ABSTRACT
This chapter provides some prescriptions regarding leadership in black higher education as it strives to provide both equity and excellence. There are potentially as many leadership agendas in higher education as there are constituency groups—faculties, students, staff, alumni, private benefactors, and other supporters including, in some cases, governmental entities at the state and federal levels and the public’s they represent. The existence of so many constituencies in higher education creates the need for leadership that can forge constructive harmonies out of diversity. Within the past decade, nearly 90% of the black colleges and universities have undergone a leadership change. Measurable disparities characterize the status of blacks and whites in American society: disparities in rates of unemployment, housing conditions, access to and quality of health care, and educational opportunity, to name but a few. A persistent theme in black America has been that education, or more generally, self-improvement, can by itself equalize the status of blacks and whites in American society.
