Related video follows story

Above: Medical students and resident physicians gather on Tulane Avenue near the medical school in support of Black lives on June 11. The group observed a moment of silence for African Americans who have experienced racially motivated injustices. (Photo by Paula Burch-Celentano)

The George Floyd killing by police in Minneapolis this spring — captured on cellphone video — triggered what may be the largest and most widespread protests in U.S. history.

“When you are actually seeing it, the emotions are right there,” said Carolyn Barber-Pierre, assistant vice president for student affairs and namesake of the Center for Intercultural Life. “It’s having an effect, not just on marginalized communities. Now everybody’s seeing and feeling it.”

Student activists have always led the way for social change through their demands for accountability, but now they have a different level of sophistication and awareness that Barber-Pierre said is new.

“I’ve been inspired to stay because of our students,” she said. “I try to give them a sense of home away from home in creating safe and brave spaces, programs and opportunities that reflect their culture, their identities, so that they can thrive in this institution.”

The challenge is to continue to change and “make this place the place we all want it to be, a place where all students can come here and achieve the possibilities that they’ve always dreamed about.”

A Plan for Racial Equity

In response to the events of the summer, Tulane President Michael A. Fitts announced a new plan for promoting diversity, racial equity and inclusion at Tulane. 

“The historical significance of this moment must be underscored,” said Fitts. “Each of us is challenged to address our behaviors, practices and systems.”

Some of the elements of the plan, such as a required course on Race and Inclusion for undergraduates and the Presidential Commission on Race and Tulane Values, had already been established; they are now being enhanced. The commission, for example, has been renamed the Presidential Commission on Racial Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, with the goal to gain as much participation and as many perspectives as possible from across the university. Other efforts are new or more sharply focused, such as increased support for marginalized students, increasing staff diversity and a new Health Equity Institute, led by School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine Dean Thomas LaVeist. [See “Health Equity” on page 28.]

An essential component of Fitts’ plan is for more community discussion. “I believe the most successful efforts in creating positive change begin by listening,” he said.

Vulnerability and Resilience

One faculty member to whom Fitts has listened is Michael Cunningham, professor of psychology and associate provost for graduate studies and research.

Cunningham appreciates the priority Fitts and other university leaders have given to the grassroots activism of students.

“Things have changed dramatically from when I first started in 1996,” said Cunningham.
 
Cunningham said when he was “young and slim” and the first Black person hired in the psychology department, he was more than once mistaken for a student-athlete as he walked across campus.
 
Cunningham recalled, “Somebody said, ‘Oh, are you new here?’ and I said, ‘Oh, yes.’ And they said, ‘Oh, you should try out for the baseball team.’”

That kind of stereotyping, while maybe not intentional, amounts to a “microaggression,” a petty slight that as a single event may be merely irritating. But microaggressions, one after another, can pile up.
 

“That type of microaggression stuck with me,” Cunningham said. “That could have been me walking down the street because people don’t look at me and say, ‘Tulane University professor.’ They see me as a Black man, and they get afraid of who I am, instead of trying to understand who I am and my true, authentic self.”

In his scholarly research, Cunningham studies the process of resilience in African American youth, particularly young men and boys, who have been exposed to adversity — “and then do better than expected in terms of outcomes.” 

“People who are resilient have some significant person in their life,” said Cunningham. That could be a parent, uncle, aunt, grandparent, coach, teacher, peer, mentor — someone like Carolyn Barber-Pierre — or an academic adviser.

In addition to holding faculty appointments in psychology and Africana studies, Cunningham is associate provost for graduate studies and research in the Office of Academic Affairs. In the future, he’d like to see more “minoritized” students encouraged to apply for postgraduate opportunities. He noted that between 35% and 45% of all students at Tulane are in the university’s graduate and professional schools.
 

He also pointed to a statistic that shows progress: Tulane has increased the percentage of PhDs it has awarded to underrepresented minorities, as defined by the National Science Foundation, to 24% over the last five years. 

Pressure From the Outside World

Paula Booke, director of the Newcomb-Tulane College Center for Academic Equity, said that the students served by the center are “feeling a lot of pressure from the outside world.”

“The Tulane community is impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the social injustices that characterize this particular American moment.”

Students are experiencing an increase in stressors around racial equity and inclusion. “There’s a lot that they are trying to process.

“In some cases, our students have had loved ones who have passed away as a consequence of COVID-19.” 

