UMBC President Freeman Hrabinski giving the 2007 commencement address at Wheaton College, Massachusetts. *** Freeman Hrabowski III, President of University of Maryland - Baltimore County, is the only African American to make Time Magazine’s recent list of the nation’s 10 best college and university presidents. This is not the first time that a major news magazine has recognized Hrabowski for his outstanding leadership at UMBC. In 2008 U.S. News & World Report recognized him a... Read Full Story

Dr. Virginia Watts, the first Black woman student on the U of M campus, and the first Black woman to earn a U of M medical degree. (Source: Origins of Diversity_UM) Posted by Ajuan Mance Read Full Story

RPI president, Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson. *** According to last week’s Chronicle of Higher Education,  Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson was the highest paid president of a private U.S. college or university during the 2007-2008 school year (the most recent year for which statistics are available). During that year, Jackson’s total compensation for her duties as president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) amounted to $1,598,247. Jackson’s compensation is a reflection of her unp... Read Full Story

  Lou Jing, a student at Shanghai’s Theater Academy, dress for a night of competition on Go! Oriental Angel. Lou Jing, a junior at Shanghai’s prestigious Theater Academy, considers herself completely Chinese. Many in China’s TV viewing audience would say otherwise. The daughter of a Chinese woman and an African American man she never met, Lou Jing nevertheless felt comfortable in the nation of her birth, that is until she appeared on a popular television singing competition... Read Full Story

The Toast Bar, where Lionel McIntyre’s debate with Camille Davis degenerated into violence. *** The general consensus among Black bloggers is that, while arguments about race can get heated and frustrated, there is no excuse for Lionel McIntyre’s violent attack on Camille Davis. Many Black bloggers have asserted that while they can understand McIntyre’s intense feelings on the subject of white privilege, they are appalled by his choice to punch someone who disagreed with hi... Read Full Story

Black on Campus trivia: Howard University women’s lacrosse team is the first and only such team to be fielded by a Historically Black College or University (HBCU). To learn more about Howard Women’s Lax and it’s outstanding women athletes, follow THIS LINK and cheer them on during their upcoming spring 2010 season! Posted by Ajuan Mance Read Full Story

“It was a very unfortunate event. I didn’t mean for it to explode the way it did.” – Columbia University Professor Lionel MacIntyre on his physical altercation with female college Margaret Camille Davis Lionel McIntyre *** Lionel McIntyre, the Nancy and George Rupp Associate Professor in the Practice of Community Development and the director of the Urban Technical Assistance Project at Columbia University, was arrested on Monday and charged with assault for his Friday ... Read Full Story

Pedro Noguera *** “In many black communities, it is the ethos, the style, the orientation of poor black kids that influences middle-class black kids in ways that [are not] true for middle-class white kids. Most middle-class white kids don’t know poor white kids.” – NYU sociology of education Professor Pedro Noguera on the impact of class on African American students’ identity conflicts, from an interview with NPR’s Nancy Solmon. To read more on this, or to... Read Full Story

Percentage of U.S. public school students who are Black males: 8% (Journal of Blacks in Higher Education) Percentage of U.S. public school teachers who are Black males: 2% (Journal of Blacks in Higher Education) Percentage of 18- to 24-year-old African Americans enrolled in college in 1996: 27% (The Chronicle of Higher Education) Percentage of 18- to 24-year-old African Americans enrolled in college in 2006: 32.3% (The Chronicle of Higher Education) Obama administration stimulus fun... Read Full Story

Andre Narcisse (1990 - 2009) (Source: Yale Alumni Magazine) *** You could never stop learning when you were around him. He was in love with every moment he experienced. – Jonah Quinn, on classmate and friend, Andre Narcisse *** From the age of three until the end of my 8th grade year, I lived in the village of Freeport, a suburb of New York city, located on the south shore of Long Island. Freeport is one of a handful of small, ethnically diverse, middle-class communities clustered to... Read Full Story