This Issue: The 42nd Pullias Lecture
The 42nd Pullias Lecture, “Advancing Racial Equity through Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) Campus Centers,” takes place September 15th (Register Now). The event features Tia Brown McNair, Vice President in the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Student Success, Association of American Colleges and Universities, and Kaiwipunikauikawēkiu Lipe, Native Hawaiian Affairs Program Officer, University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa. This rescheduled version of an in-person gathering was initially planned for what almost seems like a lifetime ago. So much has changed so quickly. From pandemics to racial equity, higher education has been knocked off balance and has been forced to keep that high-wire act going as a fledgling and uncertain Fall semester progresses under historic conditions.

This makes the overarching topic of this lecture, Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT), a timely happenstance that is worth a closer look. Our guest editor for this month's newsletter is Dr. Kaiwipunikauikawēkiu Lipe, who is one of the featured speakers for the lecture. Her unique and valuable perspectives in this edition serve as a preview to her upcoming presentation at the event.

Dr. Kaiwipunikauikawēkiu Lipe works at the University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa (UHM) as the Native Hawaiian Affairs Program Officer where she implements findings from her research to advance UHM’s goal of becoming a Native Hawaiian place of learning. She is also the Director of UHM’s Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Campus Center, which she will address in depth at the lecture.

This edition includes insights on settler colonialism as well as the far reaching impacts of COVID on communities of color and minoritized populations across Higher Education. It also reveals the winner of the 2020 Delphi Award and debuts the Higher Ed Conversations in Black project. We also welcome Dr. Kristin Renn, Professor of Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education and the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies for Student Success Research at the Michigan State University, to reflect on her time with the Pullias Center as we continue to celebrate its 25th anniversary.
“Mommy, do I have to go to college?” While the question itself stopped me in my tracks, what surprised me even more was how much I hesitated before answering my 9-year-old daughter.

On the one hand, it should have been an easy “yes.” For starters, we are a family steeped in higher education. Both of my parents, who were first generation college graduates and PhDs, spent their lives using those extra letters behind their name to advocate for and make change in their communities. My husband and I have followed suit, dedicating our careers to supporting the success of Indigenous students in higher education while simultaneously working to transform our institutions to become more equitable. Needless to say, part of the reason my daughter’s question stopped me in my tracks was that I thought the answer was obvious.

So why did I hesitate? Well, there are a lot of reasons for that, too. While I am immensely grateful and proud of my mom’s accomplishments as one of the first Native Hawaiian female PhDs in the world, I have seen firsthand how her dedication to the University has taken a toll on her physically and emotionally. I’m already feeling that exhaustion too. For example, for all the years I’ve been at my university, almost nobody says my name correctly even though Hawaiian is one of two recognized official state languages. Can you imagine having your name mispronounced day in and day out with no end in sight? The list goes on with the type of not-so-micro-aggressions experienced by myself and other Hawaiians on a daily basis...
One of the topics that Dr. Lipe will touch upon during her featured presentation at the 42nd Pullias Lecture is settler colonialism. Her native Hawai’i stands in many ways as an example of the impacts of settler colonialism and Dr. Lipe leads a team at her university taking a close look at the drastic changes it has brought.

Settler colonialism refers to the systematic efforts to assimilate, isolate, or suppress indigenous people through the elimination of their societies, culture, language, and political systems. It represents a distinct type of colonialism driven by the replacement of the uniqueness of an indigenous population with a hybrid native-settler society that eventually consumes the original culture. Settler colonial states include, but are not limited to, the United States, Australia, Canada, and South Africa.
The Pullias Center has selected two winners of the Delphi Award for 2020. Louisiana State University and Northcentral University will each receive $15,000 cash awards to continue their work to support adjunct, contingent, and non-tenure-track faculty in promoting student success. In addition, finalists from Bay Path University and the Lehigh Valley Association of Independent Colleges (LVAIC) are also being acknowledged for their successful work towards supporting non-tenure track faculty.
There has been much discussion about the disparate impact COVID-19 has had on communities of color and other marginalized populations. This reaches into higher education where struggles for racial equity had already taken a toll before the pandemic arrived.

In Dr. Gail Christopher's plenary speech at the AACU TRHT Institute earlier this summer, she describes why racism is a public health issue and makes powerful connections between COVID and racism. In particular, she points out how communities who have long had to defend themselves against racism day after day, generation after generation, suffer from compromised defense systems as a result of this perpetual struggle. This leaves them especially vulnerable and opens the door open for something like COVID to come along and widen an already insufferable racial divide in its wake.
The Pullias Center introduces Higher Ed Conversations in Black. a new series where every other month we intentionally curate questions around different issues and priorities for an invited group of Black higher education thought leaders.

The inaugural issue, "Good and Necessary Trouble," features insight from Pedro Noguera, John Slaughter, Charles Davis, Sharon Fries Britt, and Raquel Rall. It also includes an introduction by Jordan Harper of the Pullias Center, who created "Higher Ed Conversations in Black" and edited this first issue.

The commentary we ask invited contributors to share is meant to both evoke new conversations and offer novel perspectives on existing issues that plague higher education.
Celebrating 25 Years of the Pullias Center
Like many other readers of the Pullias Center's newsletter and posts, I consider myself a friend of the Pullias Center. I didn’t go to USC, I never worked at the center, but I have benefitted from the work of Pullias Center researchers and count several of them as colleagues and, yes, friends.

I started my PhD program at Boston College the same year Bill Tierney moved from Penn State to USC to start the Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis, as the Pullias Center for Higher Education was known in its early days. As Bill wrote in his post for this series of reflections, he was working with one support staff person and one grad assistant in a bunch of empty offices. But I had no idea. By the time I learned my way around the higher education research landscape I was given to believe the center was a staid establishment, long in years.
Quick Takes
from the Pullias Center

  • The Pullias Center's Adrianna Kezar contributed her voice to a collection of essays on the future of the higher education academic workforce in a post-COVID world in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
  • New Research co-authored by Adrianna Kezar explores American Association of Universities (AAU) STEM Initiative and its attempt to scale culture change related to improving STEM teaching.
  • An article in The Chronicle of Higher Education explores the work done by The Pullias Center's Adrian Huerta and colleagues towards re-imagining the college admissions process.
  • A new paper from Pullias Center faculty member Adrian Huerta looks at the narratives of Latino high school young men to understand what college knowledge they possess.
Recommended Media
Dr. Lipe's suggestions for your reading and playlist

October's issue will be guest-edited by Dr. Julie Posselt