Last January in his State of the City address, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland walked to the lectern with a binder of good news. 

The city was still in a swell of violent crime, but it was also investing in youth programs and its police force – including an elite SCORPION unit. The city had lost 46,000 jobs during the pandemic, but almost all of them were now recovered. Mayor Strickland titled the speech “A City on the Rise.”

A year later to the day, Mr. Strickland addressed the city again, this time in a video preparing them for footage of five police officers ruthlessly beating Tyre Nichols. His coda: “We must all work to regain the public’s trust and work together to heal the wounds these events have caused.”

This is a familiar cycle in Memphis – adding new wounds before the city’s old ones fully heal. Its residents often speak of their home as a series of contradictions: liberation and poverty, racial progress and stagnation, nonviolent protest and persistent violent crime. Mr. Nichols’ death would have been traumatic anywhere, but in Memphis it met a local crisis of confidence.

“We have such potential,” says Tomeka Hart Wigginton, former commissioner of Memphis City Schools and the Memphis Urban League. “But I’ve got to tell you, we’ve been saying that for 30 years.”

In the aftermath of Mr. Nichols’ death and the release of the police footage, many residents sensed the return of that same reputation they’ve tried so long to eschew: a caricature of poverty and violence, a city that can’t be saved. 

Memphians often argue for their city’s promise as though they’re repeating a liturgy. This is, after all, the home of the blues, the birthplace of Elvis, a global distribution hub, a lodestone of American history. How is that so different, they say, from Atlanta or St. Louis? 

Alyssa Pointer/Reuters

Mayor Jim Strickland welcomes Vice President Kamala Harris to Memphis, Tennessee, Feb. 1, 2023. Vice President Harris was to attend the funeral of Tyre Nichols, who was beaten by police officers during a traffic stop and died three days later.

And that, perhaps, is the core contradiction of Memphis. Its residents often have to make peace with their city, its high rates of poverty and crime, and its many setbacks. But they also harbor a sense of pride. Memphis may be wandering in the wilderness, but Memphians still believe it can be the promised land. 

Roots in history

For much of the city’s history, its advantages enabled its worst faults. Its progress always excited backlash.

The nearby Mississippi River and the city’s fertile ground made Memphis one of the capitals of the South’s cotton kingdom, and by 1850, it was the world’s largest inland market for cotton and for slave labor. The size of the Black population also made Memphis a haven for people escaping slavery, looking to blend in and then flee upriver. 

During the Jim Crow era, Memphis had a relatively prosperous Black population – including America’s first Black millionaire. At the same time, the city and surrounding Shelby County also had Tennessee’s most recorded lynchings. 

Decades later, in 1968, the city saw the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, after asking a musician to play his favorite hymn. King’s death accelerated a deal to improve conditions for the striking sanitation workers he came to Memphis to support. 

“We have never really gotten over that,” says Otis Sanford, a veteran city journalist and historian. “It opened up so many other wounds and created so many other problems.”

One of those problems was that many of the city’s white residents and businesses began to flee, fearing unrest and eventual integration. The mostly white city gradually became less so, and by the 1990 census, African Americans made up a majority. 

At just under 65%, Memphis’ share of Black residents is one of the highest among major American cities. “With that has come for a long time a lot of Black political power,” says Ms. Hart Wigginton, and yet “not nearly enough Black economic power.”

The city’s overall poverty rate is 22.6%, and that of Black residents is 26.5%. Explaining why – like the recital of Memphis’ strengths – summons a list of the city’s weaknesses: poor education, sclerotic local government, and, atop everyone’s mind, violent crime. 

“It is the number one challenge that we face,” says Bill Gibbons, former district attorney and head of the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission.

Noah Robertson/The Christian Science Monitor

In his office, Feb. 8, 2023, Bill Gibbons, former Memphis district attorney and head of the local Crime Commission, is – like the police officers who work down the hall, he says – at a loss for how the death of Tyre Nichols took place.

The crime narrative

Even as crime has fallen overall in the past five years, Memphis’ rate of violent crime has soared. The police department reported 302 homicides last year, 44 fewer than in 2021 but far more than in the mid-2010s. 

Elevated cameras known as SkyCops now shine dark blue lights above the city’s business districts. Local news stations flash crime alerts and reports of shootings on their broadcasts. Residents end conversations telling each other to “stay safe.” 

