In this episode of “Collage,” the Rev. F. Willis Johnson interviews Ryon J. Cobb, an assistant professor of Social Work at Rutgers University. His research interests focus on social determinants and consequences of population health, health disparities and the religious dimensions of racial attitudes among adults.
Welcome to the Fulcrum Roundtable, formerly known as Democracy in Action, where you will find insights and discussions with Fulcrum's collaborators on some of the most talked-about topics.
Consistent with the Fulcrum's mission, this program aims to share diverse perspectives to broaden our readers' viewpoints.
I spoke with these Fulcrum columnists about their June writings:
Megan Thiele Strong, a Sociology professor at San José State University and a Public Voices Fellow at The OpEd Project and a member of the Scholars Strategy Network.
Faustina M. DuCros, a Sociology associate professor and scholar of race, migration, and inequality at San José State University and a Public Voices Fellow at The OpEd Project.
Elisabet Avalos is a leader in housing justice, developing programs for survivors of violence experiencing homelessness, and a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project on Domestic Violence and Economic Security.
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Last month, Megan and Faustina co-authored, along with Susana Gallardo, the column: Why Doing Immigration the “White Way” Is Wrong. They write:
Immigration policies are built on colonialism and white supremacy. The hypocrisy is stark: a nation founded by colonizers who pillaged, kidnapped, and displaced indigenous populations and trafficked enslaved people is aggressively, yet selectively, anti-immigrant.
Megan spoke about access to information, "While in graduate school I was exposed to a lot of information that I didn't have. I didn't understand about wait times in our immigration system. So, when I heard people talking about 'well people should just get documented' I understood I had this insight that some people didn't have."
Faustina talked about the need to look back in order to understand what's happening right now, "Our immigration policies that we see today have historical precedent. Our country was founded in such a way that we have always had these kind of anti-immigrant sentiments. It's been embedded in our culture and then it gets embedded in our policy."
Elisabet wrote the column, Dear Latino Voter, where she shared her experience growing up in a Mexican and Nicaraguan family:
Even though Latinos voted in record numbers in 2024, millions of eligible Latino voters sat out an election whose outcome greatly impacts them.
Democrats and Republicans have mixed reputations in the Latino Community. For example, Reagan promoted himself as a compassionate conservative who sought out middle-of-the-road approaches to immigration reform. The same Reagan who also funded the Contras in Nicaragua, who were embattled with the Sandinista government.
Growing up in a Mexican and Nicaraguan family, there were those in my family who loved Reagan for his amnesty policies and others who despised him for fueling the devastating war in Nicaragua.
"Now, there's this cognitive dissonance of where do we fit in the political landscape? Because I have members of my family, mostly are Republican, very few Democrats.There's a bit of identity that's wrapped in it and a desire to assimilate to be grateful that we're living in this country now," she said. However, she sees things differently, "I see what the US has aspired to be in its ideals and where it falls short in terms of injustices and inequalities."
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Hugo Balta is the executive editor of the Fulcrum and the publisher of the Latino News Network
Americans with Disabilities Act ADA and glasses.
One July morning in 1990, a crowd gathered on the White House lawn, some in wheelchairs, others holding signs, many with tears in their eyes. President George H.W. Bush lifted his pen and signed his name to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)—the most sweeping civil rights law for people with disabilities in the nation's history. It was a moment three decades in the making: a rare convergence of activism, outrage, and legislative will. The ADA's promise was simple—no longer would disability mean exclusion from public life—but its implications were anything but.
Thirty-five years later, the ADA remains a landmark, a legal bulwark against discrimination, and a symbol of hard-won visibility for a community that has been too often relegated to the margins. Yet, like every civil rights law, the ADA's story is more complex than a single signature or a morning in Washington. Its passage and its legacy have always been about more than ramps and regulations.
What Came Before?
The ADA did not arrive out of thin air. Its roots run deep into the fertile soil of American activism. In the years following World War II, disabled veterans returned home to an inaccessible country, and institutions like the League of the Physically Handicapped and the National Federation of the Blind began agitating for change. In the 1970s and 1980s, disability rights activists deployed tactics borrowed from the civil rights and women's movements—such as sit-ins, marches, and direct action—with a distinctive flair. The "504 Sit-In" in San Francisco lasted nearly a month and forced the Carter administration to implement Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which ultimately became the ADA's immediate legislative ancestor.
