Public research universities were previously able to provide excellent education to white families thanks to healthy government funding. However, that funding has all but dried up in recent decades as historically underrepresented students have gained greater access, and now less prestigious public universities face major economic challenges.

In Broke, Laura T. Hamilton and Kelly Nielsen examine virtually all aspects of campus life to show how the new economic order in public universities, particularly at two campuses in the renowned University of California system, affects students. For most of the twentieth century, they show, less affluent families of color paid with their taxes for wealthy white students to attend universities where their own offspring were not welcome. That changed as a subset of public research universities, some quite old, opted for a “new” approach, making racially and economically marginalized youth the lifeblood of the university. These new universities, however, have been particularly hard hit by austerity. To survive, they’ve had to adapt, finding new ways to secure funding and trim costs—but ultimately it’s their students who pay the price, in decreased services and inadequate infrastructure.
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The rise of new universities is a reminder that a world-class education for all is possible. Broke shows us how far we are from that ideal and sets out a path for how we could get there.

CounterStories from the Writing Center gathers emerging scholars of colour and their white accomplices to challenge some of the most cherished lore about the work of writing centres. Writing within an intersectional feminist frame, this volume’s contributors name and critique the dominant role that white, straight, cis-gendered women have played in writing centre administration as well as in the field of writing centre studies. This work will shake the field’s core assumptions about itself.
 
Practicing what Derrick Bell has termed “creative truth telling,” these writers are not concerned with individual white women in writing centres but with the social, political, and cultural capital that is the historical birthright of white, straight, cis-gendered women, particularly in writing centre studies. The essays collected in this volume test, defy, and overflow the bounds of traditional academic discourse in the service of powerful testimony, witness, and counterstory.
 
CounterStories from the Writing Center is a must-read for writing centre directors, scholars, and tutors who are committed to antiracist pedagogy and offers a robust intersectional analysis to those who seek to understand the relationship between the work of writing centres and the problem of racism. Accessible and usable for both graduate and undergraduate students of writing centre theory and practice, this work troubles the field’s commonplaces and offers a rich envisioning of what writing centres materially committed to inclusion and equity might be and do.
 
Contributors: Dianna Baldwin, Nicole Caswell, Mitzi Ceballos, Romeo Garcia, Neisha-Anne Green, Doug Kern, T. Haltiwanger Morrison, Bernice Olivas, Moira Ozias, Trixie Smith, Willow Trevino
 

In Multisituated Kaushik Sunder Rajan evaluates the promises and potentials of multisited ethnography with regard to contemporary debates around decolonizing anthropology and the university. He observes that at the current moment, anthropology is increasingly peopled by diasporic students and researchers, all of whom are accountable to multiple communities beyond the discipline. In this light, Sunder Rajan draws on his pedagogical experience and dialogues to reconceptualize ethnography as a multisituated practice of knowledge production, ethical interlocution, and political intervention. Such a multisituated ethnography responds to contemporary anthropology’s myriad commitments as it privileges attention to questions of scale, comparison, and the politics of ethnographic encounters. Foregrounding the conditions of possibility and difficulty for those doing and teaching ethnography in the twenty-first-century, Sunder Rajan gestures toward an ethos and praxis of ethnography that would open new forms of engagement and research.

On the morning of February 13, 1969, members of Duke University's Afro-American Society barricaded themselves inside the Allen administration building. That evening, police were summoned to clear the building, firing tear gas at students in the melee that followed. When it was over, nearly twenty people were taken to the hospital, and many more injured. In Point of Reckoning, Theodore D. Segal narrates the contested fight for racial justice at Duke from the enrollment of the first Black undergraduates in 1963 to the events that led to the Allen Building takeover and beyond. Segal shows that Duke's first Black students quickly recognized that the university was unwilling to acknowledge their presence or fully address its segregationist past. By exposing the tortuous dynamics that played out as racial progress stalled at Duke, Segal tells both a local and national story about the challenges that historically white colleges and universities throughout the country have faced and continue to face.

The courageous and inspiring personal narratives and empirical studies in Presumed Incompetent II: Race, Class, Power, and Resistance of Women in Academia name formidable obstacles and systemic biases that all women faculty—from diverse intersectional and transnational identities and from tenure track, terminal contract, and administrative positions—encounter in their higher education careers. They provide practical, specific, and insightful guidance to fight back, prevail, and thrive in challenging work environments. This new volume comes at a crucial historical moment as the United States grapples with a resurgence of white supremacy and misogyny at the forefront of our social and political dialogues that continue to permeate the academic world.

Contributors: Marcia Allen Owens, Sarah Amira de la Garza, Sahar Aziz, Jacquelyn Bridgeman, Jamiella Brooks, Lolita Buckner Inniss, Kim Case, Donna Castaneda, Julia Chang, Meredith Clark, Meera Deo, Penelope Espinoza, Yvette Flores, Lynn Fujiwara, Jennifer Gomez, Angela Harris, Dorothy Hines, Rachelle Joplin, Jessica Lavariega Monforti, Cynthia Lee, Yessenia Manzo, Melissa Michelson, Susie E. Nam, Yolanda Flores Niemann, Jodi O’Brien, Amelia Ortega, Laura Padilla, Grace Park, Stacey Patton, Desdamona Rios, Melissa Michal Slocum, Nellie Tran, Rachel Tudor, Pamela Tywman Hoff, Adrien Wing, Jemimah Li Young

Speechifying collects the most important speeches of Dr. Johnnetta Betsch Cole—noted Black feminist anthropologist, the first Black female president of Spelman College, former director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African Art, and former chair and president of the National Council of Negro Women. A powerful and eloquent orator, Dr. Cole demonstrates her commitment to the success of historically Black colleges and universities, her ideas about the central importance of diversity and inclusion in higher education, the impact of growing up in the segregated South on her life and activism, and her belief in public service. Drawing on a range of Black thinkers, writers, and artists as well as biblical scripture and spirituals, her speeches give voice to the most urgent and polarizing issues of our time while inspiring transformational leadership and change. Speechifying also includes interviews with Dr. Cole that highlight her perspective as a Black feminist, her dedication to public speaking and “speechifying” in the tradition of the Black church, and the impact that her leadership and mentorship have had on generations of Black feminist scholars.

Writing Centers and Racial Justice responds to renewed and invigorated interest in racial justice and antiracism across writing centers and in writing studies, providing practical ways to enact racial justice in and through the writing center. The collection builds on decades of largely theoretical work on race and racism to move everyday writing center administrators toward action.
 
In five thematically organized sections—Countering Racism and Colonialism in Higher Education; Recruitment, Hiring, and Retention; Tutor Education and Professional Development; Engaging with Campus and Community; and Holding Our Professional Organizations Accountable—scholars from a variety of institutions, both large and small, public and private, present critical reflection and concrete guidance on anti-racist writing center administrative policies and practices. Several chapters include sample materials, such as course syllabi, consultant education activities, and recruitment materials, to help current and aspiring writing center administrators implement changes in their own contexts.
 
Writing Centers and Racial Justice is the first book to offer clear and actionable advice on how writing centers and their staff can take up racial or social justice work that will result in real sustainable change. Writing center directors, professionals, and tutors, as well as administrators and decision makers at the institutional level, will benefit from this thoughtful and effective text.