“I worry about the fact that seemingly random acts of violence, however they unfold, are becoming normalized and that we unintentionally build some callousness around them,” says Russell Wigginton, head of the National Civil Rights Museum and husband of Ms. Hart Wigginton. 

At the same time, says Dr. Wigginton, it’s hard to find another large – especially Southern – city without its share of crime. Those cities, unlike Memphis, aren’t primarily known for their violence, something he, like many other Memphians, attributes to race.

“If we were not a majority-Black city, we would not have that reputation,” says Dr. Wigginton. 

Reputation aside, violent crime remains both an issue that citizens desperately want to solve and the epitome of an unsolvable problem, especially in a city that’s struggled with violence since the 1800s. The demand to do so inexorably leads back to tough-on-crime policing and, often, the specter of police violence. 

“The vast majority of citizens, especially African Americans, want more of a police presence in their neighborhoods,” says Mr. Gibbons, sitting in his cluttered office beside former police director Buddy Chapman. “Having said that, they also want good policing.”

Many Memphians don’t think policing gives them that option. Mr. Chapman, now head of Memphis’ tip line CrimeStoppers, rose to the top of the department soon after the police beating of another young Black man, named Elton Hayes, 50 years ago. Community trust in the department, he says, was fragile before Mr. Nichols’ death. It’s fractured now. 

The city’s crime “is definitely a problem,” says Mr. Chapman. “But you don’t solve it by having your police officers violate the law.” 

Noah Robertson/The Christian Science Monitor

Buddy Chapman says he developed a distaste for elite units like SCORPION while Memphis police director from 1976 to 1983. "You will not address [crime] by trying to be meaner than the criminals," he says.

A big small town

The sum of these parts is a city that often feels like it’s wasting its own potential.

“We’re stuck,” says Ms. Hart Wigginton. “I feel like we’re constantly stuck.”

Despite that feeling, something always brings her back to this city. As the old joke goes, Memphis is a small town with a lot of people living in it.

“Everything that any company, any family would need is in this community,” says Ms. Hart Wigginton.  

After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the National Civil Rights Museum didn’t have to light a beacon for people to gather. On their own, says Connie Dyson of the museum, just under 10,000 peaceful protesters gathered at the old Lorraine Motel, where a wreath hangs from the balcony on room 306. 

“People come here. They’re drawn here. ... They find comfort here,” says Dr. Wigginton, speaking at the museum’s offices across the street. Typical Memphis, he says, choosing the place of most acute pain as the place to find closure.

Protesters didn’t gather the same way following the death of Tyre Nichols, a fact he attributes to the city leaders’ decision to fire and prosecute the officers. Such peaceful response is also a part of the city’s identity. When King died in 1968, Memphis’ response was relatively calm. 

“We have this unbelievable persevering spirit about ourselves,” says Dr. Wigginton. “The overwhelming majority of the time, that’s to our favor. But part of what it covers up is our vulnerability and the need to heal.”

“Grit n’ grind”

The city’s unofficial motto comes from its basketball team, the Grizzlies, whose logo sits on Dr. Wigginton’s notebook: “Grit n’ Grind.” The challenge is not to grow exhausted by the grind.

Randy Gamble, part of the city’s Lynching Sites Project, seeks that balance daily. Mr. Gamble and his team have spent the last seven years researching, documenting, and memorializing victims of lynching in the city. “You have to have love to do this work,” he says. “Because if not, it’s going to literally drive you crazy.”

Noah Robertson/The Christian Science Monitor

Randy Gamble was born in Oakland, California, but moved to Memphis in the 1990s, where he now works on the city's Lynching Sites Project. "We live in a culture of violence," he says. "But we also live in a culture of love."

In early 2016, back when the project had just begun, Mr. Gamble parked at a nearby miniature golf course with two white colleagues and walked into the woods, searching for the site where Ell Persons – a Black woodcutter – was horrifically murdered by a white mob in 1917.

“I could have been angry,” says Mr. Gamble, who walked silently through thickets and mud thinking about how Memphians could do something like this to their neighbors. “But I was here to do the work.”

Mr. Gamble and his two friends found the site. A year later they saw a historical marker enter the soil there, telling Persons’ story. How far Memphis has come in 100 years, he thought. How far it still has to go. 

