University of Michigan Bicentennial: 1817-2017

In 2017, the University of Michigan (U-M) will celebrate its bicentennial--200 years of teaching, scholarship, and service. Established in 1817 in Detroit as the Catholepistemiad or University of Michigania, U-M is the state's oldest university. In 1837, the school moved from Detroit to its present-day location, Ann Arbor. Since its founding, U-M has become one of the premier research universities in the world and boasts the largest living alumni in the world (over 500,000). As of 2016, the university has 19 schools and colleges, 260 degree programs, and 103 of its graduate programs ranked in the top 10. Its official colors are maize and blue, and its motto is "Go Blue!".

The university is historically known for its student activism, popular stop for U.S. presidents and important figures, and its role in defending affirmative action at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 (though Michigan voters in 2006 approved restrictions on the use of race in college admissions in Proposal 2). As a proud U-M alumna, U-M also boasts the best graduate programs in my fields: higher education administration and social work. To my delight, the current U-M president, Mark S. Schlissel, has picked diversity, equity and inclusion as well as poverty solutions as two of his five areas of focus in his administration.

Browse the links below for more information about the U-M Bicentennial:

• PSA kicks off U-M bicentennial with a historic look back
• Welcome to the University of Michigan's Bicentennial (Office of the President)
• Office of the President's Message on the U-M Bicentennial
• Official Planned Celebrations in 2017 (University Record)
• News Coverage regarding the U-M Bicentennial (University Record)
• 200 Years and Counting (Michigan Today)
• U-M Bicentennial YouTube Channel
• The University of Michigan, 1817-2017 (Millennium Project)
• The University of Michigan Teach-Out Series

Five Bicentennial Symposia

• 1817: Nation Building in the Old Northwest and the Making of the University of Michigan
• 1877: Reconstructing the University of Michigan
• 1917: Michigan's Great War and Its Aftermath
• World War II: Consequences of Mobilization
• 1967: Shock Waves — The Detroit Rebellion and its Reverberations

DetNews: Detroit’s chance of netting major retailers improving

Something amazing is happening in Detroit. This could be the sign of a real renaissance. The local newspaper reported that major retailers, who historically shunned the inner city, may expand into the city. Detroit suffers as a food (or major store) desert, an urban area in which it is difficult to buy affordable or good-quality fresh food. Unsurprisingly, most food deserts are located in predominately black neighborhoods with the most need for access to healthy, nutritious food. Mom and pop stores, which are run predominately by Arab and Asian immigrants, dominate the grocery store market in Detroit. Mom and pop (and dollar) stores have limited selection and more likely to serve unhealthy food. City residents who desire more options must travel to the suburbs to shop at a major retailer with wider selection of goods such as Target or Costco. For city residents who lack a personal vehicle, this poses as a serious limitation. Detroiters deserve the same access and availability of stores as their suburban neighbors. Detroit needs more major retailers -- I welcome this fabulous news!

Detroit may be near the tipping point in getting major retailers like Target and Kroger to open in the greater downtown area.

In most cities, such stores are commonplace. In Detroit, every type of major national retailer – supermarkets, department stores, movie theaters, restaurants – started to vanish from the city limits more than 60 years ago. When residents began to move out of Detroit, big retalers followed them.

Even now, a Home Depot (one store), a Kroger (no stores) or a Starbucks (eight stores) are rare in the 142-square-mile city limits.

But the greater downtown area – the central business district, Midtown, Corktown, Eastern Market – has seen a recent wave of new residents and new specialty stores, including some chains like Whole Foods in Midtown and Nike downtown.

The Flint, Michigan Water Crisis

As a former Detroiter who now lives in Washington DC, my heart cries out for the residents of Flint. The blame lies at the incompetent state officials who prioritized cutting costs over providing healthy water to the people. Though the Obama administration announced $80 million in federal aid to the city of Flint, please spread the word about the crisis in Flint because the water is still unsafe to use. Let's be honest -- this preventable tragedy is an example of environmental racism where leadership is indifferent to the deplorable conditions in which poor and minority residents live. State officials would have never provided polluted water to wealthy communities.

