EDUCATION
Backtalking to the Backlash: Resisting Erasure in the Age of Trump Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw The story of America has always been about belonging, about determining who gets to be a member of the club and who doesn’t. It was about belonging when Congress passed the Naturalization Act of 1790, which held that “only free white persons” could be citizens of the new Republic. This exclusive notion of belonging would hold for three-quarters of a century, only to be opened up, at least partially, after 600,000 had lost their lives either in the name of white supremacy or in the fight against enslavement—its most pernicious manifestation. So too was it about belonging when Congress passed restrictive immigration laws in the 1880s and again in the 1920s, either to exclude non-Europeans from entering the nation, or to limit even these if their ethnicity marked them as unassimilable, dangerous, or subversive. And it was surely about belonging, and its opposite, that day in 1928 when my grandmother took my mother to a community swimming pool in Canton, Ohio, only to watch as white parents pulled their children from the water and the pool was drained, sending a clear signal that my family and others like it were not welcome. Although my grandmother returned with a dozen other Black kids in tow—an act of defiance that momentarily succeeded, as the police who were called to the scene refused to enforce the implicit color line—that pool and others like it around the country would be closed in decades to come once forced to integrate. For some white folks, their own enjoyment of a summer swim was less important than maintaining the power to exclude, as if belonging meant nothing unless others were relegated to the status of permanent outsiders.
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It was as an outsider that a carload of white men viewed me in my first days at Harvard Law School, walking in Cambridge only for them to verbally assault me with the predictable racial slur to which African Americans have long been subjected. Forty-five years later, it is clear that policing the borders of belonging in explicitly racialized ways is the essence of the MAGA project. And so, we have seen how ICE and the Border Patrol have brutalized Brown and Black communities, in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis, among others: killing 8, injuring dozens more, and kidnapping those they deem “illegal,” or whose color and accent alone suggest their unbelonging. And even as they impose their white nationalist vision of the nation with maximum cruelty and consequence, they are actively undermining our ability to connect the dots between these racially fascistic policies and those of prior eras. By censoring textbooks and restricting lessons about the history of racism, lest these lessons create “guilt or shame” in white students, lawmakers are erasing the past to control the present and shape the future. By removing exhibits and artifacts from museums (not because they present a false history, but because they present an inconvenient one), this administration hopes no one will notice the through-lines of racial subordination that have distorted American democracy from the start. If the current Department of Education had a slogan, it would be: “See no evil, hear about no evil, and rectify no evil.” Because in the minds of those making education policy, at the federal level and in dozens of states, to speak of the nation’s history of oppression and the ongoing struggle for freedom is too “woke,” by which they mean, too challenging to the dominant and triumphalist narrative long believed and preferred by most white folks.
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But if students can’t learn from the past, they lose the power to understand the present national condition, let alone change it. While this suits those in power, it hardly suits the principles to which we say we adhere to as a nation. Only by studying the good, the bad, and the very ugly of our society’s history, and its relationship to current-day inequalities, can students avoid falling into the trap of rationalizing those disparities. Stripped of historical context and kept clueless about the systemic causes for the inequities any child can see with their own eyes, those children will come to imagine disparities to be naturally occurring—the inevitable result of group superiority or inferiority. And once that conclusion has been reached, it is a disturbingly easy lift to suggest that those on the bottom don’t belong—in this workplace or in that college, or law school. Or community. Or nation. Thankfully, millions of people in recent years have taken to the streets for racial justice, whether in the post-George Floyd uprising of 2020 or the more recent protests against ICE and anti-immigrant brutality. They demand a more capacious understanding of America, as both a nation and an idea. And if they (if we) stay the course, and insist that this conception of our country should be the one taught in textbooks and historic sites, we may yet put the issue of belonging to rest, by finally and fully extending its protection to any who believe in liberty and justice for all, rather than just the few. Dr. Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw is a pioneering scholar and writer on civil rights, Black feminist legal theory, and race, racism, and the law. She was a founder and has been a leader in the intellectual movement called critical race theory, and is also known for introducing and developing the concept of intersectionality. She is a Distinguished Professor of Law and the Promise Institute Chair in Human Rights at the University of California, Los Angeles; the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia Law School; and the cofounder and executive director of the African American Policy Forum. Author of the upcoming memoir, Backtalker: An American Memoir, she has appeared as a commentator on media outlets including CNN, MSNBC and NPR, and hosts the podcast Intersectionality Matters!
If the current Department of Education had a slogan, it would be: “See no evil, hear about no evil, and rectify no evil.”
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Without Public Education, Democracy Crumbles Becky Pringle Without a public education system that is equitable, just, and strong— one rooted in values that empower every student, regardless of race, color, or gender—democracy cannot survive. Equitable access to public education is not a byproduct of our history, but a conscientious choice by us to create opportunity, teach the truth, and hold power accountable. With the assistance of the National Education Association (NEA), President Jimmy Carter established the U.S. Department of Education in 1979 to provide support to all students and to enforce federal laws in public education. Through its programs and services, the department aimed not to run public schools but to advocate for and protect students so they can grow into their brilliance. At the core of what the department does is enforcing civil rights protections that expand access to opportunity to make sure that every child has a future not dictated by their ZIP code, ability, or family income, but by their curiosity and willingness to navigate life with resilience and confidence. For generations, organized labor and civil rights organizations have stood at the center of the work to ensure those rights and protections remain in place. When our nation has faced moments of reckoning, the NEA and its three million members have leaned forward—away from fear and cruelty, and toward dignity, opportunity, and democracy. Federal investments in public education have expanded access to higher education, protected students with disabilities, enforced civil rights laws, and helped ensure that public schools serve all students, not just those with the most privilege or political power. These were not abstract victories. They are hard-won gains secured through struggle—by educators, families, workers, and
communities who refuse to accept exclusion as destiny. They are proof that democracy can work when we choose to make it work. The Department of Education represents the understanding that democracy requires shared responsibility—and that without federal commitment, inequity is not reduced; it is entrenched. The dismantling of the Department of Education is a deliberate assault on public education and on the very idea that government has a responsibility to protect the most vulnerable. What the Trump administration is doing is sabotaging and rolling back decades of progress. When the Department of Education is weakened, students, families and communities lose. Funding for special education is destabilized. Civil rights enforcement is gutted. Student aid is threatened. Oversight disappears. And students who rely on essential safeguards—students with disabilities, students living in poverty, students of color, immigrant students—are left on their own to try and obtain the education that they deserve. This dismantling is paired with a broader strategy of control and efforts to sow fear and division. Immigrant communities are targeted. Black, brown, Indigenous, and AAPI communities are scapegoated. LGBTQ+ students are erased. Students with disabilities are left behind. History is censored. Truth is treated as a threat. Pain, struggle, resistance, and resilience are scrubbed from classrooms because they expose injustice—and injustice makes people ask questions. And people, especially students, who ask questions are dangerous to those who crave unchecked power. Public education grounded in critical thinking is a direct threat to authoritarianism. Because when students learn how to analyze, how to question, and how to see one another’s humanity, they become harder to manipulate. That is why Trump and those in power
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Public education grounded in critical thinking is a direct threat to authoritarianism. target what students learn, how educators teach, and whether the Department of Education can enforce even the most basic standards of fairness. If learning can be controlled, belief can be shaped. If belief can be shaped, reality can be distorted. And if reality can be distorted, cruelty can be normalized, and democracy can be hollowed out from the inside. We know this happens through voucher schemes, privatization, and policies that move us further from equality while perpetuating systemic inequities that have long existed. But hear this clearly: We are union members. We are NEA. And we were built for moments like this. Organized labor was born in struggle and sustained by collective action—which is the driving force of NEA and its members. When they come for our students, our professions, and our communities, we respond together, unapologetically, and without wavering.
