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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
PJ (00:02.6)
Hello and welcome to Chasing the Viathan. I'm your host PJ Weary and I'm here today with Dr. De'Andra Rose, Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. And we're here to talk about her book, The Power of Black Excellence, Historically Black College and Universities and the Fight for American Democracy. Dr. Rose, wonderful to have you on today.
Deondra Rose (00:27.554)
Hello, PJ. Thank you so much for having me with you. I'm really excited to be here.
PJ (00:32.308)
So talk to us, Dr. Rose, why this book?
Deondra Rose (00:36.596)
gosh, and please call me Deondra. I have to say, so I'm a political historian, a political scientist by training, and I study the connection between US higher education public policies and democratic citizenship. So I'm really curious about how policymakers can use education programming to help promote political engagement, civic engagement among citizens, especially groups that have historically been
PJ (00:38.802)
Okay.
Deondra Rose (01:05.938)
minoritized, marginalized, or otherwise, you know, have occupied the margins of political power in the United States. So to my mind, like to really understand sort of the progress that Black people have made, the question of like how Black people have found educational opportunity is paramount. And I would argue that no institution in the history of the United States
set of institutions have invested so heavily in the educational achievement and opportunity of Black Americans.
PJ (01:41.254)
Why is higher education so important?
Deondra Rose (01:44.77)
So political scientists have long established that people who have more education are significantly more likely to engage in politics. So getting a college degree, for example, comes with or is correlated with higher levels of voter participation, higher levels of contacting elected officials, higher levels of volunteering for political candidates or campaigns, a higher propensity to participate in protests, for example.
People who have higher levels of education are also more likely to be tapped by politicians, by parties, by campaigns for their participation. And we know that people with more education are significantly more likely to run for office themselves.
PJ (02:30.888)
What are the causes for that? So what's the story of why someone with higher education? mean, some of those seem kind of self-evident, but I'm always leery of just, well, let me just make an assumption here.
Deondra Rose (02:33.816)
Yeah.
Deondra Rose (02:45.268)
Absolutely. political scientists talk a lot about mechanisms. So what would the mechanisms or the levers be that support this correlation? So on one hand, higher education is oftentimes related to higher levels of socioeconomic status. So people who have more education, in many instances, tend to earn more money because they oftentimes have access to jobs that pay better or provide a little more
sort of freedom in terms of how they use their time. And so higher levels of income or higher levels of flexible time or disposable time can be associated with a greater likelihood or a lower cost of engaging in politics, more disposable income to use to contribute to those campaigns. know like the astronomical role that money plays and astronomical amounts of money in the political system.
Higher levels of educational attainment might also correspond to more familiarity with the complexities of government. government is, like in the US, for example, intricate. So thinking through a federalist system where you have, at the national level, three branches of government, but then you also, at state and local levels, have municipal and state and county forms of government.
In the US, there are so many instances to cast votes, for example. We have so many elections. It can be dizzying. And so just understanding what are we voting for this time and having a sense of, we talk a lot about efficacy, that I as an individual have what it takes to influence government. And then also the sense that government, the external efficacy, responds to people like me or cares about what people like me think.
So those are some of the areas where a higher level of educational participation and achievement can correspond to greater participation.
PJ (04:49.192)
This might be a shot in the dark, but...
Is there a correlation here too between where voters really have more power, which is down ballot and more education? generally speaking that, I mean, most people don't talk about down ballot until you get higher up in education. And it is funny because like your vote for the presidency, like by all means, like exercise your responsibility, but you're...
Deondra Rose (05:07.246)
Mm-hmm.
PJ (05:19.411)
We all love the Mulan quote, you know, a single grain of rice, but most grains of rice aren't tipping the scale.
Deondra Rose (05:26.766)
That's right. There's so much to be said about like government that is closer to our everyday lives. And so, you know, oftentimes, you we might joke about like elections for dogcatcher, for example. But, you know, thinking through what mayors and city councils and county commissions do, like those in many cases are the policies that we are more likely to see on the day to day. So the federal level of policymaking absolutely has a bearing on our lives.
But recognizing just, again, how complex our governmental system is and having deeper conversations about politics that extend beyond some of those larger headlines is also something that oftentimes comes with, you know, perhaps majoring in political science or public policy if you're interested in Duke, a shameless plug.
