Journal of Higher Education Management - Vol 36(1)

Pandemics, You Will Not Break Our Spirit — Consulting Editor’s Comments and Acknowledgements “Oppression is not focused on the breaking of the body but is designed to break the spirit of the oppressed…The enemies of Black bodies have never been after our bodies; they are after our spirit. Slavery was not simply the subjugation of Black bodies, but an attempt to break our spirit…And the public lynching of George Floyd was not an attempt to arrest a Black man for passing a fake $20 bill; it was an attempt to break our collective and communal spirit.” -Wesley Knight We can no longer do scholarship that is one dimensional. We can no longer attempt to solve the academy’s intractable administrative challenges without engaging both critical and intersectional approaches. It is time out for pontificating and philosophizing about these problems using surface analytical tools and theorizations.

We need researchers investigating practical solutions addressing the root causes of these problems, moving away from only addressing its symptoms. And we need empowered and informed leadership that utilizes the most current and accurate scholarship to inform their policies and practices. That is why this compendium of pivotal articles addressing two of higher education’s most pressing and current issues is so relevant and important.

The twin pandemics of racism and Covid-19 are issues that will continue to impact our campuses for the foreseen future. A laissez-faire approach to solving these challenges is unacceptable. I am excited that so many of the nation’s top scholars and leaders so deftly addressed these issues within this special issue.

Ijeoma Oluo in the book “Mediocre: The dangerous legacy of White Male America” penned these important words, There would be no widespread cries for justice. There would be little outrage in the streets.

Black people would be outraged, Black people would demand justice. But there was not enough of us to be heard, and that was by design.

When speaking of addressing the pandemic of racial injustice on American higher education campuses we must understand that this challenge is not something that is unforeseen but a calculated design flaw. Too many Predominantly White Institutions engage in what Yawo Brown coined as, Polite White Supremacy, where they intentionally underfund and under-resource diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Higher education leaders often coddle and placate to members of racist boards, legislators, think tanks, external donors and their own administrators, faculty, staff, and students to ensure that these institutions are not transformed into the sites of decolonization and liberation that they could be.

Those of us who are activist scholars and higher education administrators often struggle with the institutional silence that accompanies our cries and demands for equity and justice in the academy. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said it this way, “there comes a time when silence is betrayal.”

Dr. Wesley Knight in his speech, Hold this for me, succinctly provides a key explanation for the pervasive silence of college and university administrators when addressing issues of racial justice and equity when he posits that, Can I tell you why they are (White people) silent, why they sit in their privilege and why they never speak up? It is because they are trying to break your spirit.

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