From Diversity, Inc:

The city of Flint, with a population of nearly 100,000, is majority African-American — in fact, at 57 percent, its Black population is more than three times the national average. Additionally, more than 41 percent of residents live beneath the poverty line — nearly three times the national average.

The lead contamination occurred after the state decided to separate Flint’s water system from Detroit’s water line in spring 2014 as a cost-saving measure, switching Flint’s water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River — which already had a bad reputation as a polluted water source. A class-action lawsuit alleges the state Department of Environmental Quality did not treat the water for corrosion, in accordance with federal law, and the improperly treated water from the Flint River allowed lead to leach from the pipes into the water supply.

From the Detroit Free Press:

In Flint, where lead-poisoned water has sparked international outcry, the image of Sincere Smith, his skin covered by severe rashes his mother believes are the result of bathing in the contaminated water, has become a symbol of the city's suffering.

UPDATE (02/24/2016):Ongoing Coverage of Flint Water Crisis (NBC News) and How to Prevent the Next Flint (The Atlantic>

UPDATE (02/20/2016): What e-mails have shown us about Flint water crisis and Timeline: How Flint's water crisis unfolded and Jesse Jackson in Flint: 'It’s time to fight back' (Detroit Free Press)

Related content in TIME Magazine and the New York Times:

• See What Flint’s Poisoned Water Looks Like (TIME)
• Photographing Flint’s Water Crisis From the Inside (TIME)
• Go Behind TIME’s Flint Water Crisis Cover (TIME)
• As Water Problems Grew, Officials Belittled Complaints From Flint (The New York Times)
• A Question of Environmental Racism in Flint (The New York Times)
• Depraved Indifference Toward Flint (The New York Times)
• Michigan Gave State Employees Purified Water as It Denied Crisis, Emails Show (The New York Times)

Amid Deplorable Conditions of Detroit Public Schools, Teachers Stage Sickouts

Like the toxic water situation in Flint, Detroit is facing its own crisis. A decade of bad decision-making, privatization of services (e.g., maintenance and transportation), and emergency financial managers has not stopped the declining student enrollment, corruption (as with the federal indictment of ex-Chicago Public Schools superintendent and former DPS academic and accountability officer, Barbara Byrd-Bennett), and mounting debt in Detroit Public Schools (DPS). The school system is so inundated with debt that it lacks funding to focus on repairs to aging school buildings. Years of neglect and delayed maintenance has created a toxic situation where students and teachers are exposed daily to dangerous elements: water leaks, mold, falling ceiling tile, exposed electrical wiring, dead rodents, and other poor conditions. Students cannot use the gym because it is unsafe to use. Students have to wear coats in their classrooms because there is no heat in their building. Yet, the state leadership continues to be indifferent towards poor and minority children learning in inhumane classroom settings.

From Diversity, Inc:

Teachers in Detroit have been protesting the deplorable conditions of their schools and on Wednesday staged their biggest “sick-out,” where teachers refused to work to bring attention to the matter. This forced 88 of the city’s 97 public schools to close, according to the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) Facebook page.

Some of the problems schools face include significantly overpopulated classrooms, leaky ceilings, mildew, broken heaters, warped floors, bugs and rats. In addition to the poor building conditions, teachers are also protesting cuts in salaries and increased health care expenses.

Like Flint, Detroit is also a majority-Black city, with 82.7 percent of its population being Black. This greatly contrasts with the overall population of Michigan, which is 14.2 percent Black, as well as the U.S. Black population of 12.7 percent.