PJ (06:16.798)
Hey, nothing wrong with that.
Deondra Rose (06:19.534)
So yeah, I mean, I think this term I'm actually teaching a class on political analysis for policymaking. And we spend a lot of time thinking about just how, you know, with the decline of local news, for example, there can, it's harder to get coverage of what's going on, you know, in your city, in your town. So a lot of our attention.
is trained on the federal landscape or the national landscape, but there's a lot of government and policy that happens at the local levels.
PJ (06:55.676)
I can't remember who I was talking to that was mentioning that there's been a real loss of local newspapers and that's contributed to one, a lack of knowledge about local elections. But it's also, there seems to be, and I don't have the studies on it, but an increase in corruption in local government because there's less accountability. So that's something I...
I threw out there pretty recklessly without citations, but I have to look that up later.
Deondra Rose (07:28.278)
And such an interesting point, like a number of colleagues here in the Sanford School who study the media and journalism, and they absolutely point to a number of democratic challenges that come from not having those local reporters on the beat sitting in at the city council meetings and county commission meetings, providing an important sort of set of eyes for the people.
PJ (07:51.582)
So to kind of go to the roots of your book here, what was the motive for starting Historically Black Colleges and Universities?
Deondra Rose (08:01.806)
Yeah, so the first HBCU was established in 1837. It was known as the Institute for Colored Youth, later named Cheney University up in Pennsylvania. And it was established by a Quaker philanthropist. you know, he actually, his family was from the Caribbean and they made their fortune in, I believe it was in sugar plantations and, you know, their family
enslaved people, you know, owned enslaved people. And when this gentleman, his last name was Humphreys, came to the U.S. and settled in Pennsylvania, he recognized that there was this second class citizenship for Black Americans and really, you know, decided and committed himself to working, you know, and I think much of this was, you for him a matter of faith to
to work to address that and to use a tenth of his estate, basically a tithe, to support the creation of educational opportunities. So that was a really big part of it. Like let's train black youth to go into trades or to perhaps become teachers. And so that impetus was the establishment of that first.
Black College in 1837. And then you saw additional sort philanthropic efforts. The African Methodist Episcopal Church was also very prominent in starting HBCUs. had even like there was a military regiment like after the Civil War that actually founded a college in Missouri. So like there were a number of different sort of forces or groups of people.
that recognized that the key to black upliftment, racial uplift during the 19th century, especially the years preceding and after the Civil War, was education. Also, it's important to underscore that education in the US went all the way back to the creation of Harvard in 1836. So there was this long standing history of higher educational institutions. But
Deondra Rose (10:19.212)
you know, many of those institutions declined to admit Black Americans, certainly not in the same numbers as they did white Americans. And so the establishment of higher ed institutions that would focus and prioritize education for Black people, and especially for Black teachers who could go into communities and do that important work of helping to habilitate these newly sort of established citizens.
for newly freed black people was an important impetus.
PJ (10:53.886)
Just real quick, I think you might have misspoke. You said Harvard 1636? Yes. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I think you said 1836 because you just said the history. just for the sake of our listeners, yes.
Deondra Rose (10:59.554)
I believe it's 1636.
Deondra Rose (11:06.478)
1636. Yes, 1636.
PJ (11:14.01)
One, thank you. Great answer. And as we talk about that, this is something that has come up a lot with a of my guests. more and more people go to college, I was just talking to Dr. Mark Roach from Notre Dame about this, that it used to be that you went to college to become a better citizen. And that over time, that has flip-flopped and almost disappeared with.
we go to college to get a job. and that, so of course that was the whole, a whole other discussion with him, but I think it has a lot of relevance here. Can you talk about that idea of education to make someone a better citizen over just, Hey, I just want to get a better paying job.
Deondra Rose (12:01.593)
I love this question. So I mean, in addition to this idea of fostering better citizenship, there was also this idea of really investing in the clergy. So creating people who would be on hand in communities to be ministers and preachers and pastors. And then for co-ed education, the education of women, it was largely to invest in the development of wives, like educated partners for...
these clergymen. So there was very much this sense of like personal development as an impetus for education that over time has really shifted toward thinking and understandably given what so many families and students invest in higher education, giving the rising cost of college, especially in recent decades, this connection between higher education and socioeconomic outcomes. I think
PJ (12:53.544)
Yep.
