Intersection Subject Line
America’s top universities pursue racial equity and repair
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| DELIVERING ON DIVERSITY, GENDER EQUALITY, AND INCLUSION
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| In this issue, we look at an effort by Harvard University to address its ties to slavery. Plus: how student loans are affecting Black Americans. |
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| Pursuing repair. This week, Harvard University announced that it is committing $100 million in support of efforts to “redress—through teaching, research, and service—our legacy with slavery.” The university noted that “the profound harm caused by [Harvard’s] entanglements with slavery and its legacies cannot be valued in monetary terms alone.” Still, Harvard described its financial commitment as “a necessary predicate to and foundation for redress.” |
| As part of its reparative efforts, Harvard will deepen its partnerships with historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), recognizing their “invaluable role … in the educational landscape and the persistent underfunding of these colleges.” McKinsey research shows that HBCUs, which confer 13 percent of bachelor’s degrees earned by Black Americans, are uniquely positioned to accelerate Black economic mobility and boost the economic performance of the United States as a whole. |
| Among the signatories of the Harvard letter: Harvard Law School graduate Ken Chenault, former CEO of American Express and a leading voice on racial equity, voting rights, and business leaders’ responsibility to take a moral stand against injustice. As Chenault recently told McKinsey: “the role of a leader is to define reality and give hope.”
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| A Spelman woman. Spelman College, one of two historically Black women’s colleges, has named Dr. Helene Gayle as its next president. Dr. Gayle is an epidemiologist, global public-health leader, and CEO of the Chicago Community Trust. “This is a moment,” she says, “where HBCUs are once again being recognized for the importance that they bring to every sector of this country.” Gayle has set out to make Spelman more affordable and to decrease the amount of debt that its students take on.
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| Black families across America are disproportionately burdened by student loan debt. Federal data show that Black college grads hold nearly $25,000 more student debt than their White counterparts four years after graduation. By that point, thanks to interest, half of Black grads owe more on their federal loans than they did on the day they graduated (that’s compared with less than one in five White graduates).
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| The big picture: student loan reform could help the United States advance racial equity. |
| Editor’s note: Among the Spelman alums congratulating Dr. Gayle was Walgreens CEO (and Spelman board chair) Roz Brewer, who reflected in her 2018 commencement address on the experience of “getting mistaken.” |
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| — Edited by Julia Arnous, an editor in McKinsey’s Boston office |
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