By the late 1980s, public opinion had begun to shift, albeit with resistance. Stories of exclusion—children barred from classrooms, workers fired, citizens shut out of buses and libraries—made headlines. Bipartisan support emerged, but so did fierce opposition, with business groups warning of increased costs and the potential for "frivolous lawsuits." What ultimately broke the deadlock were the human stories: activists crawling up the Capitol steps, parents demanding a better future, and legislators willing to listen.
The ADA's signing into law transformed the culture. Suddenly, curb cuts appeared on every corner; sign language interpreters stood beside politicians, and wheelchair users became visible in public life. More subtle, but just as important, was the shift in how disability itself was understood—not as a personal tragedy or a medical problem to be "fixed," but as a natural part of the human experience. Media, too, began to catch up. Shows like "Sesame Street" introduced disabled characters; movements like Disability Pride parades brought celebration and self-advocacy to the streets. The disability community, once fragmented, began to coalesce into a force in American art, literature, and politics. Narratives shifted from pity to pride, from charity to justice.
The ADA's Ripple Effects
Legally, the ADA set a new standard. It barred discrimination in employment, required accessible public spaces, and mandated "reasonable accommodations" in schools and workplaces. Yet, the ADA's power has always depended on enforcement—and on interpretation. Courts have debated the meaning of "reasonable accommodation" for decades. Lawsuits have piled up over a range of issues, from digital access to service animals, and uneasy compromises have been reached. The law's very breadth—its attempt to address everything from movie theaters to medical care—has been both its strength and its Achilles' heel.
And then there's the question of intersectionality. The ADA was written with a broad brush, but not all disabled Americans are affected equally. Race, gender, class, and immigration status intersect with disability in ways the law still struggles to address.
Even as this year’s anniversary marks progress, the ADA's limits are glaring. Disabled people still face unemployment rates twice as high as their non-disabled peers. Accessible housing is scarce; public transportation can be a nightmare. For many, the promise of the ADA is more theoretical than real.
Critics within the community point to tokenism—disabled people are celebrated for overcoming barriers but rarely invited to shape the systems that create those barriers in the first place. Others note that compliance is often performative: a ramp at the back of a building, a website with half-baked accessibility features. The law's reliance on individual lawsuits means that those with the least resources are often the ones most left behind.
COVID-19 laid bare these failures. As schools and workplaces moved online, digital accessibility became a lifeline—and a battleground. Telehealth, remote work, and flexible policies—long demanded by disabled advocates—suddenly became possible for the non-disabled majority. However, the digital divide remains deep, particularly for those without access to resources or a reliable internet connection.
What Real Inclusion Looks Like
Young activists are not waiting for permission. They're organizing online, calling out ableism in politics and pop culture, and demanding that the fight for disability rights be woven into every other movement for justice—climate change, racial equity, and reproductive rights. Intersectionality, once a buzzword, is now a blueprint for understanding.
Lawmakers and institutions, too, must do more. The ADA's promise cannot be fulfilled without robust enforcement, expanded protections for the most marginalized, and a willingness to rethink what "access" means in a rapidly changing world. Disability justice demands more than compliance; it requires imagination, solidarity, and, above all, a recognition of our shared humanity. Thirty-five years on, the ADA endures as both a shield and a challenge—a testament to what is possible and a reminder of how much remains to be done.
Rev. Dr. F. Willis Johnson is a spiritual entrepreneur, author, scholar-practioner whose leadership and strategies around social and racial justice issues are nationally recognized and applied.
Kuumba Family Festival at Evanston Township High School
Summer camps in Evanston, Illinois — a quiet suburb just north of Chicago — usually consist of an array of different sports, educational programs, and even learning how to sail. But one thing is obviously apparent throughout the city’s camps: they’re almost all white.
Despite Black or African American families making up nearly 16% of Evanston’s population, Black kids are massively underrepresented throughout the city's summer camps.
