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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.

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.
We shouldn't be casually equating the health of the economy with the health of the desperate, helpless people who labor on the front lines.
COVID-19 is hitting African Americans the hardest. Public officials could do far more about the social determinants of health that underlie the coronavirus's disparate impact.
Saturday marks the 52nd anniversary of King’s assassination. In looking back at the campaign to end legalized segregation, the participants in the civil rights movement were willing to risk their lives to ensure that everyone could vote and that anyone could aspire to public office.
The pandemic is creating new burdens and exacerbating existing ones for Americans at the economic margins. Government has the obligation and the opportunity to ease those burdens.
Our current system fails to prepare too many students for the competencies that are needed in today's and tomorrow's workplace. We need to rethink our approach to funding, curricula and governance.
Far too many Americans still don't have access in their homes to the technology and affordable high-speed broadband they need to succeed in today's economy. We need to think of it as a civil and human right.
Mixed-income and diverse neighborhoods are good for our cities. There are policies we can pursue that can help to keep housing affordable and protect these communities' legacy residents.