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GOV_jabari-simama

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.

Just hiring more recruiters won’t address the issue. By partnering with community organizations that connect with young people daily, some higher education institutions have an opportunity to overcome demographic trends.
Many of our land-use policies have their roots in housing discrimination, and they continue to stand in the way of affordable and equitable housing. These policies need to change. Restricting single-family zoning is a place to start.
Greater investment is key, enabling smaller classes with better-paid teachers, and most state and local governments have the money. But our public schools also need leadership stability and more parental involvement.
Ghana's spirituality informs its approach to governing. It shows up in everything from the way streets are used to the belief that unity is strength.
Even before the Supreme Court's decision striking it down, Black students didn’t have equitable access to elite public higher education. We need to find better ways to extend true educational opportunities to all Americans.
A trip to the birthplace of the blues is also a visit to a region soaked in the history of bigotry and the struggle for civil rights. It’s a past that we need to acknowledge and that today’s students need to learn about.
Community colleges are ideally situated to produce police officers who better understand the delicate balance between acting as guardians and as warriors.
The more than 1.6 million preventable deaths of Black Americans documented in a new study reflect racism and discrimination in housing, education, employment and health care. We have the money and the means to do something about it.
Too often it’s our youth who are the targets of racial- and gender-based animus and attacks. Rather than making life harder for children, public officials should be protecting them.
We’ve long known that its roots aren’t biological or genetic. It’s time for Americans to discuss it rationally and speak out against efforts to turn us against each other.