Deondra Rose (12:59.916)
I think to my mind, this is one of the most important questions facing higher education today and educators and educational leaders today is like, why do we do this? Why higher education? Are we in the business of developing workers or are we in the business of developing citizens? And I think that has like huge implications for democracy, my mind. So I think to your point, know, HBCUs,
I would argue have always been in this mindset of, you know, we're working very intentionally to develop people who are, you know, on one hand, able to you know, livelihoods to build a life for themselves and their families. And on the other hand, we're working to foster the development of leaders who can create positive change in society. But it was debated.
Like this was actually not something that was sort of, you know, there was not a consensus on this. It wasn't a valence issue. One of the most, I think, sort of illustrative examples of this debate was the conversation between Booker T. Washington and W. B. Du Bois during sort of the turn of the century period. For Booker T. Washington, you know, the big question is, you know, to what end education for Black people?
he would argue that the priority really needed to be in helping people to become gainfully employed or the jobs that existed at that moment. And so, you know, to his mind, vocational training was really like, should have been the priority. That was a bit of a contrast to W.E.B. Du Bois who felt that in order to change society, we needed to invest in the development of leaders. So people who
new sort of sewing and cooking and sort of agricultural work, but also classics and the social sciences and economics and political science and leadership. So there were some really interesting questions about what courses to prioritize, what the curriculum should look like. And we saw that in terms of early support for different black colleges and how they developed.
PJ (15:26.462)
And you kind of touched on it already. You mentioned there's this period here from the 1870s to about 1964, where there's a political mission for HBCUs. What is that political mission? mean, well, yeah, I think we can see where this is going ending in 1964. But if you could talk us through how that looked in the development of these.
Deondra Rose (15:52.354)
Yes, so it was part and parcel of their development. I think that for especially the black leaders who led HBCUs and who worked in them, the faculty, for example, recognized what a disruptive force black education could be and was in the US, especially during the reconstruction period.
but also in the years before and immediately after the Civil War. So again, HBCUs were operating before the Civil War. And then in the years after, as the US was sort of reconstituting itself and there was this work to habilitate these newly enfranchised black citizens, HBCUs were really central to that work. And you see it in some of their mottos and...
you know, just the work, there were some interesting instances where some of the earliest black elected officials were actually sort of leaving their post to go teach in HBCUs because they felt that that work could be especially beneficial to, you know, the progress that black people made at the time. you. So I think, you know, to that end, thinking through, you know, what does it take to build
PJ (17:02.461)
Excuse me.
Deondra Rose (17:14.938)
active citizens, people who can effectively engage and participate in the participation of or an exercise of power. So perhaps not only as voters, but also as elected officials. you know, HBCUs, for example, did this very important work of generating teachers. So producing teachers who were then going out, as I mentioned a little earlier, into communities all over the country, and they were fighting back.
like in real time against some pretty pernicious ideas that had been used to support the subjugation of black people and the enslavement of black people for many years. So this idea that black people were not equipped with the intellectual fortitude to exercise citizenship, for example, that inherently black people were feckless or lazy or incompetent. You had these black colleges popping up.
And they knew that their work was political and they were very intentional in how they did that work. So one of my favorite examples was how some black colleges held public examinations. So they would invite everyone, they would advertise it in the news and they would say, on down and check out our students as they do their term exams. And you would have these black college students reciting in Latin.
and demonstrating in-depth knowledge of classics and really performing at the highest level. And there are news accounts from the period. So a lot of my book is archival. So I looked at historical newspapers, historical papers, and people would talk about just how impressive this work was. And even the most fervent opponents of equity, of racial equity, had to admit that these students were impressive. So that work.
was political and it was very intentional and it pushed back against a lot of the, just sort of the tropes that were used to subjugate black people.
PJ (19:21.438)
This might be a little bit too far off the beaten path here, but is there anything in particular about how they interacted with eugenics? Because of course, at the time that would have been like the scientific consensus when you read about it from that time. As I understand it, was that kind of...
What did that look like to push against what was considered, I mean, if you were an educated person, that was the right way.