That’s one of the many reasons why Greg Taylor started Camp Kuumba — a free summer camp meant to provide equal opportunities to children of color in academics and athletics. Taylor founded the camp in 2021 in response to local acts of gun violence, initially opening the camp only to local Black boys in grades 3-8.
“We felt the need to try and help young Black boys in our community find other pathways,” Taylor said. “We want them to explore different interests so they don’t get stuck thinking that they have to play basketball or make music to be successful.”
Camp Kuumba expanded to include girls in its third summer and now hosts over 175 campers each year. Taylor is also piloting a Latinx camp this summer to continue growing his mission to reach more kids in the community.
Through a daily schedule that consists of STEM classes, reading, writing, sports, field trips, and financial literacy lessons, Taylor and the camp’s counselors teach their campers how to be selfless and kind, to give back to their community, and to respect themselves and others.
“Primarily, we’re working on how we interact with one another, to try and learn how to celebrate ourselves and who we are and how we can extend that out to the broader community,” Taylor said. “Sometimes a kid might not feel like they have the same opportunities as other kids in school, but we're trying to make sure that the same opportunities are leveling out.”
An average day for Kuumba campers consists of a rotation of enrichment activities. Through biology, technology, reading, and writing classes — mostly curated by teachers at Evanston Township High School (ETHS) — campers get access to high-quality educational programs. The campers also participate in athletic rotations, where they learn new sports every week, ranging from basketball to tennis and even rowing.
For parent Ronald Theodore, whose 11-year-old daughter, Bailee, and nine-year-old son, Gavin, participate in the camp, sports have been a great way for his kids to explore new activities and gain confidence.
“Bailee knows that she can try new things and not be great at it, but she knows that if she gives her best effort, she can be proud of herself,” Theodore said. “The kids had a great experience that first summer in the camp with their activities.”
However, what sets Camp Kuumba apart are its in-depth lessons in financial literacy. Created by ETHS math teacher Dawn Eddy, the campers learn a financial literacy curriculum that teaches them that money is a tool, and provides lessons on investing and generational wealth that they can’t find elsewhere.
Throughout the day, campers earn Kuumba Cash for engaging in their enrichment activities and for working well as a group. At the end of the day, they can see their balance and are presented with decisions meant to emulate real-world financial decisions.
Campers can either deposit or withdraw cash from their account, spend money on snacks, participate in a makeshift stock market that can gain or lose them money at random, or invest their cash in a 5% account for it to grow throughout camp. Campers who invest their money tend to reap the greatest rewards.
“It gives cool ways for them to see how to use their money and to see how their money can work for them,” Taylor said. “They get really excited about seeing their account balances every day.”
While Theodore had already started to teach his kids about the importance of financial literacy, Kuumba’s lessons piqued their curiosity and allowed them to ask questions.
“They started asking more questions about investing, like ‘what is compounding interest?’ … they would come back to me and tell me what they learned at the end of the day,” Theodore said. “They took away a lot of knowledge from the financial literacy program.”
But the financial literacy lessons aren't just educational. At the end of camp, the money from the top-5 earners is deposited into a custodial investment account for the parents, providing real-world benefits for campers and their families.
In addition to their weekly lessons and activities, campers also participate in up to two field trips per week. In the first week of July, campers visited the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and took public transportation to Maggie Daley Park in the heart of the city.
The field trips have given campers the opportunity to explore Chicago, see it from different perspectives, and learn how to be independent.
“Camp Kuumba has exposed them to other forms of transportation that let them see the city from a different perspective,” Theodore said. “It helps the kids understand the city better and to be aware of their surroundings.”
Taylor also leads Camp Kuumba on local community service projects, such as helping to clean up local walking trails, writing letters to first responders, and working at local food banks, all aligning with the camp’s mission to teach kids how to be selfless and kind and how to give back to their community.
“[The campers] are a representation of themselves, of their families, of their school, and of Kuumba Evanston, and we want them to go out in the community and proudly interact with people in a positive way,” Taylor said. “The whole mission on a daily basis is to open their minds to doing their best and being proud of who they are.”
For Theodore, the community impacts of Camp Kuumba are on full display.
“Other kids who may not have access to camps that go on field trips or play sports get this great opportunity because they’re exposed to such great activities,” Theodore said. “It’s a lot of new experiences for kids of the community that they may not have the opportunity to get elsewhere.”