We fight forward for a public education system where every student walks into a school that is safe, welcoming, and fully resourced. Where students are affirmed, not erased. Where excellence and care are inseparable. Where education justice is not a talking point, but a lived reality and birthright. We fight forward for educators to be respected as the professionals they are, trusted to teach the truth, supported to meet students’ needs, and protected from political intimidation. And we fight forward for communities to be treated not as problems to control, but as partners in shaping a more racially and socially just future. Together with parents and allies, we will organize. We will advocate. We will mobilize. And we will fight—relentlessly—for public schools that allow every student to thrive. Because when we choose solidarity over silence, truth over fear, and compassion over cruelty, we do more than defend public education. We defend the soul of our democracy. And history will remember that when this moment demanded courage, educators led the way. Becky Pringle is President of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest labor union. Becky is a fierce social justice warrior, defender of educator rights, an unrelenting advocate for all students and communities of color, and a valued and respected voice in the education arena. A middle school science teacher with 31 years of classroom experience, Becky is singularly focused on using her intellect, passion, and purpose to unite the members of the largest labor union with the entire nation, and using that collective power to create the racial and social justice that form the building blocks of education justice.
This is not just a fight to save an agency. It is a fight to defend democracy itself.
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Beyond Policy Papers: Education as the Nexus of Black Liberation Dr. David J. Johns When Angela Rye called me early one morning with what she described as “a crazy idea,” I couldn’t have anticipated that it would become one of the most significant intellectual undertakings of my career. That conversation—about the 1972 Gary Political Convention, about policy gaps still unfilled fifty years later, about our obligation to affirm that our community is not crazy, that systems are working exactly as designed—birthed the State of the People Black Papers. More than thirty comprehensive policy papers. Over 100 Black experts. A love letter to our community disguised as a policy agenda, set for publication in 2026. But here’s what I’ve learned: we are not just in a policy crisis. We are in a design crisis. As the First Executive Director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans, I witnessed how education policy intersects with every aspect of Black life—from criminal justice to healthcare, from economic opportunity to civic participation. Now, as CEO and Executive Director of the National Black Justice Collective, we work to address how Black LGBTQ+/and same-gender loving people experience the compounding effects of failed policies, stigma, and ignorance. What we see unfolding today—literacy gaps, declining Black male college enrollment, the criminalization of Black children in schools, the erasure of our histories, the targeting of Black queer and trans youth—these are not accidents. They are predictable results of systems never truly built for all of our success. Education has always been the nexus where liberation collides with oppression, where Black communities build power and where
they invest billions to dismantle systematically. The current assault on Blackness, DEI, critical race theory, Black history curricula, and inclusive education is the latest iteration of a centuries-old pattern. What’s different now is the coordination, the speed, and the stakes. This is why the Black Papers reject incremental reform as the sole strategy. Through our work on education—and across housing, healthcare, economic policy, gender justice, disability justice, reproductive justice, and more—we’ve documented how waiting for permission from majority institutions will always carry the risk of anti-Blackness. The adjacent, Afrofuturistic ecosystem we propose is about refusing to let reform be our only option. Consider what our research reveals: Black students thrive when they learn from educators who see them as whole, brilliant, and capable. Black girls need educational spaces that don’t criminalize their selfexpression. Black students who identify as or are assumed to be queer and trans need schools that affirm their identities and protect their dignity. Black students with disabilities need accommodations that honor their learning differences. Yet we continue to dismantle pipelines to teaching while wondering why our children struggle. The State of the People Black Papers emerged from recognizing that when we translate complex policy into accessible knowledge and accountability-driven action, we don’t just inform—we activate. When communities understand that their daily struggles with childcare costs, police interactions, healthcare access, or employment discrimination result from deliberate policy choices, something shifts. Policy literacy becomes political power. Understanding becomes organizing. Our nationwide POWER Tour took this insight on the road—Atlanta to Detroit, Richmond to Los Angeles, ending with a Juneteenth assembly.
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What we witnessed everywhere: hunger for knowledge that treats Black people as sophisticated consumers of policy information rather than passive victims of policy violence. People who wanted to understand not just what policies harm them, but how to change them. Education remains the throughline because it shapes everything else. A Black child who learns their history, who develops critical consciousness, who sees themselves reflected in their curriculum regardless of their gender identity, sexual orientation, or ability status becomes an adult who reads policy, organizes neighbors, runs for office, builds institutions. Education in this sense extends far beyond K-12 classrooms. It’s civic education, political education, liberatory education. It’s knowledge that defends democracy. This is what JCPAR has modeled since its inaugural issue in 2018: the bridge between rigorous scholarship and accessible public discourse. As you sunset this format, you leave us with both a legacy and a challenge—to continue creating spaces where Black intellectual traditions inform policy action, where research meets resistance, where we build the knowledge infrastructure our liberation requires. The Black Papers are our attempt to honor that legacy. They recognize that we cannot wait for perfect policy conditions to begin building the world we need. We must reform AND reimagine. We must work within systems AND create alternatives. We must be both strategists and visionaries. And we must do so with an understanding that Black liberation is incomplete if it doesn’t include all of us—across gender, sexuality, ability, class, and every other dimension of our rich diversity.
Education remains the throughline because it shapes everything else. The answers won’t come from think tanks or congressional hearings alone. They’ll come from Black communities who refuse to accept the world as it is and who possess both the brilliance and the determination to create the world as it should be. This isn’t just about education policy. It’s about using education as the lever that moves everything else. Because when we understand the policies that shape our lives, we can fight more effectively to change them. And when we change them, we change everything. Teach (all) the babies. Let’s all get free! Author Information Dr. David J. Johns served as the First Executive Director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans during the Obama Administration and as Executive Director of the National Black Justice Coalition. He is Editorin-Chief of the State of the People Black Papers, set for publication in 2026.
So here’s my provocation as JCPAR closes this chapter: What if we stopped treating policy literacy as elite knowledge and started treating it as community power? What if we designed education systems that prepared all Black children not just to navigate oppression but to dismantle it? What if we built our adjacent ecosystem with the same rigor, investment, and commitment that others build systems of our exclusion?
