Education

Higher Ed’s Role In Tackling Two Pandemics, Covid-19 And Racism


In the last three months, we have been overwhelmed with pandemics, plural. One pandemic is Covid‑19, and the other pandemic is racism, embedded in the country’s founding and still pernicious today.

From what I can see, we need to do a better job of preventing the spread of both of these lethal forces. Scanning the landscape of both pandemics, I cannot help but think that too many of us are plagued by an overabundance of individualism and an inadequate sense of collectivism. Robert Bellah and colleagues in Habits of the Heart have posited that North America’s dominant language is that of individualism, self-determination, freedom and personal responsibility. Our second language, in contrast, is that of interconnectedness, interdependence and egalitarianism.

Higher education has a crucial role in dealing with the national crises of Covid‑19 and renewed appreciation for the failed promise of racial equity. Colleges and universities are poised to educate young people to equip them to understand and address the issues facing them, the nation and the world. This education includes opening the mind to engage different perspectives, learning to hold two opposing views (like our commonplace and less practiced languages) in our minds at once, seeing connection between opposites and developing empathy for all.

This happens not only through the pursuit of knowledge but also through practicing a community built on connectedness. During campus shutdowns this spring, many colleges and universities continued to educate through innovation and dedication on the part of faculty and students. Institutions had the opportunity to practice interconnectedness by assuring students without housing alternatives could safely stay on campus, by fundraising for student emergency needs, and by prioritizing financial aid commitments and continued employment for all employees.

To get ahead of infectious disease pandemic risks, the populous must become more fluent in a language that may be foreign to some, namely accepting that we are connected and in which we view every life as equally valuable. We might recognize our mutual dependence in which one’s own health depends on the actions of others and vice versa. We would also invest in collective goods such as global disease tracking systems, national testing capabilities, coordinated contact tracing and overall emergency preparedness. The U.S. has not done so (the $275 annual per person spending on these public health efforts that benefit the collective is dwarfed by the more than $10,000 annual per person spending on medical care that benefits an individual). Sadly, these are tragic choices, and our lack of a systemic approach to our collective health is now costing hundreds and thousands of lives and trillions in economic losses.

Similarly, to transform the racism so endemic in American life, the populous must again elevate and draw on its second language—endorsing interconnectedness, interdependence and egalitarianism across different people and groups. For too long, we have been complacent with the “bad apple” theory of racism, lulling ourselves into the false sense of security that addressing individual moments of racism and discrimination would address the problem. They help, but they are not enough. The more potent strategy would recognize that racism is systemic, entrenched in all facets of life: housing, education, health care, employment, the criminal justice system and more. Addressing these roots of racism requires not only a deep belief that all people are created equal and that our futures are dependent on each other, but also consistent investments in and expressed commitment to anti-racism.

Now as higher education institutions consider how they will continue in the pandemic, most will offer a hybrid model of education and all have the opportunity to ask their community members to practice “multilingualism,” to act upon the potential of using one’s personal freedom to protect the collective. We can be guided by Audre Lorde’s words in The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House: “Difference must not merely be tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark a dialectic. Only then does the necessity of interdependency become unthreatening.”

As students and faculty return this fall after a long time apart, whether in-person or virtually, they may see greater significance in the values of interdependence and connectedness. Perhaps in addressing the dangers of the Covid‑19 pandemic, colleges and universities can build awareness of the structural inequities among all institutions, recognize the unearned privileges afforded based on skin color and develop the empathy and courage needed to tackle the roots of the racism pandemic as well.



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