COMMITTEE CHAIR: Dr. Pamela Freeman
TITLE: HOW FAR HAVE WE COME? ANALYZING THE SOCIAL JUSTICE ORIENTATION OF HBCU DOCTORAL CANDIDATES & GRADUATES POST-TRUMP AND GEORGE FLOYD
ABSTRACT: The George Floyd murder and the ongoing saga of Trump presidencies have cemented social and ideological divisions within American culture, creating reverberations throughout the realms of academic discourse and debate. Casualties of this sociopolitical war include the elimination of federal support for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs, the eroding of protections for LGBTQ citizens, and the proposed elimination of the Department of Education. Meanwhile, P-16 educational leaders must reverse the course of failing schools and work through the cultural and political shifts of current events. Historically Black Institutions serve as the intellectual production centers of educational professionals that will ultimately lead within some of the most challenging P-16 environments. However, those challenges now include battling against the unjust policy suppositions and racist agendas of the far right. This conundrum has created a research opportunity concerning social consciousness and justice in the wake of the reverberations of the Trump presidency and the Floyd Murder. This study intended to gauge how the participants of the Williams et al. study (2019) and current HBCU doctoral candidates made sense of the experience of living through the sociopolitical aftermath of the Trump presidencies and the Floyd murder. Since both events occurred after the Williams et al study, the researcher employed a phenomenological methodology to see if that experience represented a transformation into conscious action. The purpose of a phenomenological study is to describe the common meaning of the lived experiences of several individuals in the attempt to discover the essence of the experiences (Creswell & Poth, 2018). Therefore, the phenomenological method was seemingly the most prudent for this study. The results of the data analyses will inform HBCU-trained institutional leaders that are directly involved in the creation and implementation of local policies that impact curriculum offerings, intervention processes, discipline management, etc. Furthermore, the results of the study can serve as a litmus test for HBCU educational leadership coordinators to see if their program content offerings are intentionally preparing their students to recognize and expose institutional injustices in an era where truth is routinely discredited by those who construct alternate truths to serve their agendas (Wells & Scott, 2019).
Keywords: Post pandemic, doctoral students, social justice
Location Online:
Zoom Link:
https://pvpanther.zoom.us/j/99274102767?pwd=SFGAMwOeAbbqsDzKLW2ugUYKriLB5n.1
Meeting ID: 992 7410 2767, Passcode: 052868