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Amplifying Black Perspectives: Spotlight on Education To what extent is access to higher education important for the advancement of Black communities? Over 80% of respondents indicated that access to higher education is extremely important for the advancement of Black communities. Very important
15%
Moderately important
4%
Extremely important Very important Moderately important
Extremely Important
81%
DATA SOURCE: THE CENTER FOR POLICY ANALYSIS AND RESEARCH AMPLIFYING BLACK PERSPECTIVES DATA PROJECT. RESULTS ARE BASED ON ANALYSIS OF AN ONLINE SURVEY OF 187 BLACK-IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUALS CONDUCTED BETWEEN JANUARY 14 – 30, 2026.
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To what extent is a strong public education system important for the advancement of Black communities? Over 90% of respondents indicated that a strong public education system is extremely important for the advancement of Black communities. Very important
7%
Moderately important
2%
Not at all important
1%
Extremely important Very important Moderately important Not at all important
Extremely Important
90%
DATA SOURCE: THE CENTER FOR POLICY ANALYSIS AND RESEARCH AMPLIFYING BLACK PERSPECTIVES DATA PROJECT. RESULTS ARE BASED ON ANALYSIS OF AN ONLINE SURVEY OF 187 BLACK-IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUALS CONDUCTED BETWEEN JANUARY 14 – 30, 2026.
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Education Policy Landscape Black Americans have long experienced systemic exclusion from equitable educational opportunity. During slavery, laws across the United States prohibited the education of enslaved Africans, reflecting a broader effort to deny literacy as a pathway to autonomy and civic participation. Following emancipation, Black communities built schools despite violence, underfunding, and segregation. These early inequities laid the foundation for enduring disparities in educational access, resources, and outcomes that continue to shape the American education system today. Throughout the twentieth century, federal involvement in education expanded in response to growing recognition that access to quality schooling was central to economic mobility and democratic participation. The Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, marking a turning point in federal responsibility to address educational inequality. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 further strengthened this commitment by prohibiting discrimination in federally funded educational programs and enabling federal enforcement against segregated school systems. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 represented a landmark investment in addressing educational inequities through targeted federal funding for schools serving lowincome students. The No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law in 2001 under President George W. Bush, later reauthorized ESEA and required states to implement standardized testing as a metric of school performance with the intention of closing achievement gaps. The Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA), signed into law by President Barack Obama, replaced No Child Left Behind. ESSA shifted greater authority to states in setting up accountability systems while maintaining federal requirements to track and address achievement gaps for historically underserved students. Congressional Black Caucus members, Rep. Bobby Scott, Ranking Member of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, and Rep. Alma Adams,
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advocated to ensure the law maintained strong federal guardrails around accountability, subgroup data reporting, and protections for historically marginalized students. Their influence helped preserve requirements that states disaggregate data by race and intervene in low-performing schools, which were central equity concerns in the transition away from No Child Left Behind. Federal higher education policy also played a critical role in expanding access. The Higher Education Act of 1965 increased financial aid opportunities through Pell Grants and student loan programs, enabling generations of Black students to pursue postsecondary education. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), many established during Reconstruction and Jim Crow segregation, remained central to Black educational attainment, producing a disproportionate share of Black professionals across medicine, law, education, and STEM fields. In response to the economic fallout of COVID-19, the federal government enacted a series of measures to stabilize students and borrowers. The Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump in March 2020, included a temporary pause on federal student loan payments, set interest rates to 0%, and halted collections on defaulted loans. Subsequent executive actions under both the Trump and Biden administrations extended this relief through the duration of the pandemic. The Biden administration also attempted broader student debt cancellation in 2022 through executive action under the Heroes Act, but this effort was ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court in Biden v. Nebraska. Throughout this period, members of the CBC, including Rep. Ayanna Pressley and Rep. Maxine Waters, were vocal advocates for more expansive and permanent student debt relief, citing the disproportionate burden of debt on Black borrowers. Despite these advances, educational opportunity for Black students remains vulnerable to political and policy shifts. Persistent racial disparities in school funding, disciplinary practices, teacher access,
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and college affordability reflect structural inequities embedded in local property tax systems and uneven state investment. Recent federal and state actions limiting diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility initiatives, restricting curriculum related to race and history, and reducing oversight of civil rights enforcement have raised concerns about the federal government’s commitment to addressing longstanding disparities in education. As education policy evolves amid a polarizing political climate, technological change, and demographic shifts, policymakers play a critical role in protecting equitable access to quality education. Strengthening civil rights enforcement, investing in historically under-resourced schools and institutions, and ensuring affordability across postsecondary pathways will be essential to supporting Black students and communities in the years ahead.
Black Americans have long experienced systemic exclusion from equitable educational opportunity.
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Timeline May 17, 1954 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education, declaring that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional and establishing federal responsibility to dismantle segregated education systems.
July 2, 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, prohibiting discrimination in federally funded educational programs and authorizing federal enforcement against segregated school systems.
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April 11, 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) into law, providing federal funding to schools serving low-income students and expanding educational access nationwide.
November 8, 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Higher Education Act into law, expanding federal financial aid programs, including grants and loans, significantly increasing college access for Black students.
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January 8, 2002 President George W. Bush signed No Child Left Behind Act into law, expanding federal accountability requirements focused on standardized testing and closing achievement gaps across racial and socioeconomic groups.
March 27, 2020 President Donald Trump signed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act into law, which established the CARES Act Education Stabilization Fund. The fund provided emergency federal funding to support schools and higher education institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
December 10, 2015 President Barack Obama signed Every Student Succeeds Act into law, which reauthorized ESEA, returning greater authority to states while maintaining federal oversight of educational equity indicators.
November 2022–June 2023 Legal challenges blocked President Joe Biden’s student debt relief plan, which was ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court in Biden v. Nebraska.
August 24, 2022 President Joe Biden announced student debt relief executive actions, announcing federal student loan forgiveness measures aimed at reducing debt burdens disproportionately affecting Black borrowers.
January 21, 2025 President Donald Trump issued a series of executive actions eliminating diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility initiatives, raising concerns regarding civil rights enforcement and equity-focused education programming.