Deondra Rose (19:50.572)
That's right. So I mean, I would argue that another especially political aspect of HBCUs was that they provided these intellectual homes for scholars who are pushing back against received scholarship and wisdom that established, you know, what was purportedly a scientific set of evidence for extremely problematic and racist views. And so you had these
early scholars, I described them as sort of the intellectual architects of what emerged as the civil rights movement, who they pushed back and they critiqued that scholarship. you know, I think one of the most valuable aspects of the academy is the fact that it provides a fertile ground for debate and the checking of different ideas and questioning of things that we think we know and assumptions that we're making.
And so a lot of that work, just even on race, even on sort of blackness and sort of the science of gaining insight into race, was really pushed forward by some pioneers who were ensconced in HBCUs.
PJ (21:01.925)
And we've talked a lot about higher education, but why were HBCUs uniquely important?
Deondra Rose (21:11.63)
I mean, I think there's something to be said about creating a set of institutions that are dedicated to the empowerment and uplift of people who had never been prioritized by any other institutions, but whose labor had been essential to the growth of the country. so I think after the Civil War, the US had this task of
figuring out how to.
essentially do right by so many citizens who had been, you know.
can't even, it's hard to articulate like the burdens of enslavement and second class citizenship. And so to work to reverse that, to work against that, to correct that was a tall order. And there were a number of things that lawmakers might've done at that time that they opted not to do. And even like today, for example, there's a really energetic debate about reparations.
you know, this question of how as a society do we work to repair historical wrongs that were perpetrated by the government? You know, so when the government is culpable, like how do we as a society work to address that culpability? And, and, know, is there a statute of limitations on those things? You know, to my mind, you know, people often talked about 30 acres and a mule, like there might've been ways that the government, you know, in that closer proximity.
Deondra Rose (22:50.934)
to that system might have addressed things and they didn't. So in many ways, HBCUs were the institutions that did that hard work and have continued over time to do that important work of empowering citizens that really were marginalized in ways that the government contributed to and participated in. So I think for that reason, they were uniquely important. think just
politically, like in terms of what they represented, you what they symbolized, their presence in the educational landscape, in the civic landscape, in the democratic landscape also was huge. And then finally, you know, the fact that they have over generations produced leaders who have, you know, not only gone to work as teachers or in communities as local elected officials and business people and, you know, philanthropists.
We're also seeing people who are disproportionately represented at like in national politics, for example, or in state level offices. It's something like 80 % of black judges in the United States who are HBCU alums today. I wanna say it's 50 % of black lawyers, 40 % of black members of Congress. So, you you asked earlier PJ about like some of the reasons why.
I decided to do this research and some of it was understanding the significance of HBCU alums in our democratic landscape. And if you think of the major turning points for our country in terms of rights, civil rights expansions, for example, I think it's fascinating and inspiring to think that the strategy that was used to shape
like the civil rights movement, the key civil rights arguments that went into Brown versus Board of Education, for example, were crafted in HBCU law schools by HBCU students and HBCU faculty members. So there's so much that our society benefits from and a lot of the language that we have today about equity and expectations about segregation and equal opportunity that
Deondra Rose (25:10.742)
emanated from those institutions.
PJ (25:18.502)
I really appreciated where you went at the end there. had a question that I think actually doesn't fit the flows as well. So, So instead of going where I was originally thinking, let me ask you about that.
that history, that story, can you explain a little bit more of that direct connection to civil rights? You said the political mission, you know, that period ends in 1964. I know that that's a little bit, you know, there's a periodization you have to do, but it's obviously ongoing.
Deondra Rose (25:48.574)
Ongoing, absolutely. it is indeed. So to my mind, I think a lot about the intellectual antecedents of what many people describe as the civil rights movement. Oftentimes, we're talking about the 1950s and 1960s. But that movement, as you point out, was a long one. And so we had civil rights acts back in the late 19th century even.
