of the American people. He’s too untrustworthy to allow hospitals and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to maintain autonomy in recording COVID-19 cases and patient information, and instead wants them to send the data to his administration cronies. He’s too ignorant to wear a mask, and he’s too incompetent, dangerous, and too much of an international disgrace to serve in office of the presidency for another day.”

July 16, 2020

By Joe Reedy

AP Sports Writer

 

Southern California's professional sports teams compete for advertising dollars and attention from fans but the 11 organizations are joining forces for a new social justice initiative.

The franchises announced Tuesday that they are launching The Alliance: Los Angeles. The five-year partnership's main emphasis will be to provide more resources for underserved Black children. It also aims to address racial injustice while developing educational programs.

Los Angeles Football Club president and co-owner Tom Penn said the first meeting was held May 31, less than a week after George Floyd died in police custody in Minneapolis.

The death of Floyd and other Black people at the hands of police sparked demonstrations in cities across the globe, including Los Angeles.

“Everyone co-signed that we would try to bring some good out of the situation. If not sports, then who?” Penn said. “We expect this program to be a beacon and magnet for others.”

The Alliance – which also includes the Angels, Chargers, Clippers, Dodgers, Ducks, Kings, Galaxy, Lakers, Rams and Sparks – will work closely with Los Angeles' Play Equity Fund and Accelerate Change Together (ACT) Anaheim.

Renata Simril, the president of the Play Equity Fund, said the program's progress will be measured by tracking high school graduation rates, college admission and retention.

Simril said the five-year commitment from teams was important because changes will not happen overnight.

“The next step is to engage community organizations and a cohort of young leaders,” she said. “We are really trying to change systems and engage over the long term. The teams are committed to staying with it.”

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said the work of The Alliance will be in addition to the community work already being done by each franchise. He also expects there will be plenty of participation by players on each team.

“This allows for another vehicle to get into communities. With numbers there are power,” he said.

The Alliance's first event will be a social justice symposium on July 22, which coincides with National Youth Sports Week. 

July 09, 2020

By Melina Abdullah

Contributing Writer

 

“We are the diviners of change!” proclaims Janaya “Future” Khan. Three thousand people … significantly young and Black … fill the massive concrete steps at Los Angeles City Hall, pouring out onto the sidewalk, into the street, extending the length of the block and into Grand Park.

The hotter-than-July sun shines on the faces of Youth Vanguard members who just finished speaking about their recent victory in LAUSD – ousting police from school campuses and cutting their budget by 35%.

To their left is veteran organizer and “Baba” of the movement, Akili, who has been engaged in the struggle since the late 1960s. You can feel the adulation and pride exuding from actor and activist, Kendrick Sampson, who just introduced Future as one of his all-time favorite speakers and comrades.

 

 

Newly inducted President of United Teachers Los Angeles and BLMLA member, Cecily Myart-Cruz, stands among teacher-friends, students, and organizers from Students Deserve. 

She had just given her first speech as UTLA President … a fiery commitment to liberatory education and centering the wellness of Black students. Sister Fouzia Almarou, the mother of #KennethRossJr, dotes on her son and grandson – both 5-year-olds – after having bellowed out the most thorough tongue-thrashings of District Attorney Jackie Lacey imaginable, before the crowd marched from the Hall of Justice, where we initially assembled to City Hall.

I stand back, scan the crowd, rest my eyes on the faces of my three school-aged children, who are all firmly entrenched in the movement, and feel the Spirits of each of the names that we called during libation. Warrior Ancestors seem to dance among us.

The families of those killed by police take a moment to exhale. Alongside the speakers, rotating, volunteer ASL interpreters sign, at the base of the steps non-Black allies hand out cold drinks, snacks, and requisite masks.

A tall man at the center of the crowd intermittently leads chants from a bullhorn between speakers. The crowd erupts in cheers, chants, laughter, and occasional tears together … as if one massive organism.

 

 

 

 

There is so much beauty and power in this space … a space that has grown to the hundreds of thousands for some demonstrations … and, before the murder of #GeorgeFloyd was sometimes limited to just a few dozen.

 

 

Last week, the New York Times pointed to Black Lives Matter as, quite possibly, the largest movement in U.S. history.

