From Higher Learning to Charlottesville: College Campuses and American Democracy

This book interrogates John Singleton’s 1995 Black cult classic film Higher Learning, set on a fictitious American college campus, as a harbinger of Donald Trump’s successful 2016 and 2024 presidential campaigns, the 2017 Unite the Right Rally, reenergized protests by Blacks denouncing public monuments to the Confederacy, the #MeToo Movement, the Black Lives Matter Movement, and student protests erupting after the 2023 Israel-Hamas Gaza War. Contributors use Higher Learning as a fulcrum to explore how racial antagonisms, attitudes of college students, socio-economic disparities, and interpersonal relationships in America have changed and remained the same since the 1990s. From debates over free speech, affirmative action, hip hop music, and K-16 curriculum content, to protests condemning police brutality, this book examines why American college campuses continue to be sites of physical, visual, and epistemological conflicts over the meaning of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. This book also provides recommendations for how Americans might unite to address today’s divisive issues and strengthen American democracy.

Tyson D. King-Meadows is Retired Full Professor from the Department of Political Science at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and is Former Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Former Full Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Shahara’Tova V. Dente is Associate Professor of English & Women’s Studies and Graduate Director of Women’s Leadership in the Department of Languages, Literature and Philosophy at the Mississippi University for Women.