There is of course Plessy versus Ferguson that permitted the use of quote unquote separate but equal accommodations in public spaces. But that sort of doctrine of separate but equal was actually established years before Plessy versus Ferguson in the area of higher education. And so we think of the federal government's intervention in this space. It played a really important role in
in sort of creating the foundations that led to a lot of the sort of de jure discrimination that HBCUs and their leaders worked against. And so, you know, one of the points I make in the book is that the government acted as both a friend and a foe to HBCUs historically. And so one example of that is, you know, in 1862, the federal government created the first
land grant policy, the Morrill Land Grant Act. And so if you think of like the major flagship higher ed institution in your state, you know, it was established with the support of this land grant policy. So, you know, I went to University of Georgia for undergrad. That's a land grant, like a flagship institution. I think they go back and forth with the College of William & Mary on who's first. I think it was Georgia, clearly. And in North Carolina, North Carolina State.
That policy was passed right before the Civil War. After it was passed, some people really liked the fact that the government provided this really nice democratizing support for education. So extending the reach of higher educational institutions across states created so much opportunity, but the colleges needed more support. So they needed
Deondra Rose (28:11.054)
money to pay their faculty to pay to help students stay enrolled, you know, because their infrastructure was starting to crumble. you know, policymakers over the 1860s, 1870s, 1880s tried to follow, tried to pass some follow-up legislation. Well, also over that time, you had a reconstruction and you started to see the election of some early Black senators and members of Congress.
who were then asking questions like, well, what does this mean for black college students? Will we see those flagship institutions desegregate? And we're talking like back in the 1870s, they're having these conversations. And so the interesting policy outcome was that in 1890, when it was a Justin Morrill of Vermont actually, who was the person who was really spearheading this policy.
PJ (28:53.798)
I didn't realize it was that early. That's amazing.
Deondra Rose (29:09.73)
and it was named for him, it was part of this compromise. And the idea was that each state, states could not discriminate in terms of how they allocate their land grant funds. But if they create separate but equal higher ed institutions for black students, that would be considered in compliance. And so 1890, were a number of HBCUs that we refer to as the 1890 institutions that were supported
by that, I want to say there were about 17 that were created as a result of that land grant policy. So, you know, on one hand, it did the great work of helping to create these HBCUs. On the other hand, the government really created this president of supporting separate but equal in higher education, even before it did so in Plessy versus Ferguson. I don't think it's coincidental that so much of US civil rights
the battles over civil rights have happened in education space. I think that's really interesting. So I'm sorry, this is a long-winded way of getting the intellectual antecedent. So there were people who were working in these HBCUs. So people like Carter G. Woodson and Alan Locke and Ida B. Wells, who were doing that work, as we mentioned a little while ago, of pushing back against some of those early ideas about race and about
PJ (30:16.156)
No, no, this is great.
Deondra Rose (30:37.39)
sort of ability and intellect and also just how we teach history. So raising questions about, know, are we really telling our national narrative in an accurate way? Whose stories are we privileging? Whose stories are we obscuring? And you know, had people like Carter G. Woodson who fought for, you know, an appreciation for and an honest treatment of Black history and Black contributions to the United States.
So those were some of the, I would argue, leaders who were academics, intellectuals, who were really pushing forth ideas that I would argue were connected with political activism by the next generation of Black leaders, people like Martin Luther King, Ella Baker, who were products also of HBCUs. They had these classes with some of those intellectual pioneers.
And they started thinking about, what do we do about this? How do we connect this sort of line of thinking, the way we're interpreting citizenship with some legal and institutional sort of pushing back? And so they were the people who translated those intellectual ideas into action in the 1940s, actually, which is when some of the early
boycotts and sit-ins were established, like even as early as like the 1940s in Washington, D.C. Pauli Murray was involved in some of those. But you started to see HBCU students and also high school students, know, so some of whom had siblings at the HBCUs were on the front lines as the foot soldiers of the civil rights movement. And HBCUs provided hubs where
students, their faculty colleagues, their community colleagues and allies would meet and they would develop strategies. I mean, it was a really interesting, I mean, to my mind, thinking about what it was like to be what it had to be like to be a college student in the 1960s and the 1950s, who were protesting regularly and still enrolled in school. So you have people like Diane Nash and John Lewis who offer these stunning accounts.
Deondra Rose (32:55.83)
of what it was like to be students and to juggle their academic responsibilities with their roles as activists.