Their measure is based on the number of people who have participated in Black Lives Matter protests, especially over the last several weeks. From the beginning, it was our clearly-stated intention to build Black Lives Matter as a mass movement. 

Movement organizers recognized that it is only through large-scale action that the kind of fundamental change necessary for Black people to get free can take shape.

 

We have also learned that there are no shortcuts in this process. 

For the last seven years, Black Lives Matter has worked to end state-sanctioned violence against Black people and struggle forward, in the Black radical tradition, to transform systems that were deliberately and intentionally designed to produce oppressive and deadly outcomes.

 

The movement was birthed in Los Angeles, and built by a fairly small initial collective of visionary and committed Black folks, summoned together by BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors. 

After the initial uprisings that followed the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the murder of our beloved son  #TrayvonMartin, Black Lives Matter members spent the year engaging in political education, smaller demonstrations, artistic and cultural endeavors, and relationship building.

 

 

 

The murder of #MikeBrown was a watershed moment, marking the explosion of Black Lives Matter into a global movement. Organizers with particular skill sets were summoned to Ferguson.

Chapters arose all over the country and the world. Black people, especially young Black people, committed themselves to the struggle. For two years, the movement remained in the headlines … and then, on November 8, 2016, the cameras turned.

 

 

 

 

 

With the election of Donald Trump came the whiting out of Black Lives Matter. Lead organizers went from daily appearances on national news to a refusal by even local outlets to cover the killings of Black people by police and White supremacists or the demonstrations that followed.

 

 

 

 

 

The struggle for Black freedom, though, must continue whether there is media or not, when crowds number in the thousands or just a handful. The work is both visible and invisible; it requires skill, and heart.

It was between 2016 and 2020 that the real work of building Black Lives Matter took shape in earnest.

It was during this period that those for whom this was a momentary phase fell off, counter-organizers were exposed, and those with a real commitment stepped up.

It was in this building phase, that we launched and intensified campaigns ranging from police accountability to #BlackXmas to #JackieLaceyMustGo, and readied ourselves for what was to come.

 

In April and May 2020, Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles pulled together the #BlackLADemands and assembled the #PeoplesBudgetLA coalition. For at least five years, BLMLA had issued the call to #DefundThePolice, to counter the Mayor of L.A.’s budget, which consistently spent more than 50% of the City’s general fund on LAPD.

 

 

 

 

But it was following the excruciating, eight-minute-and-forty-six-second murder of #GeorgeFloyd at the hands of Minneapolis police when the “defund” demand became the clarion call. 

 

 

On May 25, 2020, the world cracked wide open.

Black people, especially, felt viscerally what was meant when we said that “the system of American policing descends from slave-catching,” as the souls of every evil forebear shown through the face of Officer Derrick Chauvin as he defiantly shoved his knee in the neck of our Brother George and held it there.

 

 

As the breath was stolen from George Floyd’s lungs, his Spirit arose, joining Breonna, and Ahmaud, and Sean, and AJ, and Wakiesha, and Kendrec, and Rekia, and Tamir, and Andrew, and Redel, and Michelle, and Oscar, and, and, and … and shook awake all of the Black folks who had grown weary of movement work, and commanded more of non-Black folks who once thought it enough to not be active racists.

The world has cracked wide open.

Black Lives Matter has been doing the work for seven years. We have been disrupting White supremacy and building Black community. We have been doing work that is visible and invisible.

 

 

 

We have been writing, and thinking, and healing, and organizing, and loving, and readying ourselves for this particular moment.

For this movement-moment, for the coming radical change, for the realization of our Ancestors’ wildest dreams.For this chance to transform the world, for this ushering in of Black freedom.

 

The world has cracked wide open.

July 13, 2020, will mark the seventh anniversary of Black Lives Matter.

 

 

Seven years ago, we pledged to build “a movement not a moment,” only imagining this movement-moment, only freedom-dreaming of the victories that are manifesting all around us.

On this seventh anniversary, we continue to step out on faith, with courageous discipline, expansive vision, and immeasurable love for our people, committing ourselves with our whole selves to the struggle and to serving as the diviners of change.