Related content:

• The Emergency Manager Who Used to Oversee Flint, Michigan, Just Resigned From Detroit’s Struggling Public Schools (Slate)
• Teachers union says DPS blocked its health inspectors (Detroit Free Press)
• 'We are failing them': Detroit teachers demand fix to 'hazardous' school (CNN)
• Students stay home as 'sick-outs' continue in Detroit Public Schools (CNN)
• DPS sickouts put spotlight on a district in free fall (Michigan Radio)
• How bad are conditions in Detroit public schools? This appalling. (The Washington Post)
• Detroit teacher ‘sickout’ was a call for attention and help (Bridge Magazine)

Michigan Radio: In fight against Detroit unemployment, study finds "there is no silver bullet"

Detroit suffers from a high unemployment rate for a variety of reasons. I will focus on the distribution of jobs, in which the majority are located in the suburbs. Some suburbs do not have bus routes because a state law allows suburbs to "opt out" of bus service in their community. This creates a haphazard situation for people who rely on public transportation. If there is no bus service in the location of the employer, then the job is not accessible to the person who is most needy for employment. For example, this Detroit man used to walk 21 miles to get to work because he relied on public transportation in the region. This kind of situation is utterly unheard of in other metropolitan areas. But it is not unusual for anyone living in a car-dependent state like Michigan. Unfortunately, there is no regional support for a sustainable regional mass-transit system in Detroit.

From Michigan Radio:

A new study finds there are many challenges to Detroit residents accessing job opportunities.

The report, Detroit’s Untapped Talent: Jobs and On-Ramps Needed, was commissioned by JP Morgan Chase and Company and was compiled by Corporation for a Skilled Workforce.

Jeannine La Prad helped prepare the report.

La Prad says the Detroit unemployment rate is chronically twice that of the statewide unemployment rate. She found that factor has been compounded by an insufficient number of jobs in Detroit, a mismatch between the skills and educational requirements for what jobs are available, and a lack of support structures like childcare and reliable transportation.

Related content:

• Detroit Skills Gap Report (JP Morgan Chase & Company)
• Detroit unemployment remains more than twice level of state, nation (Michigan Chronicle)
• Youth Unemployment in Michigan is At An All-Time High (WDET)

Daisy Elliott, Detroiter behind civil rights law, dies

From The Detroit News:

Daisy Elliott, an African-American civil rights advocate and former Michigan representative who helped push through a landmark law aimed at protecting against racial bias as well as other forms of discrimination, has died at age 98, friends and family announced late Tuesday.

The Detroiter spent 18 years with the Michigan House of Representatives, becoming “an effective and eloquent civil rights advocate, especially for workers, education, senior citizens, women, and minorities,” relatives said in a statement. But she perhaps was best known for authoring and co-sponsoring the historic Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act.

The Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act is Michigan's anti-discrimination law. Passed in 1976, it prohibits discrimination on the basis of "religion, race, color, national origin, age, sex, height, weight, familial status, or marital status" in employment, housing, education, and access to public accommodations. The law is named for its two primary sponsors, Daisy Elliott, a Democrat from Detroit, and Melvin L. Larsen, a Republican from Oxford. It was signed into law by Michigan Governor William Milliken on January 13, 1977 and went into effect on March 31, 1977.

Freep: Concentrated poverty spikes in Metro Detroit communities

Metro Detroit has not recovered well from the Great Recession of 2007-2010. The Southeast Michigan region has more concentrated poverty than any period in history. From the Detroit Free Press:

Concentrated poverty has exploded in metro Detroit over the past 15 years, especially among minority groups, according to a new report.

In Wayne County, half of all its residents who are poor now live in areas of high concentration of poverty, the second-highest rate in the U.S. In Detroit, the number of census tracts where more than 40% of people are in poverty more than tripled, from 51 to 184. And the high concentrations of poverty are now pushing out to Detroit suburbs such as Warren, Dearborn, Oak Park and Southfield.

In Wayne County, the percentage of African Americans who are poor living in areas of high poverty jumped from 18% in 2000 to 58% in 2013, says the report by the Century Foundation. That's the second-highest percentage in the U.S., after metro Syracuse, N.Y. Nationally, the figure is 25.2%.

Related article: Census bureau: Detroit is poorest big city in U.S. (Detroit News)

Detroit Free Press: Is a college degree a lost cause these days?