And Mr. Gamble, whose conversations return ever to his Christian faith, considered a beatitude.

“My favorite is ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’” 

Bullit Marquez/AP/File

Protesters hold placards in a candlelit protest against the extrajudicial killings in President Rodrigo Duterte's "War on Drugs" campaign in Quezon City, Philippines, on Oct. 8, 2016. The new administration's purge of high-ranking police officers involved in the drug trade is one in a series of high-profile breaks from Duterte-era policies over the past several months as President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. distances himself from his predecessor’s legacy.

Rosette Sandoval, whose father was killed in Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody war on drugs, campaigned against Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in the 2022 election. She wanted an end to the “unceasing climate of fear” in the Philippines, and had doubts that the son and namesake of the former dictator would lead the country any better than Mr. Duterte, especially since he chose the strongman’s daughter, Sara Duterte, as his running mate. 

Mr. Marcos has since surprised her. Ms. Sandoval was devastated when her candidate lost last spring, but she says that the Marcos administration’s recent decision to go after high-ranking police officers involved in the country’s drug trade gave her hope that justice for her parents and other drug war victims is possible. 

“I am banking on real changes in our society,” she says. “If President Marcos [Jr.] can provide those changes and bring justice to the victims of extrajudicial killings, then I am ready to support his policies that are beneficial to Filipinos.”

The police purge is one in a series of high-profile breaks from Duterte-era policies over the past several months. From recent press freedom wins to renewed ties with the United States, caveats abound, but most politics watchers agree that Mr. Marcos is distancing himself from his predecessor’s legacy.

Few believe these changes are motivated by an honest commitment to justice, freedom, and cooperation. Armand Dean Nocum, a political campaign and public relations strategist, says the president is “obsessed with clearing the Marcos name” and “winning the trust of other world leaders.” While some argue that superficial motives keep the Philippines’ transformation surface-level, others say that even small, incremental victories can eventually amount to progress. 

“Marcos Jr. has two burdens. First, to clean the mess that Duterte made, and second, to rectify the errors that his father had made,” says Mr. Nocum, adding that, at least for now, what’s good for the country and what’s good for the Marcos family image seem to align.

Jam Sta Rosa/AP

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. (right) talks with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd James Austin III (fourth from left) at the Malacanang Palace in Manila, Philippines, on Feb. 2, 2023. During Mr. Austin's visit, the Marcos administration granted the U.S. access to four additional military bases, part of a broader effort to repair the countries' fractured ties.

A 90-degree turn on foreign policy

The United States’ relationship with the Philippines, one of the oldest U.S. allies in Asia, became strained under Mr. Duterte, who threatened to cut ties with the American government and attempted to revoke a major defense treaty between the two countries. The former president refused to visit countries that criticized his war on drugs, including the U.S. and members of the European Union. Political analyst Edmund Tayao says that Mr. Duterte instead used his presidency to open diplomatic doors to nontraditional partners, such as Israel and Bulgaria, and foster relations with Beijing.

“What happened during the administration of Duterte was we showed to the world that we are not just a U.S. lackey,” says Mr. Tayao, a San Beda University Graduate School of Law professor.

Now Mr. Marcos is seeking to maintain cooperation with Beijing while repairing the country’s fractured ties with the U.S.

Early this month, during a visit by U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the Marcos administration granted the U.S. access to four additional military bases to stitch the gap in the arc of U.S. alliances in Asia and the Pacific.

Mr. Marcos also advanced military ties with Japan this month during his ninth international trip as president – putting him well on track to exceed the 21 trips Mr. Duterte took during his six years in office.

Mr. Tayao says the Marcos administration’s outreach efforts do not necessarily reflect “a transformation or an abandonment” of Mr. Duterte’s international relations agenda – after all, the U.S. never stopped supplying military aid to the Philippines, and Mr. Marcos is not turning his back on Beijing now – but they do signal “a significant redefinition” of the country’s foreign policy. 

“It is not a 180-degree turn,” he says. “It is a 90-degree turn.”

Bullit Marquez/AP/File

Then Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte addresses thousands of the country's municipal councilors during its 10th National Congress on March 8, 2017, in Pasay, Philippines. During his six years in office, Mr. Duterte refused to visit countries that criticized his war on drugs, including the U.S. and members of the European Union.

