Please join us for the 13th Annual Kurth-Schai Education and Advocacy Lecture presented by the Educational Studies Department and cosponsored by Institutional Equity, Student Affairs, President’s Office, Provost’s Office, Mahmoud El-Kati Lectureship in American Studies Fund, Program Board, and the Kofi Annan Institute for Global Citizenship.

Colleges and universities are accepting a wider range of students than ever before. But when racial unrest and a global health crisis gripped the world, schools scrambled to figure out the needs of their new student body—and disadvantaged students paid the price. In this talk, Dr. Anthony Abraham Jack, author of The Privileged Poor and Class Dismissed, explores why colleges were so unprepared to support their most vulnerable students, and more importantly, how we can move forward.

He draws on his rigorous reporting to give real-life examples of students, such as lower-income students whose valuable work experience is often overlooked on resumes. Using these stories, he challenges the myth of the “college bubble,” illustrating how lower-income students bring the inequalities of their neighborhoods right onto campus. His critical analysis offers a clear path to creating a fairer educational system. Through simple but strategic steps—like revamping how we review resumes or offering learning opportunities outside of the classroom—we can ensure a more equitable experience for disadvantaged students.

About the Lecturer

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Dr. Anthony Abraham Jack (Ph.D., Harvard University, 2016) is an award-winning scholar and author who has received national recognition for his work in transforming higher education. Once a low-income, first-generation college student himself, he details how class divides on campus create barriers to academic and career success, and shares what schools can do to truly level the playing field. His research documents the overlooked diversity among lower-income undergraduates: the Doubly Disadvantaged­—those who enter college from local, typically distressed public high schools—and the Privileged Poor­—those who do so from boarding, day, and preparatory high schools. His writings have been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Teen Vogue, The National Review, The Washington Post, and NPR. Anthony is the faculty director of Boston University’s Newbury Center, which serves first-generation students and focuses on student success and inclusion, and is also an Associate Professor of Higher Education Leadership at Boston University.

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Additional Resources

Books:

The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students

Class Dismissed: When College Ignore Inequality and Students Pay the Price