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Breaking the Binding Constraint: An Intersectional Policy Agenda for Scaling HBCU STEM Pathways Dr. Ivory A. Toldson, Dr. Mercy Mugo, and Dr. Brittany Boyd Disclaimer: This work is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2138273. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. I. The Binding Constraint: Why Single-Axis Solutions Fail Black STEM Talent The Central Framework Federal efforts to diversify the STEM workforce are failing, not because of a shortage of talent, but because of a flaw in policy design. Most interventions treat race and income as separate problems. Financial aid addresses poverty. Diversity programs address racial isolation. But for low-income Black students, these barriers do not operate independently; they compound each other. A student who is both Black and poor faces a distinct, reinforced form of exclusion that neither tool, alone, can resolve.1
like mentorship programs for “minorities in STEM,” often operate as class-neutral vehicles that benefit middle-class students with the social capital to access them. A low-income White student receives financial aid; an affluent Black student receives mentorship. But the low-income Black student, facing the compounded weight of historical wealth extraction and systemic exclusion, falls into the policy gap.1,3 The Intersectional Reality Intersectionality frameworks confirm that the joint effects of overlapping identities are irreducible to the sum of their parts.4 Data from the S-STEM Research Hub, a strategic alliance led by the Quality Education for Minorities (QEM) Network and the American Institutes for Research (AIR), illustrates this with clarity: surveys of STEM students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) reveal that over 40% report family incomes under $30,000.5
This article names that compounded barrier the binding constraint, a term drawn from development economics that refers to the single most restrictive bottleneck in a system. Until that bottleneck is released, improvements elsewhere yield negligible results.2 For Black communities in STEM, the binding constraint is the intersection of racial marginalization and economic precarity. Current policy misses it entirely because it was not designed to see it.1,2
Consider Malik, a brilliant engineering major from a low-income household. If policy addresses only his income via tuition coverage, he still enters a classroom where he is the only Black student, facing stereotype threat while lacking social capital to navigate the hidden curriculum of office hours and lab rotations. If policy addresses only his racial isolation via a diversity club, he still lacks funds for STEM’s hidden costs: the $200 lab fees, broadband for coding assignments, or the ability to take an unpaid summer research internship instead of warehouse work. For students like Malik, the barrier is compounded financial precarity within an environment not built for them.
How the Gap Works in Practice Consider how this plays out. Pell Grants function as race-neutral vehicles that address economic need, while diversity initiatives,
The HBCU Anomaly If the intersection of race and poverty is the binding constraint, HBCUs are the proof of concept for unlocking it. Despite representing only
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3% of the nation’s colleges and universities, HBCUs produce 25% of all African American STEM graduates and serve as the baccalaureate origin for nearly 30% of Black graduates who eventually earn science and engineering doctorates.6,7 HBCUs achieve this not by ignoring the binding constraint, but by designing an ecosystem that accounts for it. Unlike predominantly white institutions (PWIs), where introductory courses often function to “weed out” students, HBCUs employ a familial, intrusive advising model that validates students’ financial and social realities.8 This article translates the mechanisms of that success, identified through the qualitative and quantitative inquiry of the S-STEM Research Hub, into a concrete federal policy agenda. We argue that the U.S. can no longer afford to view HBCUs as merely a historical legacy; they are the active blueprint for American scientific competitiveness. II. Anchoring the Issue: Historical Roots and the Hidden Costs of Persistence The Long Shadow of the 1890 Partition To understand why a brilliant Black student in 2026 struggles to afford a chemistry lab coat, we must examine the legislative soil in which higher education was planted. The Morrill Land-Grant Acts created two distinct institutional classes. The 1862 Act provided federal land for colleges focused on agriculture and the mechanical arts, laying the foundation for today’s predominantly white research universities. Because those institutions largely excluded Black students, Congress passed the Second Morrill Act of 1890, requiring states to establish separate land-grant colleges for Black citizens. While the 1890 Act granted legal existence to many public HBCUs, it did not grant an equitable footing; these institutions were starved of state matching funds and federal resources from inception.9 This undercapitalization created a wealth divergence that persists today. Public HBCUs have an average endowment of $7,000 per student, compared to $25,000 at public PWIs. Private PWIs have an average endowment per student of $184,000, compared to $25,000 at private HBCUs.7 Despite this resource drought, HBCUs maintain an astonishing return on investment for the nation’s scientific workforce,
high-yield output from low-resource input suggesting a human capital development model PWIs have yet to replicate.6,7 The Hidden Financial Barrier While historical underfunding constrains institutions, parallel financial friction constrains individual students. Federal policy assumes financial aid equals tuition coverage. S-STEM Research Hub data reveal that for low-income Black STEM majors, covering tuition is necessary, but insufficient to prevent attrition. Qualitative data from focus groups across nine HBCUs expose STEM’s hidden costs. Unlike humanities majors, STEM students face ancillary expenses that financial aid frequently overlooks, such as lab fees, scientific printing, and mandatory online homework platforms. Students reported that, even when scholarships covered tuition, retention was threatened by out-of-pocket costs.i Consider Marcus, a sophomore Biology major receiving a Pell Grant and partial scholarship. On the first day of Organic Chemistry, the syllabus requires a $150 access code for the digital homework portal and a $75 lab safety kit. Marcus has $40 in his bank account. Because these are not considered tuition, his scholarship does not cover them. He delays purchasing materials, falls behind, fails the first exam, and withdraws. A $225 deficit, trivial in federal budgeting, derails a potential medical career. The Psychological Dimension This precarity creates a distinct psychological burden. S-STEM survey data indicate participants report significantly higher GPAs and spend more hours preparing for class than non-participant peers: 61.8% of S-STEM participants maintain GPAs between 3.75–4.0, compared to 38.2% of non-participants. Qualitative feedback suggests this high performance stems partly from acute pressure to validate the investment made in them; students described sacrificing social time and extracurricular engagement to meet rigorous demands.5,6 Financial support thus creates an implicit performance contract. Effective policy must couple financial aid with psychological safety, environments where students focus on mastering content rather than calculating the opportunity cost of their next meal.
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III. The HBCU Ecosystem of Success: Evidence from the Hub The S-STEM Research Hub does not merely document disparities; it uncovers the operational mechanics of resilience. Data from students across HBCUs have identified an ecosystem of success that counteracts intersectional marginalization through three mechanisms federal policy must recognize and scale. Mechanism 1: The Open Door and Holistic Faculty Engagement Faculty engagement is the single most cited support mechanism for low-income STEM students in the Hub data. Unlike the “weeding out” culture at many PWIs, HBCU faculty operate with a familial ethos functioning as a retention safety net. This engagement extends beyond office hours; faculty practice intrusive advising, intervening to solve non-academic problems threatening persistence, locating notary services for financial aid documents, and facilitating laptop access when personal technology fails. Consider Jasmine, a first-generation Chemistry major. At a large research university, missing a lab due to a shift change at her part-time job might mean a grade penalty or silence. In the HBCU ecosystem, a professor notices her absence, contacts her directly, and connects her with a departmental emergency fund or flexible lab slot. By treating students as members of a community to be cultivated rather than numbers to be filtered, HBCU faculty retain talent that other institutions discard.