PJ (33:04.572)
Now you mentioned a little bit that you think it's really interesting that most of this debate happened in education. Can you expound on that a little bit more? Why is education, why has that become the main arena for these kinds of contests?
Deondra Rose (33:24.204)
Yeah, so like, you know, the contest, I think a lot about our school desegregation battles, questions about like how we fund schooling in the United States, even thinking about curricula and what we're going to teach. You know, there's so much to be said about like the opportunities that we give people. People are much less comfortable in terms of U.S. social policy with providing in-kind benefits like, you know,
cash assistance, for example, but there's a lot more comfort in providing educational opportunity. And we all recognize that, you know, a quality education for, like we all want that for all of our kids. You know, it's a foundation for a great life and for professional opportunities, you know, just for navigating the world in a particular way. We want our kids to have a great start. And so, you know, there's so many questions about, well,
How much are we investing in educational opportunity? And are we going to invest the same amount for all of our kids? Even during the immediate post-war period, one of the most contentious issues related to race was about public school funding and whether or not the federal government would make a commitment to providing equitable public school support for all American kids. There was a policy that failed called the Blair bill.
that was like an early like 19th century proposal for, you know, making K through 12 education a federal responsibility. Sort of taking it not just from, you know, the states handle it now, but to say that we were gonna create some standards for doing this, for funding this. And the Southern states really were like, absolutely not. Like we were not gonna support this. A lot of it was because of this idea that if the federal government intervened in education,
then it would decide that it could tell the southern states what to do in terms of the racial order of things. So, you know, one example of why so many battles have taken place in that zone of education, I think it's because of the opportunities that stem from education and I think also just the politics of how we organize education in the United States.
PJ (35:45.354)
Do you think there is something specific about, and this is off the cuff, so I might be totally wrong here. Do you think there is something specific about education that makes it a good avenue for the marginalized and or the oppressed to speak up?
Deondra Rose (36:05.912)
Hmm. I definitely think it depends on if, you know, of we, big we as a society are providing educational contexts that allow for that to be done, you know, in the best possible way. you know, with quality resources, with, you know, teachers who are able to, you know, either do some of that speaking up or provide materials that offer, you know,
the full rendering of history, for example. I think to my mind, that's why I'm in higher education. I think education is such an important part of our democracy. And I think that in terms of empowering marginalized groups, and we've seen this. My first book looked at how landmark policies like Title IX and the early financial aid programs did so much to
expand educational opportunities for women and in the same way have really important democratic outcomes. So I think that if provided equitably, if provided in a way that extends quality educational opportunity, education absolutely could be the way to provide support and to amplify the voices of the marginalized. On the flip side, there are some forms of education
that target people who are from historically marginalized groups and don't provide quality educational opportunity. And so one example, historically has been some for-profit colleges that have disproportionately targeted minority groups, women, for example, first gen students, students from low income backgrounds who recognize that higher educational
PJ (37:47.815)
Mmm.
Deondra Rose (38:02.208)
opportunity and achievement has been sort of the pathway to success and a key for unlocking doors and I've kind of preyed on that.
PJ (38:15.09)
And I'm just talking through this. It seems even as you're talking, and I'm just seeing if I'm on the same track here, that there's a combination of authority and kind of the longstanding narrative that you get from education, but also when done correctly, that there is an openness to learn that the students bring and there's an openness to debate that academia has to, in order to be influential, has to allow.
That kind of, that's where I was kind of, that question came from. Does that make sense? Is that, am I, okay.
Deondra Rose (38:51.643)
I like that. And I mean, the other thing I'll point to is the fact that there's so much value in learning from others, you know, and in occupying spaces and having conversations where you gain insight into experiences and histories and backgrounds that are different from your own. I mean, that to my mind was
was like the most valuable thing about my education for me. And I learned so much from my faculty members, my professors, from the curriculum that we covered together, and so much from my classmates. And there's so much value in extending our worldviews beyond what we know or what's familiar. And I think that's a really important aspect of the educational endeavor.
PJ (39:44.892)
You mentioned a little bit about how the African, I think it's AME, what's, forgive me, I can't remember.
Deondra Rose (39:52.287)
African Methodist Episcopal Church.
PJ (39:54.886)
African Methodist Episcopal Church was heavily involved with starting a lot of the HBCUs. How is the relationship between kind of religion and HBCUs right now? And how has that been kind of historically?