Policymakers are debating whether a liberal arts education or skills-based training for high-demand jobs is the future of postsecondary education in the United States. Most pundits agree that a liberal arts degree no longer cuts it in today’s global economy. But is this viewpoint really true? Brian Dickerson asks the readers to consider these questions:

But should a perfect match between employers’ needs and graduates’ skills be the ultimate objective of higher education in Michigan? Or, to put it another way: When is training workers for specific jobs the responsibility of colleges, universities and taxpayers, and when is it a cost that should be borne mostly, or exclusively, by employers themselves?

Fareed Zakaria, author of In Defense of Liberal Education, argues that favoring job-specific training over a broad-based curriculum (keyword: well-rounded) is not only shortsighted and “un-American.”

The solution is not that more students need to major in marketing or engineering, Zakaria, argues, “but that their liberal education should be more structured and demanding,” with greater emphasis on reading and writing.

Zakaria, a native of India who emigrated to the U.S. to attend Yale University, also warns that “Americans should be careful before they try to mimic Asian educational systems, which are still oriented around memorization and test-taking.” He credits the Asian model for generating impressive test scores, but adds that it’s “not conducive to thinking, problem-solving or creativity” — the skills that have allowed American workers to maintain their productivity edge.

Robert Reich: The Bankruptcy of Detroit and the Division of America

Robert Reich--economist, professor, and activist--published a grim blog post about what happens if Americans continue to segregate by income and place. When cities lack a mixture of incomes and become increasingly poor, city services and quality of living decline. Detroit is ground zero for that reality--when the city residents, mostly poor and elderly communities of color, must deal with inadequate services while wealthier white Americans have the luxury to ignore social problems.

Detroit is the largest city ever to seek bankruptcy protection, so its bankruptcy is seen as a potential model for other American cities now teetering on the edge.

But Detroit is really a model for how wealthier and whiter Americans escape the costs of public goods they’d otherwise share with poorer and darker Americans.

.

Related Content: A Foreclosure Conveyor Belt - The Continuing Depopulation of Detroit

Schlissel: University of Michigan needs plan to increase campus diversity

Good news for black students and advocates who demand transformative change in the compositional diversity of the student body. For too long, the black student population at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, the flagship public university, has hovered dangerously around 4 percent, which is below the state's black population at 14 percent. From The Detroit News:

University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel says he will ask his 19 deans to come up with plans to diversify their departments as part of a measurable effort to make the campus more diverse.

And that diversity goes beyond race and ethnicity, he said.

"The reason why it's so darn important — beyond the question of being fair to all the citizens that we serve here as a public university — is we cannot be academically excellent without being diverse," Schlissel told The Detroit News in an interview Friday. "So much of the learning that goes on here comes with engaging one another."

Schlissel said he plans to develop a strategy aimed at re-energizing the university's efforts to diversify the student body, faculty and the staff.

Part of that strategy will include asking the university's deans next month to come up with diversity plans. A baseline will be established to measure the current state of each college.

Foundations think out of box to aid Detroit

In the city of Detroit, major foundations -- Kresge, Community Foundation, Kellogg, just to name a few -- have agreed to take on greater risk in projects that need major investment -- a light-rail system and tackling blight for instance. This is an unprecedented role for the foundations, who traditionally engage in more low-key, behind-the-scenes, and specific social issues. As a native Detroiter, this news gives me hope that the revitalization of Detroit will continue to progress with great success.

Foundations are giving differently in Detroit, in a manner unseen in other American cities. And the $366 million "grand bargain," is a prime example of that.

It's philanthropy's biggest calling and its biggest collaboration in Detroit history, credited as the cornerstone in the city's bankruptcy.

The joint agreement by 12 foundations, in which private funds as well as $195 million from the state and $100 from the Detroit Institute of Arts, will be used to shore up city pensions and protect the art collection from creditors.

Freep: The State of Charter Schools in Michigan - Corruption, Insider Dealings, and More

The Detroit Free Press has released a special investigation report on the state of charter schools in Michigan. Since the early 1990s, public charter schools have spread across the state as a solution to provide options for low-income and minority children attending failing schools. Michigan also has more charter schools operated by for-profit companies than any state in the country. As a result, for-profit educational management companies care only about the bottom-line. Until 2012, the state legislature refused to create a system of efficiency and accountability that would have prevented scams, corruption, insider dealings, nepotism ("family and friend plan"), tax evasion, and other illegal/questionable tactics. Click on the infographic below for the overview.