collaborative activities create a buffer against external stressors, allowing students to maintain focus on complex STEM concepts while building science identity or the psychological self-conception of oneself as a scientist. Mechanism 3: Research as Retention The third mechanism is integrating undergraduate research experiences (UREs) as a primary driver of retention. Hub data confirm that early exposure to hands-on research, often paired with faculty mentors, directly correlates with decisions to pursue STEM careers. Among students surveyed across 11 HBCUs, 53% were active S-STEM participants, and qualitative data underscore that research opportunities are often the primary reason low-income students cite for their ability to persist. By engaging students in knowledge production rather than passive reception, HBCUs shift students’ self-perception from recipients of aid to scholars contributing knowledge, which is critical for counteracting imposter syndrome in high-stakes fields. IV. A Policy Agenda to Scale the Model
Mechanism 2: Peer Scaffolding and Prototype Learning The second mechanism is the intentional engineering of social and technical scaffolding through peers. Hub data indicate that students use informal digital networks, such as GroupMe and WhatsApp, to create academic safety nets that operate around the clock, independent of university infrastructure. Successful programs institutionalize these interactions through structured activities. Prototype Projects have students apply theoretical knowledge to build tangible products, reinforcing technical skills not covered in the standard curriculum. Journal Clubs have students dissect academic articles, write papers, and present research, demystifying the language of the scientific academy. These
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Translating S-STEM Research Hub findings into federal policy requires shifting from gap-gazing or merely documenting disparities to capacity
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building. To scale the HBCU ecosystem of success, we propose four interventions, each tied to specific federal actors and mechanisms. A. Modernizing Financial Aid: Beyond Tuition Issue: Current financial aid is based on an outdated cost-ofattendance definition. Hub data proves hidden costs often act as the primary attrition trigger for low-income STEM students. Responsible Actors: Congress (Title IV reform); U.S. Department of Education (Pell Grant administration and regulatory guidance on allowable costs). Recommendation: Reform Title IV aid and NSF scholarship guidelines to cover the comprehensive cost of STEM attendance. • Action 1: Double the maximum Pell Grant and institute permanent Summer Pell funding (~$4,000), enabling low-income students to participate in unpaid laboratory rotations without financial ruin.³ • Action 2: Revise federal grant terms to explicitly cover ancillary STEM costs, laptops, high-speed internet, and software licenses, which Hub focus groups identified as significant barriers to persistence. B. Infrastructure as Equity: The IGNITE HBCU Excellence Act Issue: High-quality STEM training requires modern infrastructure. A GAO report found 46% of HBCU building space needs repair or replacement.3 Responsible Actors: Congress (authorization and appropriations); U.S. Department of Education (grant administration); National Science Foundation (research infrastructure investments). Recommendation: Pass the IGNITE HBCU Excellence Act (Institutional Grants for New Infrastructure, Technology, and Education). • Action 1: Authorize federal funds specifically for renovating STEM labs and research facilities, ensuring HBCUs possess the capacity to scale the familial support models identified in Hub research. • Action 2: Expand campus-wide high-speed broadband, a prerequisite for modern data science and engineering curricula. C. Institutionalizing Intrusive Mentorship Issue: The HBCU model relies on holistic, high-touch faculty engagement. This labor is often uncompensated and invisible in grant reporting, leading to burnout.i
Responsible Actors: National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health (grant solicitation design and merit review criteria). Recommendation: Mandate and fund Holistic Mentorship Plans as core review criteria in federal grant solicitations, moving beyond generic broader impacts statements. • Action 1: Include specific budget line items for faculty time dedicated to life-navigation mentoring, financial aid appeals, and mental health resource connections, as identified by Hub findings as a primary retention driver. • Action 2: Incentivize faculty development in culturally responsive pedagogy through dedicated NSF and NIH supplement mechanisms.7 D. Democratizing Research Capacity Issue: Undergraduate research experiences are the strongest predictor of STEM persistence and graduate school aspiration, yet HBCUs face systemic barriers in securing large-scale research grants.5 Responsible Actors: National Science Foundation (HBCU-UP program, Ideas Lab solicitations); Congress (appropriations for capacity-building set-asides). Recommendation: Scale capacity-building programs like HBCU-UP and Ideas Labs, targeting institutional transformation rather than isolated projects. • Action 1: Prioritize Implementation Projects and Broadening Participation Research Centers, mechanisms that enable comprehensive reforms, such as standardizing research-based curricula across departments. • Action 2: Utilize the Ideas Lab model to develop collaborative HBCU research networks, moving from competitive to networked talent development. V. Conclusion: From Gap-Gazing to Systemic Repair The findings of the S-STEM Research Hub dismantle the deficit narrative that has long shaped STEM policy discourse. Low-income Black students do not lack aptitude or aspiration; they lack runway, the financial and institutional support to convert ability into achievement.5 The binding constraint is not intellectual capability. It is the friction
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created where economic precarity meets institutional exclusion.1,2 HBCUs have demonstrated, with limited resources, how to overcome that constraint: by covering the full cost of STEM participation, fostering a familial academic culture, and engaging students early as knowledge producers rather than passive recipients.5,7 The S-STEM Hub data confirm that this ecosystem works. The question is whether the federal government will invest in scaling it. Three Urgent Priorities The evidence points to three actions that must anchor any serious federal response: 1. Modernize financial aid to reflect the true cost of STEM participation. Congress and the Department of Education must expand Pell Grant coverage, including permanent Summer Pell and explicit allowances for STEM-specific costs such as laptops, software, and lab fees, so that no student is forced out of a science career by a $225 deficit. 2. Fund institutional transformation, not transient student interventions. NSF and NIH must shift grant priorities toward capacity building, such as laboratories, broadband, faculty development, and holistic mentorship infrastructure, recognizing that durable outcomes require durable investments in the institutions that produce them. 3. Build networked HBCU research ecosystems. Congress and NSF must resource collaborative models, such as HBCUUP Implementation Projects, Ideas Labs, and multi-campus transformation initiatives, that allow institutions to share infrastructure, best practices, and administrative capacity rather than competing individually for scarce resources. The blueprint for Black STEM success is not hypothetical. It is living within the HBCU network. Federal policymakers must now provide the resources and the structural redesign to scale it.
publications and delivered over 200 presentations globally. He previously led education innovation at the NAACP and was appointed by Barack Obama to direct the White House Initiative on HBCUs. His work focuses on equity, data, and educational outcomes, with current research expanding into artificial intelligence and digital transformation. Dr. Mercy Mugo, is the Executive Director of QEM Network, where she provides strategic leadership and oversees the organization’s day-to-day operations, research initiatives, grant management, and organizational growth efforts. She has extensive experience leading the implementation of capacity-building and educational research projects focused on expanding participation and success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and careers for historically underrepresented groups. Dr. Mugo also directs cross-functional initiatives that strengthen institutional partnerships, enhance program delivery, and support sustainable growth. She has co-authored several publications examining learning environments and institutional practices that promote success in STEM education and research. Dr. Brittany Boyd, is a researcher at the American Institutes for Research specializing in qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches to education research and evaluation. Her work focuses on strengthening the rigor, validity, and interpretability of evidence used to inform education and social policy. She has extensive experience leading and supporting large-scale studies and contributing to federally funded research initiatives. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals addressing education and STEM pathways.