Deondra Rose (40:01.162)
Thank you.
Deondra Rose (40:09.23)
You know, I mean, my sense is that, you know, I talk a lot in the book about how if churches were the heart and the soul of the civil rights movement, HBCUs were like the body, you know, and sort of mind. I definitely think historically there's been a connection between religion, religious institutions, and HBCUs. You know, my sense is that that...
connection has been just like with the AME Church and establishing a number of HBCUs formal, but also rather informal. So you have people like Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, but he did seminary work, but he was also a graduate of Morehouse. So as I understand it, my book doesn't delve too deeply into religion and HBCUs, but I do get the sense that there's historically a pretty tight connection.
PJ (41:04.338)
Yeah, I was following up to you mentioned that some of it was for training the clergy and I mean, even as you look at early America, especially as it pushed out, like who you had the town doctor and the town priest or pastor, right? Those were the two most educated people in the town.
Deondra Rose (41:24.702)
Exactly. mean, and that's definitely the case for, you know, you know, PWIs historically. So, you know, Harvard, Yale, if I'm not, if I'm remembering correctly, like many of them were established with like the divinity units were like the core initially. So that's absolutely right. So, you know, in terms of U.S. higher ed writ large, that connection between like religion and education was foundational. I think, you know, over time,
Just speaking about the broader higher ed landscape, I think there has been this movement toward a more secular approach. But then you have important schools, like you mentioned Notre Dame earlier today. I did a postdoc there for two years and so many others that bring religious tradition to their academic.
PJ (42:16.058)
And you kind of end with this looking towards the future. What is the future of HBCUs and how do you see that playing out with the future of democracy?
Deondra Rose (42:26.982)
I think that HBCUs are essential to the future of democracy. you know, one example is that they continue to contribute so many leaders to our political landscape, our business landscape, our educational landscape, I mean, to our society. They continue to teach us lessons about how to activate and support
core democratic citizens at a time when I think we have to ask big questions about what it means to be a democracy and the role that higher education plays in that. And, you know, I think that if we're thinking about how to structure an educational experience in a way that provides a deep understanding of problems or history or solutions.
HBCUs have been doing that beautifully for generations. Like it's part and parcel of the secret sauce of HBCUs, I would argue.
PJ (43:29.382)
Forgive me, can you, I was listening, but I want to make sure that I kind of get that list down. Can you talk through those, kind of those practices again? Because I think that's kind of a key moment there for sure.
Deondra Rose (43:42.798)
for maybe I was talking so fast, think I've.
PJ (43:46.43)
It's all about the HB, what they're good at that democracy especially needs.
Deondra Rose (43:53.152)
so teaching history really well. Teaching civics, like just getting a sense of problems, know, understanding problems, understanding solutions. And I'll tag on an additional one, like helping to foster a sense of agency. Because I think that's also something that's necessary for democracy, where I think some people are perhaps a little uncomfortable with teaching our difficult history.
PJ (43:55.09)
Yes. Yes.
Deondra Rose (44:19.98)
because they fear that people will feel so guilty or ashamed or disempowered by the magnitude of our problems or our challenges that they won't feel the sense of agency to address them. But the HPCUs have really focused on creating this empowerment and agency and reminders of like, look at the progress that we've made. And yeah, we have quite a bit of
work to do, but it's in our DNA and here's how we do it. I think that's essential. And the last thing I'll emphasize is the ability to provide education that frees students to bring their full selves to the classroom and to not feel, and this came out, so I mentioned that the research that went into this book included archival work, it also included
a nationally representative survey and hundreds, more than a hundred interview with HBCU alumni just to get a sense of like what the experience is like. And there were so many people who told me about how like going to an HBCU, this actually caught me by surprise. I asked a lot about like, what were some things that you really valued about your educational experience? And I asked black Americans who went to HBCUs and black Americans who went to historically wider.
predominantly white institutions. And I wasn't surprised when the respondents who went to PWI said diversity. Like I really loved going to a place where I was surrounded by people who were not like me. But people at HBCU said the same thing. They said, I love the fact that my school was so diverse. And it was diverse because somebody said, this was a direct quote, I never knew there were so many flavors of black people.