Michigan Today: The Negro-Caucasian Club

The Michigan Today, a newsletter for U-M alumni, published a special article about the history of black-white relations at the University of Michigan. While U-M today sees itself as a champion for diversity and inclusion, it wasn't always the case in the early twentieth century. Rather, it perpetuated a racist campus climate.

The first two African-American students had been admitted to U-M in 1868. But only a handful followed, and by the 1920s, blacks still comprised just a tiny fragment of the student body. By University practice and informal understandings, they lived in a segregated sphere, joining white students only in classrooms.

In that era only women lived in University dormitories – but not the six or seven black women enrolled at U-M. They lived in a boarding house arranged by the University. African-American men lived in either of two black fraternity houses, Kappa Alpha Psi or Omega Psi Phi, or boarded with black families. They were not served at the Michigan Union, nor were they allowed into University swimming pools or University-sponsored dances.

...

The faculty senate’s Committee on Student Affairs recognized the group as an official student organization for only one year, and only on two conditions: It must drop its stated purpose of working “for the abolition of discrimination against Negroes,” and “the name of the University of Michigan shall not be used in connection with the activities of the Club.”

USA Today: Segregation still widespread in U.S. schools, report says

According to USA Today, American public schools are re-segregating. Furthermore, it is no longer only a black-and-white issue.

Black and Latino students are more likely to attend schools with mostly poor students, while white and Asian students are more likely to attend middle-class schools, according to a report released Thursday by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA.

In New York, California and Texas, more than half of Latino students are enrolled in schools that are 90% minority or more. In New York, Illinois, Maryland and Michigan, more than half of black students attend schools where 90% or more are minority, the report shows. Latinos are now the largest minority in public schools.

Black student attendance at majority-white schools steadily increased since the civil rights era but has been on the decline since the early 1990s. In 2011, only 23% of black students attended a majority white school -- the same percentage as in 1968, according to the report.

For more information, check out these articles:

• Schools Increasingly Segregated for Blacks and Latinos 60 Years after Landmark Case (FOX Latino)
• US schools largely re-segregated 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education (Minnesota Post)

U.S. Supreme Court Backs Michigan on Affirmative Action State Ban

In a 6-2 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the state constitutional ban on affirmative action in public institutions in the state of Michigan. This is a loss for the future of racial equality in American higher education.

WASHINGTON — In a fractured decision that revealed deep divisions over what role the judiciary should play in protecting racial and ethnic minorities, the Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a Michigan constitutional amendment that bans affirmative action in admissions to the state’s public universities.

The 6-to-2 ruling effectively endorsed similar measures in seven other states. It may also encourage more states to enact measures banning the use of race in admissions or to consider race-neutral alternatives to ensure diversity.

States that forbid affirmative action in higher education, like Florida and California, as well as Michigan, have seen a significant drop in the enrollment of black and Hispanic students in their most selective colleges and universities. Continue reading the main story Related in Opinion

In five separate opinions spanning more than 100 pages, the justices set out starkly conflicting views. The justices in the majority, with varying degrees of vehemence, said that policies affecting minorities that do not involve intentional discrimination should be decided at the ballot box rather than in the courtroom.

For more extensive coverage on this ruling, please browse the links below:

• Colleges Seek New Paths to Diversity After Court Ruling (The New York Times)
• Answers on Affirmative Action Depend on How You Pose the Question (The New York Times)
• The Supreme Court deals a blow to affirmative action (The Washington Post)
• 5 takeaways from affirmative-action ruling (POLITICO)
• Supreme Court Upholds Bans on Racial Preferences in College Admissions (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
• How Has Mich.’s Ban on Affirmative Action Affected Minority Enrollment? (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
• U.S. Supreme Court upholds Michigan's ban on affirmative action in college admissions (The Ann Arbor News)
• Supreme Court's affirmative action ruling prompts passionate reaction on both sides of issue (The Ann Arbor News)
• Affirmative action ruling: AG Schuette calls decision 'monumental' and victory for 'citizens of Michigan' (The Ann Arbor News)
• Supreme Court's affirmative action ruling 'blindly ignores biases,' says Detroit congressman (The Ann Arbor News)
• Supreme Court shuts door on affirmative action in Michigan: What's next for U-M? (The Ann Arbor News)
• What we have lost because of Michigan's affirmative action ban (guest column) (The Ann Arbor News)
• Rochelle Riley: High court only deals with one side of race issue in admissions ruling (Detroit Free Press)
• Stephen Henderson: I am affirmative action (Detroit Free Press)
• Editorial: Michigan must forge new path to equal opportunity (Detroit Free Press)
• Schuette: Supreme Court 'made the right call' on affirmative action (Detroit Free Press)
• Nancy Kaffer: After affirmative action ruling, what now? (Detroit Free Press)
• Laura Berman: Affirmative action ruling jeopardizes Michigan's progress against inequality (The Detroit News)
• Affirmative action ruling may push more state votes to limit race considerations (The Detroit News)
• Michigan's college admissions fight far from over (The Detroit News)
• Matthew Gaertner: Next Chapter for Affirmative Action (InsideHigherEd)
• The New York Times Coverage on Affirmative Action

Watch Obama's Speech on Raising the Minimum Wage at the University of Michigan

President Obama arrived today at the University of Michigan to promote his plan to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 and to criticize the Republican's opposition to the minimum wage issue. Watch the full speech below:



Related Articles:

• Obama's visit to Ann Arbor to discuss minimum wage is brief but memorable (The Ann Arbor News)
• Obama: No full-time worker should raise a family in poverty (The Detroit News)
• Obama calls GOP's budget a 'stinkburger' (Washington Post)

New Detroit Study: Economic segregation across racial lines is real in the metro region

A report released by New Detroit, a non-profit formed by business and political leaders in the aftermath of the 1967 riots to help bridge the racial divide in the Detroit metropolitan region, showed there are significant racial gaps in education and income, with Latinos and African-Americans lagging behind whites and Asian-Americans. The data is based on 2007 to 2011 U.S. Census figures. You can access the full report here.

In the city of Detroit, 56% of Latino adults don’t have a high school degree, the highest percentage among racial and ethnic groups in the tri-county region. In contrast, 76% of Asian-American adults in Oakland County have a college degree, the highest rate in the region.

There’s also an income gap across racial lines. In Oakland County, 25% of Asian-Americans make more than $150,000 a year, the highest among all groups in the region. An additional 22% of Asian-Americans in the county make between $100,00 to $150,000. Whites in Oakland County were the second wealthiest group in the region, with 16% of them making more than $150,000.

In contrast, 44% of African-Americans in the city of Detroit make less than $25,000, the highest percentage among racial groups in Wayne, Macomb, and Oakland counties. About 40% of Native Americans and 32% of Latinos in Wayne County make less than $25,000.

The report also showed that while Detroit’s population is 84% black, 56% of people who work in the city are white while 39% are African-American. The data shows that many African-Americans in the city of Detroit are commuting to the suburbs for their jobs.

U-M: Over 1,000 Attend the United Coalition for Racial Justice Speak Out! Event

I provide below links of local and national coverage of the United Coalition for Racial Justice's SPEAK OUT! sit-in at the University of Michigan. Over 1,000 faculty, students, staff, alumni, and guests attended the event to hear the keynote speaker (Dr. Barbara Ransby, former U-M graduate student and organizer of the Black Action Movement in 1987), share their minority experiences and protest the lack of racial diversity on campus. You can also access the UCRJ's viewpoint (February 24, 2014) of campus climate here.