The center’s mission is “to provide an equitable academic environment” on campus “by fostering social equality and culturally conscious learning.” 

It offers a resource lending library with learning tools such as computers. It also offers students access to summer school scholarships and research grants as well as financial support to help students participate in enrichment opportunities like unpaid internships, which can lead to well-paying jobs. 

Booke’s hope is that each student has “access to the full Tulane experience” — and that students will succeed in the classroom and have “the option to pursue graduate education or enter industry at the top of their field.”

“We are all about removing barriers and obstacles that students face that may impact how they can move through their undergraduate careers.”

Booke is pleased with President Fitts’ commitment to making Tulane an “antiracist” institution. “When I hear the president say that, I interpret that to mean that it is now Tulane’s mission to ensure that race is not a determining factor for student success in any way, shape or form.” 

As part of Tulane’s endeavor to be “actively antiracist,” Singh is in the process of looking at the university’s policies, practices and procedures where there are inequitable racial outcomes.

“One of the most important things in making Tulane a more welcoming place for students of color is engaging conversations about racism with White folks on campus — White students, White faculty, White staff, White administrators. I think students of color, faculty of color, staff of color are usually pretty used to thinking about racism a lot.”
 
These conversations about racism begin with the question, what is race? What does it mean to be White? What does it mean to be Black, Indigenous or another Person of Color (BIPOC)? Is the “White” way always the right way?

“The goal of an education at Tulane is being prepared to engage in some of the most courageous and challenging conversations of our time about race and racism,” said Singh.  “We know if racism exists in the world, then there will be racism at Tulane. If we acknowledge that reality for BIPOC community members, then we can get less afraid of making mistakes in discussing racism and get busy changing our policies, practices and procedures. We can become more vigilant and determined about developing antiracist practices and engage in conversations about race and racism more boldly, with innovation, compassion and patience — but also determination to make social change.”

Hip-Hop Lived Experience

From her experience as an undergraduate (she earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1994 and returned to the university as an English department faculty member after earning a PhD from the University of Illinois), Nghana Lewis thinks Tulane has done a good job of providing safe spaces “in which students feel comfortable expressing themselves and sharing their experiences in an unfiltered way.”
 
An associate professor now, Lewis has been teaching at Tulane since 2005. Every year, she feels, “I’ve got the most brilliant students in the world.”

The level of “wokeness” in students in the past five to seven years is “extraordinary,” said Lewis. “They are bold. They are bright. They are thinkers. They are doers.”

Faculty can learn from their students, said Lewis, if they listen to them.

“We are charged to teach and educate and expand their horizons. But there’s so much they can teach us, from what they’ve lived and what they’ve experienced and what they’re doing. And that’s across the board: Black, White, Hispanic. They’re coming in with a level of knowledge and know-how — knowing how to do things, knowing how to organize — that’s inspiring.”

Faculty have to continue to push students to be constructively critical in analysis of the dynamics of inequity at all levels — institutional, social, cultural, personal, said Lewis. These inequities have an impact on “people’s lived experiences in material ways.”

“Woke” is imported from hip-hop language, an art form that Lewis has extensively studied. As a native Louisianian from Lafayette, Lewis said that hip-hop is her “lived experience.” She’s also explored White Southern women writers. In her book, Entitled to the Pedestal: Place, Race and Progress in White Southern Women’s Writing, 1920–45, she argues that these writers are not “monoliths,” but they “wield power and influence” from their positions of esteem in White society.
 
Lewis’ current focus of research is the HIV-AIDS epidemic and its impact on Black women. 

When asked by a White colleague shortly after the George Floyd murder, “What can we do?” in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, Lewis said, “You can educate yourself.”

It’s important to understand racial issues from multiple contexts, historic and current, said Lewis. And then, “you have to be open to being reeducated. Because there’s a lot of miseducation.”

Next is to commit to action. “What that action is, I don’t know,” said Lewis.
 
“It has to match what the context calls for. You have to decide where you can act, what you can do, what resources you can bring to the action, because not everybody is going to be able to do the same thing.”

Tulane is “an environment where we’re thinking, thinking, thinking,” said Lewis. 

“We’re always charged to think. And think broadly. That’s what we train our students to do. But in the context we’re currently living in, if you cannot commit to some form of action, your thinking is not of much value. If your commitment is to institutional equity, racial equity, you have to commit to some form of action.”