Dr. Ivory A. Toldson is a professor of counseling psychology at Howard University, editor-in-chief of The Journal of Negro Education, and chief of research at Concentric Educational Solutions. A prolific scholar, he has authored more than 75
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References 1. Boyd, B., Yan, J., Lightner, T., Mugo, M., Toldson, I. A., & Li, L. (2024). Promoting Persistence: Providing Support for HBCU Students from Low-Income Backgrounds. 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition. https://peer.asee.org/promoting-persistence-providingsupport-for-hbcu-students-from-low-income-backgrounds 2. Hausmann, R., Klinger, B., & Wagner, R. (2008). Doing Growth Diagnostics in Practice: A ’Mindbook. 3. TMCF. (n.d.). Ignite HBCU Excellence Act. Thurgood Marshall College Fund, Inc. Retrieved March 31, 2026, from https://tmcf. org/policy-advocacy/ignite-hbcu-excellence-act/ 4. Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299. https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039 5. QEM Network. (2025). Building Momentum. S-STEM Hub Newsletter, 4. 6. UNCF. (n.d.). The Impact of HBCUs on Diversity in STEM Fields. UNCF. Retrieved March 31, 2026, from https://uncf.org/the-latest/ the-impact-of-hbcus-on-diversity-in-stem-fields 7. Shuler, H. D., Spencer, E. C., Davis, J. S., Damo, S., Shakespeare, T. I., Murray, S. A., Lee, D. L., & Hinton, A. (2022). Learning from HBCUs: How to produce Black professionals in STEMM. Cell, 185(16), 2841–2845. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2022.06.013 8. McCoy, D. L., Luedke, C. L., & Winkle-Wagner, R. (2017). Encouraged or weeded out: Perspectives of students of color in the STEM disciplines on faculty interactions. Journal of College Student Development, 58(5), 657–673. https://doi.org/10.1353/ csd.2017.0052 9. Postsecondary National Policy Institute. (2024). Historically Black Colleges and Universities. https://pnpi.org/wp-content/ uploads/2024/09/HBCU_FactSheet_Sept24.pdf Notes i QEM Network & American Institutes for Research. (2024). S-STEM Hub qualitative and quantitative findings. This endnote consolidates two companion reports: (a) Data Collection and Emerging Themes, and (b) Overview of Student Data Collected and Findings. All focus group quotations, GPA comparisons, hidden-cost findings, and faculty engagement themes are drawn from these sources.
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They, Too, Are Black: Intersectional Considerations of Black Disproportionality in Education Policymaking Dr. Shaun Harper Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced the concept of intersectionality in the late 1980s to help jurors, judges, attorneys, legal scholars, law students, and others understand how Black women were made particularly vulnerable to the miscarriage of justice in the courts. Crenshaw documented how legal outcomes had long disadvantaged Black women because of racism, while simultaneously complicating considerations of how being a single mother or a poor, disabled, immigrant, and/or queer person multiplied Black women’s risk of inequality in U.S. legal proceedings.1,2 Over time, intersectionality has been transported across various academic disciplines and professional fields. Some misunderstand it to be only about identities. Its originator and other scholars have made clear that it is not only about the number of identities a single person possesses and performs, but also about how the intersectionality of those identities converges in ways that devastate some people much more acutely than others.3,4 Six years ago, I testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor hearing titled “Examining the Impact of COVID-19 on the Future of Higher Education.” In my oral and written testimonies, as well as in a subsequently published article in the American Journal of Education, I acknowledged that the pandemic affected all students and families, regardless of race, socioeconomic status, geographic region, and other factors.5 However, I also highlighted how Black Americans were dying from the Coronavirus at disproportionately higher rates than other racial groups. In addition, I presented data on the racial stratification of the higher education workforce to show how Black employees
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would be placed at higher risk of infection, transmission, and death because of the professional roles they overwhelmingly occupy at colleges and universities. “Custodians, food service workers, groundskeepers, and maintenance staff are far likelier to be deemed ‘essential’ workers’ when campuses reopen,” I noted (p. 154). “Being required to come to campus more frequently and interact with other workers and students, therefore, places employees of color and the family members with whom they live at greater risk of exposure to COVID-19.” This was one of a dozen ways that I showed how a global public health crisis that threatened everyone could produce uneven and more fatal outcomes for Black Americans and other people of color. I employ a similar approach in this article. Public policies are often created without explicit consideration of how they will affect Black citizens and Black immigrants. There are myriad explanations for this, including, but not limited to, the racial demographics of the policymakers themselves. The U.S. Congress, state legislatures, K-12 school boards, higher education governing boards, and other policymaking bodies have always been overwhelmingly comprised of white people. They and others often make presumably race-neutral laws, policies, and resource allocation decisions in response to the needs, challenges, and expectations of all students, educators, and families. Their logic, to some extent, makes sense because they were elected to represent all citizens. But the purpose of this article is to show how eight current education policy issues that affect everyone ought to be rigorously examined through the prisms of Black disproportionality and intersectionality. The approach I call for is relevant to policymaking beyond education and across time beyond the present moment in our nation’s history. Notwithstanding, the illustrative examples I furnish herein are
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education policy activities that affected Americans and immigrants within the first year of Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House. EIGHT INTERSECTIONAL POLICY ISSUES Presented in this section are eight contemporary issues to which the second Trump Administration responded via policies, executive orders, and written threats to the recipients of federal funds, specifically K-12 and postsecondary educational institutions. For each, an articulation of how the effects are having (or will likely have) disparate effects on Black Americans and Black immigrants is offered. Also explained and forecasted are the ways that the intersection of race with other identities and circumstances will produce especially harmful outcomes for particular groups of Black people. Antisemitism Antisemitism is abhorrent and has no place anywhere in our society, including on campuses. As I documented in a May 2025 testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives and in a subsequently published article in a peer-reviewed American Educational Research Association journal, rates of violence against Jewish people in K-12 schools, colleges, and universities are unacceptably and horrifyingly high.6 I also furnished these federal statistics to juxtapose with violence against Black students at educational institutions across the nation: According to FBI data published in 2024, of the 950 religiouslymotivated hate crimes that occurred at educational institutions between 2018 and 2022, 78.4% were targeted at Jewish people. During that same four-year timeframe, FBI data also show that of the 2,624 racially motivated hate crimes on campuses, 64.4% were targeted at Black people. By comparison, 9.3% of racially-motivated hate crime victims on campuses were white. (p. 2) Within weeks of his second term, Trump and others in his administration revoked federal funding from Harvard, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, and many other postsecondary institutions for their alleged mishandling of antisemitism. Later that year, they demanded that UCLA pay the federal government $1.2 billion. Irrefutably, there should be institutional accountability for antisemitism. But there also should be investigations, legal proceedings, congressional hearings,
