Making It on Broken Promises

"This book provides an occasion to examine the complex conjuncture between the White supremacist realities of the American Academy and the often threatening presence of brilliant Black men in the Academy. This challenging book should also serve as an inspiration for a new generation of Black men deeply devoted to the life of the mind in or outside the Academy." ―From the foreward by Cornel West.

Sixteen of America's leading scholars offer an uncompromising critique of the academy from their perspective as African American men. They challenge dominant majority assumptions about the culture of higher education, most particularly its claims of openness to diversity and divergent traditions.

They take issue with the processes that determine what is legitimized as scholarship, as well as with who wields the power to authenticate it. They describe the debilitating pressures to subordinate Black identity to a supposedly universal but hegemonic Eurocentric culture. They question the academy's valuing of individuality and its privileging of dichotomy over their cultural styles of community, humanism and synthesis. They also range over such issues as culturally mediated styles of cognition, the misuse of standardized testing, the disproportionate burden of service placed on African American faculty and a reward system that discounts it.

Lee Jones is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Instruction and Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the College of Education, The Florida State University.