For the Greater Good of Our Place

The authors have not considered a traditional executive summary for this book so that readers will read and absorb the entire the book to capture the essence, content and scope of this timely publication. Their experience has been that, too often, college students limit their reading of material about race to synopses versus synergies of information. The primary purpose of this holistic handbook is to provide guiding prescriptive principles toward institutionalization of policies and practices that foster global diversity and local inclusion in institutions of higher learning in the aftermath of the unsettling and disturbing racial incidents in the Deep South following the re-election President Barack H. Obama.

Ironically, President Obama was criticised in 2013 for the lack leadership diversity (especially women) among his cabinet and senior staff. In any event, this handbook has been conceptualized based on the individual, collective and culminating Southern “cotton to” experiences of the five authors from both predominantly/historically White institutions of higher learning (PWIs) and predominately/historically Black institutions of higher learning (HBCUs). Both institutional communities can use this book to create campus climate and culture for global diversity and local inclusion. The handbook encompasses seven chapters, seven conceptual frameworks in a logic model, and seven steps for campus-community collaboration.

The book also highlights three dimensional “circular” themes and threads from spirituality in the preface and the initial chapter from several faiths and religions to introduce and symbolize spiritually different yet “commonly” denominating doctrines from around the world. We believe these themes and threads represent the “Commonwealth of intellectual intersections” in modern academe, driven by diverse intellectual capital and inclusive cerebral currency. This book was written to encourage systemic, holistic and systematic inputs, operations, outputs, outcomes and impacts that yield returns on investment (ROI) from campus-wide implementation of global diversity and local inclusion efforts.