federal funding revocations, and presidential actions in response to hate crimes and other acts of violence that Black students have long endured on campuses. Also noteworthy is that some Jewish and Muslim people are Black. Therefore, current and future policy actions that aim to eradicate antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of religious discrimination on campuses should account for their intersectionality with anti-Black violence. Travel Bans and Visa Issuances The Trump Administration has made it considerably more difficult for international students to attend U.S. colleges and universities. They are issuing fewer visas. This is affecting current and prospective college goers all over the world. It is seemingly race-neutral, but noteworthy are the places on Trump’s travel ban list. Ferragamo documents the disproportionate representation of African nations and other countries with high Black populations (e.g., Antigua and Barbuda, Haiti, and Dominica).7 Despite this, media reporting and conversations on campuses about threats to international student enrollments rarely focus explicitly on Black visa applicants. It is possible that policy considerations also default to students from Canada, as well as Asian and European nations. These are also places where some Black people live. Immigration policies are affecting them, too. ICE Raids and Immigrant Deportations Racial profiling, raids, mass deportations, violent conflicts, and fatal encounters involving U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Portland, Charlotte, Chicago, and other cities during the second Trump presidency have been highly contested and well publicized. Fear among students in K-12 schools and their parents has also received considerable attention. ICE raids and intimidation tactics occurring on and around college campuses have not received as much media coverage. Many immigrant collegians (including, but not limited to, those who are undocumented) are terrified. In the United States, students without documentation are largely presumed to be from Mexico and other Latin American countries. Even if that, to an extent, is indeed true, it leads to the erasure of Black undocumented immigrants from the Caribbean, African countries, and other nations around the world. They are also scared and targeted, but are rarely the face of protective services
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and media reports. Efforts to end ICE misconduct, racial profiling, and terrorism activities, as well as immigration policy reform efforts, must be inclusive of Black immigrant students and their families. Defunding Hispanic-Serving Institutions Funding was cut from Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) during the first year of the second Trump Administration. These colleges and universities have been mischaracterized as racially discriminatory, presumably because “Hispanic-Serving” is in the title of their longstanding federal designation. Alongside other Latino students, Afro-Latinos will be harmed. So too will Black Americans who are not Latino or Hispanic. Many HSIs, especially those that are community colleges and largely open-access public four-year institutions, enroll significant numbers of Black students. Funding cuts will not only affect the 25% or more of attendees who are Latino, but their Black classmates will also suffer from decreased federal investments. Black HSI students from low-income and working-class families will be especially impacted as institutional capacity to recruit, educate, serve, and ensure their success is diminished. Defaulted Student Loans The Biden-Harris Administration approved nearly $190 billion in student loan forgiveness for 5.3 million borrowers. Some of those beneficiaries were Black. The Biden-Harris Administration also made it easier for students who had defaulted on loans for a variety of reasons to resume payments. Within its first year, the Trump Administration began garnishing the wages of borrowers who were in default. The effects of this will be disproportionately arduous for those who attended Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), the sector of American higher education that disproportionately enrolls low-income Black students who receive federal Pell Grants and finance their attendance via loans. In many instances, borrowers who default on student loans do so not out of negligence but because they cannot afford repayment plans. At times, some are out of work for extended periods. Notably, Black women have the highest student loan debt. 8 This is often the result of predatory recruitment and lending practices that exploit Black women’s educational attainment and career advancement aspirations. Hence, harsh default wage garnishment policies are almost guaranteed to affect them the
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hardest, especially single mothers, those who manage eldercare responsibilities, or those who work low-wage jobs. Anti-DEI Executive Orders and Federal Agency Intimidation Letters Trump signed Executive Order No. 14148 on his first day back in office. “The injection of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) into our institutions has corrupted them by replacing hard work, merit, and equality with a divisive and dangerous preferential hierarchy,” the document claimed without evidence. Listed below in Table 1 are 11 Biden-era executive orders that Trump categorically reversed in EO 14148, each of which either explicitly focused on or had federal implications for K-12 schools, colleges, and universities across America. A few weeks later, the U.S. Department of Education sent a ‘Dear Colleague’ letter to every educational institution in the country. It threatened them with the choice of either ending socalled discriminatory DEI programs or risk losing federal funding. Students with disabilities, women, low-income and working class collegians, returning adult learners, Jewish students, LGBTQ+ persons, international students, and other populations that make campuses diverse were harmed by anti-DEI documents issued by the Trump Administration. Table 1. Education-Related Biden Executive Orders Rescinded in Trump Executive Order 14148 Biden EO Number
Executive Order Title
13985
Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government
13995
Ensuring an Equitable Pandemic Response and Recovery
14020
Establishment of the White House Gender Policy Council
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14021
Guaranteeing an Educational Environment Free From Discrimination on the Basis of Sex, Including Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity
14031
Advancing Equity, Justice, and Opportunity for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders
14045
White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Hispanics
14049
White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Native Americans and Strengthening Tribal Colleges and Universities
14050
White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Black Americans
14075
Advancing Equality for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Individuals
14091
Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government
14124
White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity Through Hispanic-Serving Institutions
At least three things are noteworthy here. First, Black collegians are among the students with disabilities, women, low-income and working class collegians, returning adult learners, Jewish students, LGBTQ+ persons, international students, and other diverse populations that were negatively affected. Put differently, many people in these groups are Black. Second, many DEI activities, policies, and professional positions, along with culture centers and ethnic studies programs, were born out of Black student protests over generations in U.S. higher education. Thus, the initiatives they initially created for themselves will inevitably affect them more than others. Third, Black students are the overwhelming targets of race-based hate crimes on campuses.6 The elimination of protective systems, campus response and recovery protocols, and DEI experts to help students cope in the aftermath of racial violence will affect the collegians whom white supremacists and other hate groups attack most. Federal Grant Terminations Students are not usually the recipients of federal research grants. But professors and scientists on their campuses are. The Trump Administration canceled most federal research grants related to DEI. New requests for proposals from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Education, and other federal agencies explicitly stated that DEI-related projects would not be funded. In fact, applicants and eventual grantees were told that their institutions would be required to certify that so-called illegal DEI activities were not occurring anywhere on campuses; failure to comply would result in the revocation of federal funds. For many years, researchers in the life, physical, and social sciences have leveraged federal dollars to study and create evidence-informed remedies to racial, gender, and socioeconomic inequities in education. At most institutions, it is Black male students who are chronically at the bottom of every statistical measure of educational outcomes. Those who are the first in their families to attend college, as well as those from low-income and working class communities, those who are fathers, and those who attend college part-time while working full-time off-campus jobs, are especially susceptible to dropping out. Therefore, the cancellation of grants that aim to make college access and success equitable for students will surely lead to fewer, not more, Black men who attain the benefits of U.S. higher education.
