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Jabari Simama

Senior Contributor

Jabari Simama is an education and government consultant and a senior fellow with the Center for Digital Government. He served two terms on the Atlanta City Council, from 1987 to 1994; as deputy chief operating officer and chief of staff for DeKalb County, Ga., from 2009 to 2012; and as president of Georgia Piedmont Technical College from 2012 to 2018.

Simama received his bachelor's degree from the University of Bridgeport, his master's degree from Atlanta University and his Ph.D. from Emory University. He is the author of Civil Rights to Cyber Rights: Broadband & Digital Equality in the Age of Obama, published in 2009, and has been a columnist for Creative Loafing and Southwest Atlanta magazine and a feature writer for Atlanta magazine. He blogs at Jabari Simama Speaks.

Our democratic experiment in self-governing is on trial. In government at all levels, we need to get back to the place envisioned by our Constitution's fathers, however flawed they might have been.
Political exploitation of pain and fear has diverted our attention from the goals of the Black Lives Matter movement. Public officials need to work to bring us back to the more important issues.
Too little progress has been made to ensure that high-speed Internet is available to all. As the pandemic has demonstrated, far too many still don't have what they need to function in a virtual world.
With the COVID-19 pandemic raging across much of America, a return to full-scale classroom instruction poses too grave a risk to students, teachers, school staff, parents and their communities.
In fighting for the downtrodden and the forgotten, not only on the national stage but also in local government, he led a life that ought to provide a moral imperative for today's public officials.
Over a long career, Eugene Jones Jr. has led several big-city public-housing agencies. In an interview, he discusses the federal landscape, affordable housing and political accountability.
Smartphone-wielding citizens and the ease of video conferencing have largely taken the place of the public-access television of earlier decades. They raise new questions for public officials.
They must feel for themselves — and act on — the suppressed anger and heartache that the deaths of Black Americans at the hands of police have brought to the surface.
They need to protect their citizens and businesses, but it's time for them to begin addressing the systemic racism underlying the protests that have roiled cities across America.
The pandemic is challenging colleges' enrollments and finances as never before. Some may not survive, and those that do will have to consider major changes in their structures and the way they teach.