Jared Tucker is a sophomore at the University of Washington — Seattle studying Journalism and Public Interest Communication with a minor in History. Jared is also a cohort member with the Fulcrum Fellowship, to share his thoughts on what democracy means to him and his perspective on its current health.
Today, Hispanic-Serving Institutions enroll 64 percent of all Latino college students.
The Tennessee Attorney General has partnered with a conservative legal nonprofit to sue the U.S. Department of Education over programming that supports Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), colleges, and universities where at least 25% of the undergraduate full-time equivalent student enrollment is Hispanic. On its face, this action claims to oppose “discriminatory” federal funding. In reality, it is part of a broader and deeply troubling trend: a coordinated effort to dismantle educational opportunity for communities of color under the guise of anti-DEI rhetoric.
As a scholar of educational policy and leadership in higher education, I believe we must confront policies that narrow access and undermine equity in education for those who have been historically underserved. What is happening in Tennessee is not just a misguided action—it’s a self-inflicted wound that will harm the state's economic future and deepen historical inequality.
For generations, higher education in the United States was designed to serve a narrow elite. White men were the primary beneficiaries of public and private investment, while communities of color were excluded from both elite universities and the funding that supports college success. Institutions like HSIs emerged to fill this gap—not only for Latinx students but also for African American, Indigenous, Asian American, and white working-class students. These colleges have done the heavy lifting with limited resources, yet they remain near the bottom of the higher education funding hierarchy.
Today, HSIs enroll 64 percent of all Latino college students. These students are overwhelmingly first-generation and low-income. And, yet, HSIs receive only a fraction of the support directed toward elite universities. While places like Princeton and Harvard, with multibillion-dollar endowments and selective admissions, continue to attract the lion’s share of attention and funding, HSIs remain chronically underresourced. Still, they persist—graduating thousands of students who would otherwise be locked out of opportunity.
Despite misleading narratives that suggest these institutions are receiving special treatment, the reality is quite the opposite. If we are to have an honest conversation about privilege in education, we must begin with the centuries-long history of exclusion that created the current landscape. The push to defund HSIs is not about leveling the playing field. It is about maintaining an uneven one.
The consequences of such disinvestment are not theoretical. Latino college completion rates still lag significantly behind those of white students. And by 2060, Latinos will make up nearly 28 percent of the U.S. population. Without significant investment in their education, the country risks a severe economic shortfall—one that will impact every sector of our workforce. This is not just a matter of fairness; it is a national imperative.
And yet, in the face of chronic underfunding and political hostility, some educational leaders are showing what true transformation looks like. In the largest study ever conducted on leadership at HSIs, I interviewed presidents, deans, advisors, and faculty across the country. What I found was not resignation but resolve.
At one community college in the Southwest where most of the students are Latinx, a multiracial team of leaders asked themselves a critical question: Are we being brave enough for our students? They rejected outdated leadership models designed for wealthy, white-serving institutions and instead reimagined their college from the ground up. They rewrote job descriptions with more inclusive language that attracted diverse faculty. They helped students access childcare and food pantries, offered emergency aid, and built job pipelines that reflected their students’ realities.
These leaders weren’t managing decline—they were building futures. Their work caught the attention of the federal government, as their college was one of the highest-ranked HSIs in the nation for Hispanic student credential completion. Community members voted to fund a local bond measure in support of the institution because they believed in what these leaders were doing.
This is what I identify as critical transformational leadership. It is grounded in justice, history, caringness, and courage. It is not about symbolic gestures or temporary programs—it is about structural change.
At a time when higher education is under attack, we need more of this kind of leadership, not less. The Tennessee lawsuit is not simply a political stunt—it is part of a larger movement to immobilize communities of color and preserve a shrinking version of America that no longer reflects our demographic and economic realities.
We must resist policies that aim to gut opportunity in the very institutions built to serve those long excluded. The story of American higher education doesn’t have to be one of continued exclusion. We can choose a different future—one where equity is not a threat but the foundation of our collective progress.
Dr. Anthony Hernandez is a faculty member in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin—Madison (UW-Madison) received a research award from the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation for his study on leadership in higher education.