PJ (46:11.644)
Yeah.
Deondra Rose (46:13.912)
that I went to a school that recognized that we come from all over, that we are not monolithic. We have lots of different backgrounds. And I think that just recognizing the nuances of all of us is something that many of our identity-related conversations and many of the refusal for some to engage in those conversations reflects that perhaps we're not engaging and thinking at that more advanced level of
PJ (46:25.758)
Hmm.
Deondra Rose (46:42.944)
of moving beyond, okay, you are this race or you are this ethnicity or whatever this identity factor is to recognize that we're all different. And there's a lot of complexity in race and in identity and nuance necessary to deal with it. So I think that's also part of the secret sauce. So thinking about the future of democracy, the future of higher education, there are some big questions about what kind of campus experiences we intend to foster.
And there is some powerful lessons that HPUs have taught us that we really ought to take seriously and to look at their success in generating people who have really gone out into the world and worked to create positive change.
PJ (47:28.99)
I'm curious, this is something you've mentioned and we've talked about here, and I don't think this is just an addendum here, that there is a proven track record of resisting totalizing narratives, which goes right along with what saying. as we look at massive amounts of disinformation, as we look at the rise of this huge informational
Deondra Rose (47:45.144)
That's right.
PJ (47:56.155)
superstructure that like we don't know how to handle like we have we already have I mean going back to what we were talking about earlier with eugenics like there's like this weird consensus that echo chambers all these sorts of things and we have this proven track record is that
Deondra Rose (48:12.647)
I think that's right. mean, and it's interesting because like, like to put it in that context, that's also a part of HBCU's DNA is to be critical, like critical thinking and a willingness to push back on popular wisdom or received wisdom and to view data critically, to view, you know, different arguments critically and to just, you know, not necessarily to
PJ (48:20.786)
Right?
Deondra Rose (48:40.632)
Well, to engage them, to engage them and to always push us toward greater understanding. And I think that in my opinion is the work of higher education in a democracy at a time when we all have cell phones and can tweet out information and create information. We have this immense democratization of the ability to broadcast.
PJ (49:02.256)
information, know, air quotes, but yeah.
Deondra Rose (49:10.688)
And so I think, you know, sort of the reminder of what the academy and what intellectual institutions have to offer and bring to our landscape, you know, is this idea that there are checks on what we do, know, peer review, conversation, know, critiquing, dissent. You know, that's really part and parcel of what higher education has historically, you know, endeavored to do.
PJ (49:27.976)
Hmm. Yeah.
Deondra Rose (49:40.106)
and at its best done and what it must continue to do, I think in a way that is probably even more resolute and intentional than perhaps we even recognize that it needs to be. Because the forces of social media and now increasingly artificial intelligence, they're just, at a different, we're in a different, it's a different ball game.
PJ (49:55.486)
Yeah.
Deondra Rose (50:09.002)
or for ideas and I think that will require us to be really comfortable engaging in difficult conversations with increasingly diverse interlocutors.
PJ (50:21.448)
Dr. Rose, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on today. One last question, I want to be respectful of your time. If you could leave one thing for our audience to either think about or do over the course of this next week after listening to this episode, what would you encourage them to do or think about?
Deondra Rose (50:39.022)
this. You know, I would encourage them to...
to check out their local HBCU, you know? And think about a way to support it. I mean, the thing that I've been struck by is, I would argue like legitimately, how much all of us, how much we have all benefited from the work of HBCUs, their faculty, the leaders who have come out of them, and just understanding their significance to our democracy.
I think is paramount. Like I'm very proud that half of my authors royalties I'm giving to the Thurgood Marshall Fund that supports HBCUs. So to my mind, like anything we can do to support these organizations, these amazing, you know, mechanisms of education in the U.S. and leadership and democracy, I think is critical.
PJ (51:36.392)
So make sure that you check out your local HBCU and make sure to read your excellent book on it. Dr. Rose. Yes. I have it on electronics, so it's not as exciting, but beautiful cover. Dr. Rose, thank you so much. It's been a joy.
Deondra Rose (51:42.158)
Please, you know, I have it handy.
Deondra Rose (51:53.294)
Thank you so very much for having me. It's been a delight to talk to you today.