Noliwe M. Rooks

We asked African-American scholars about race, merit, and belonging. Here’s what they told us.

Five questions faculty members should ask themselves before they weave a recent controversy into their courses.

Whether about Kara Walker or Rihanna, social media provide rare, much-needed forums to opine.

Two black students are accepted into many Ivy League colleges. Noliwe M. Rooks unpacks the backlash.

We tend to want people to just sort of notice how fabulous we are and pay us what they think we are worth.

Far too many of us consider the act of discussing structural racism to be racist in and of itself. It’s a problem in society, and it’s a problem in the academy, too.

In his latest book, Randall Kennedy argues that one kind of discrimination is necessary to grapple with another.

Enrollment gains for black students mask the fact that many of them attend for-profit institutions and graduate with crippling debt, says Noliwe M. Rooks.

We should be less compelled by white people who feel they have been robbed of what they are entitled to, and more concerned by students who suffer racial harassment, writes Noliwe M. Rooks.

In the late 1960s, black studies became a part of American higher education. By 1971 more than 500 programs, departments, and institutes had been founded on four-year college campuses; add in black-studies initiatives in those same years at high schools and community colleges, and the number jumps…