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Data Theft Many publicly available datasets that track racial disparities disappeared during the first year of the second Trump presidency. Even among the datasets that survived, variables and statistics that highlighted differences between racial groups were deleted. In many instances, it appeared that artificial intelligence was used to scrub these websites for words like race, racism, racial, disproportionality, Black, Asian, Indigenous, Hispanic, Latino, equity, inclusion, and so on. Taxpayers (including Black Americans) paid for the statistics that were in those federal datasets. The Trump Administration stole the American people’s data. Without them, our nation will have no federal mechanisms to systematically measure or identify who is being most severely harmed and underserved. As previously noted, federal data have long revealed acute disadvantages for Black undergraduate men. Other statistical metrics show that among women, Black student outcomes are most troubling. Thus, data theft places Black collegians at particular risk of erasure in corrective, equity-minded policymaking activities. IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICYMAKERS As previously noted, the concept of intersectionality has become widely used across numerous academic fields and disciplines over the past four decades. It is clear in the earliest publications on the topic that Crenshaw was less interested in creating a popular term and more committed to ensuring that the multidimensionality of Black women’s lives and circumstances were accounted for in judicial proceedings and that such understandings produced more just legal outcomes.1,2 Similarly, I want policymakers, staffers, and analysts who read this article to account more fully for the ways that legislative activities affect all Americans, Black Americans inclusively, and Black people whose specific identities and circumstances place them at particular risk of educational and social injustice. Thus, practical guidance for professionals involved in the public policy ecosystem is offered in this section. The list of eight illustrative examples of the Trump Administration’s policies, executive orders, and federal agency actions furnished herein is neither extensive nor exhaustive. There are many other White House statements, federal agency directives, and actual policies
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passed by Congress that affect every American. Nevertheless, the eight highlighted examples show how issues that threaten access, experiences, livelihoods, and outcomes for all or the majority of people across multiple racial groups have population-specific effects on Black Americans and Black immigrants. Race-conscious, not deceptively colorblind analyses, must therefore shape policymaking activities. Without them, Black students will get left further behind, and well-documented, longstanding disparities that disadvantage them will multiply. Everything in the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ and Project 2025, for instance, should be analyzed with this specific question in the forefront: What will each thing documented herein do to Black Americans? To be sure, this same question should be posed in a one-population-at-a-time fashion for all other racial groups. Policymakers, their staffers, policy analysts, and others should also question the effects of proposed and existing legislation on Black students with disabilities and their same-race peers who are poor, queer, older, immigrant, and pursuing degrees within types of campuses (community colleges, HBCUs, HSIs, and predominantly white institutions). And of course, gender also ought to be considered at all these intersections. During Barack Obama’s presidency, the U.S. Department of Education created a national data system that tracked disproportionality in K-12 school suspensions and expulsions. Attention was paid to gender and disability. And most importantly, school districts were sometimes investigated and, in myriad other ways, held accountable for closing the gaps revealed by the data. Our nation needs more of this. One resistant response to the brand of race-conscious policymaking that I am calling for in this article is that it is divisive, as it seemingly prioritizes one racial group above others. Racial inequities, by their very nature, do not equally affect all racial groups. Therefore, their remedies require population-specific policy analyses and affordances. Policymakers often rely on the ‘I was elected to represent all citizens’ explanation to justify colorblindness. It is worth noting that some of the people who elected them are Black, and the jurisdictions they represent often include Black taxpayers. They, too, have kids who want to go to college but cannot afford it or are unable to access higher education because of systemic racism and impactful confrontations
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with antiblackness. Some are Black collegians themselves who experience the intersectionality of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, antisemitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, and other acts of violence on campuses. Oftentimes, it is Black constituents who experience these issues the worst. Policymakers should explicitly ask Black people about their needs, experiences, and expectations. Paying close attention to within-group diversity and intersectional differences is essential as sensemaking, race-conscious policy formation and implementation, and resource allocation ensue. It cannot be left to just Black congresspersons, Black state legislators, Black K-12 school board members, and Black college and university trustees to highlight and develop policy solutions to these problems. White policymakers, the group that comprises the overwhelming majority in these and all other legislative domains, must also deeply consider the effects that ‘policies for all’ will specifically have on Black people. They also must work in race-conscious ways to ensure that new policies and resource allocations right past and present wrongs that cyclically reproduce racially disparate outcomes for Black Americans, including those who aspire to pursue higher education as well as their same-race peers who are presently enrolled at postsecondary institutions. Adopting a framework developed during the Biden-Harris Administration would help assess the effectiveness of intersectional policy interventions. Every federal agency was first required to take stock of all inequities affecting workers and beneficiaries of their programs.9 They were expected to disaggregate data by race, gender, disability, and other demographic variables. Agency leaders were then required to furnish comprehensive written plans that specified how they intended to eliminate disparities, on what timelines, with what resources, and using what accountability levers and tracking mechanisms. While initially created for federal agencies, a similar approach could be adapted for public K-12 school districts, colleges and universities, and city and state government contexts. Tracking year-over-year data at the intersections of race and other identities and circumstances will confirm whether interventions are making a difference in achieving racial equity for Black people. Conclusion
Consistent with Kimberlé Crenshaw’s original vision, I want policy actors to fully account for the intersectional expansiveness of Black people’s lives and to create racially responsive policy remedies within and beyond education. Doing so will benefit not only Black Americans, but the entire country. An ‘All Lives Matter’ approach to policymaking fails to identify and dismantle the durable engines of racial disparities that disproportionately affect Black people’s lives. Those inequities cost Black Americans and immigrants. They also cost cities, states, and the nation. Addressing them at their finest, most granular intersectional points will improve outcomes for groups that are too often overlooked in legislative and resource allocation activities. In the U.S., those groups are simultaneously Black, poor, disabled, queer, and immigrant. And they have genders that uniquely place them at risk of mistreatment and disadvantage. Dr. Shaun Harper, is University Professor and Provost Professor in the Rossier School of Education, Price School of Public Policy, and Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. He also is the Clifford and Betty Allen Chair in Urban Leadership, as well as the USC Race and Equity Center’s founder and Chief Research Scientist. Dr. Harper has published 14 books and over 125 academic papers. He has testified to the U.S. House of Representatives four times, served as president of both the American Educational Research Association and the Association for the Study of Higher Education, and is a National Academy of Education inductee. References 1. Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989, 140-167. https://chicagounbound.uchicago. edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8 2. Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241-1299. https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039 3. Hancock, A. M. (2016). Intersectionality: An intellectual history. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/
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acprof:oso/9780199370368.001.0001 4. Harris, J. C., & Patton, L. D. (2019). Un/doing intersectionality through higher education research. The Journal of Higher Education, 90(3), 347-372. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546. 2018.1536936 5. Harper, S. R. (2020). COVID-19 and the racial equity implications of reopening college and university campuses. American Journal of Education, 127, 153-162. https://doi.org/10.1086/711095 6. Harper, S. (2025). Leveraging research and demanding proof in response to legislative attacks on DEI in U.S. higher education. AERA Open, 11(1), 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584251355514 7. Ferragamo, M. (2026, January 14). A guide to the countries on Trump’s travel ban list. Council on Foreign Relations. https://www. cfr.org/articles/guide-countries-trumps-travel-ban-list 8. Mir, A., & Toor, S. (2024). The business of stealing futures: Race, gender, and the student debt regime. Journal of Business Ethics, 193(4), 765-784. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-024-05724-w 9. Balu, R., DeRuiter-Williams, D., Cook, B. J., Baxter, M., & Reginal, T. (2023, March). Pathways to equity at scale: A synthesis of the 2022 federal equity action plans and recommendations for 2023 plans. Washington, DC: Urban Institute. https://www.urban.org/ research/publication/pathways-equity
An ‘All Lives Matter’ approach to policymaking fails to identify and dismantle the durable engines of racial disparities that disproportionately affect Black people’s lives.
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