• All-night sit-in at the Ugli addresses the campus racial climate (Michigan Daily)
• U-M students hold all-night protest of racial climate (Detroit Free Press)
• U. of Michigan students to protest what they say is low minority enrollment, poor racial climate (WDIV Detroit)
• U-M students hold all-night protest for racial diversity (Fox News Detroit)
• 1,000-plus flock to University of Michigan 'Speak Out' to share minority experience, support activism (Ann Arbor News)
• How A Twitter Hashtag Sparked A Push For Diversity At The University Of Michigan (Huffington Post)
• The University of Michigan wants more black students (Michigan Radio)
• Black students 'feel silenced' as U-M president publicly reaffirms commitment to diversity (Ann Arbor News)
• Colorblind Notion Aside, Colleges Grapple With Racial Tension (The New York Times)
• Share Your Experience with Racism on Campus (The New York Times Blog: The Lede)
• In Diversity Gap at Michigan Flagship, 
Signs of a Lost Public Mission (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
• Being Black at Michigan (Michigan Today)

Sign the petition: University of Michigan -- Support Your Black Students

Today, a black alumnus from the University of Michigan launched an online petition to support the Being Black at Michigan (#BBUM) campaign and the Black Student Union's list of demands to improve African American enrollment at the University of Michigan. In November, the BBUM campaign received national attention regarding their personal experiences (positive but mostly negative) at the University of Michigan. The low black enrollment (4.1% as of Fall 2013!) has sparked disappointment and fueled protest. Black students expressed feelings of alienation, marginalization, invisibility, and the need to prove that they deserve to be at U-M even though Proposition 2 (2006) banned the use of race and gender in college admissions and state hiring. IF U-M truly wants to sustain its commitment to diversity, then it must take appropriate actions within the law to address the claims of Michigan's black student population. Sign the petition and share it with your friends and allies! #moveblueforward

My name is Lester Spence. I am an Associate Professor of Political Science and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University. I received my undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan in 1991, and my PhD from the University of Michigan in 2001.

I worked hard for both of those degrees. But contrary to stories of “individual initiative,” I know my degrees didn’t come from my hard work alone. Student protest created the Comprehensive Studies Program that accepted me in 1987. Student protest created the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies where I took many of my classes, where I wrote the undergraduate paper in 1989 that led to my first book 22 years later. Student protest led to the hires of every single letter writer I had for grad school. Black students (and their allies) risked their academic careers. Risked their academic careers so years later people like me could find themselves and their purpose. Risked their careers to force the university to live up to its highest principles and values.

When I saw that black students at Michigan were forced to protest again, forced to issue demands protesters issued almost thirty years ago, I couldn’t stand by silently. We know what they’re risking. We know what they’re fighting for.

Our petition accomplishes two goals: First, the petition tells students they aren’t alone. They have received hate mail and threats. This in addition to the stress they’re already undergoing as students. Second, the university recently named Dr. Mark Schlissel (current Brown University provost) its next President. This petition tells incoming President Schlissel and other university officials that the issue of racial and economic equity are critical concerns they should not ignore.

The University of Michigan, like all prestigious institutions, is sensitive to public pressure. Adding your name will turn up the heat on university leadership and further enable students organizing for a Michigan that truly represents the leaders and best.

Tell the University of Michigan that it’s time they stand up and support student demands for more racial diversity and more economic support for poorer students.

Related Links

• Black Student Union at U-M: Change needs to happen
• U-M to boost racial diversity following social media outpouring
• Online petition urges University of Michigan to act on black students' demands
• Black Student Union, U-M officials meet to talk solutions to students' diversity concerns
• Being Black at Michigan (Michigan Today)

Detroit News: Minority enrollment mixed at Michigan universities under affirmative action ban

The news isn't good for racial minorities in Michigan. From The Detroit News:

Since Michigan’s ban on affirmative action in higher education and government was passed in 2006, there are more students of color at the state’s smaller universities but fewer at the larger universities and in the three largest medical schools, according to a report unveiled Friday.

The study also showed state hiring of women and people of color has been reduced in the wake of the 2006 voter-approved constitutional amendment, which is being challenged before the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices are scheduled to hear arguments next month. Commissioned by the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion, the report is the first to set a baseline and measure the impact of the law, which also is in place in five other states.