Carl Marc Ramota, political scientist and faculty regent at the University of the Philippines, agrees that Mr. Marcos’ “friend to all, enemy to none” approach isn’t particularly new or radical, though it may have serious consequences. He says the “big difference between the Marcos and Duterte governments is that indicators point to Marcos getting closer with the U.S. military authorities, which might cause ripples in the political and military scene in the South China Sea.”

Indeed, maintaining relations with China while expanding ties with the U.S. and other Pacific allies could prove difficult. China has already criticized the recent deal with the U.S. as undermining regional stability, and Filipino observers are concerned that the renewed cooperation with American authorities might lead to further militarization of the South China Sea, where the Philippines and China have repeatedly butted heads. Just last week, the U.S. announced that it would defend the Philippines after a Chinese coast guard ship allegedly blinded its Filipino counterparts with a military-grade laser and blocked their way to a critical naval outpost. Mr. Marcos said Saturday that the incident was not enough to trigger the mutual defense treaty. 

Domestic progress – and limitations

In another attention-grabbing quarter pivot, the Marcos administration has promised to rein in police misconduct and impunity as it continues to implement the war on drugs. Mr. Duterte gave the national police massive latitude in carrying out the anti-drug campaign, which from the start was beset by violence and controversies, but last month some 900 police generals and colonels were forced to submit courtesy resignations in an attempt to reset trust in the program.

Critics say the move sidesteps justice for thousands killed under the Duterte administration, and in late January, Manila decried the International Criminal Court for resuming its probe into drug war deaths. Still, the move reflects a departure from the existing culture of total impunity, and for some survivors such as Ms. Sandoval, that’s a win. 

Basilio Sepe/AP

Rappler CEO Maria Ressa speaks to the media in Quezon City, Philippines, Jan. 18, 2023, after the Court of Tax Appeals cleared her and her online news company of tax evasion charges, which she said were part of a slew of legal cases used by former President Rodrigo Duterte to muzzle critical reporting.

Press freedom defenders also scored a victory in January after the tax court acquitted Nobel laureate Maria Ressa and her news organization, Rappler, of the tax evasion charges filed by the Duterte administration.

“Today, facts win. Truth wins,” a teary-eyed and defiant Ms. Ressa told reporters outside the Manila courtroom on Jan. 18. 

Jonathan de Santos, chairperson of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP), says that while press freedom advocates and media organizations celebrate Ms. Ressa’s acquittal, “it is too early to tell whether this would lead to a transformation of government policies on handling dissent.” 

He stressed that many journalists – particularly those outside Manila and who lack an international following – are still under attack for their work. NUJP reports that at least two journalists have been killed during the Marcos administration, and at least one – the Tacloban-based Frenchie Mae Cumpio – remains in prison. 

Some experts say the administration is simply falling back on old initiatives not of the last regime, but of earlier administrations – the same administrations that allowed a strongman like Mr. Duterte to flourish in the first place. 

Raymond Palatino, spokesperson of the left-wing Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (New Patriotic Alliance), says Mr. Marcos is “posturing as good, just, and cooperative.” 

“The Marcos administration is trying to distance itself from the damaging image of its immediate predecessor by showing the world that it has different approaches to many domestic and international issues,” says Mr. Palatino. “But in reality, they are the same.”

Mr. Palatino says that “all forms of institutionalization of impunity, corruption, and injustice are still in place,” adding that “if this administration really wants to perform better than the previous regime, it has to abandon policies and programs that plunge Filipinos into poverty, oppression, and social injustices.” 

Mr. de Santos echoes this attitude when discussing press freedom, arguing that if the Marcos administration is serious about “moving away from a Duterte brand of attacking dissenters, he must abandon all anti-people and anti-press freedom policies and programs.” 

Until then, he adds, “the only thing that has improved is that we do not hear a president cursing journalists in televised speeches anymore.”

Still, even that can be considered a victory. 

Jacquelyn Martin/AP/File

With the Founders Library in the background, a young man reads on the Howard University campus, July 6, 2021, in Washington. Howard President Wayne Frederick says the school is on track to become the first HBCU to reach a $1 billion endowment.

Post-pandemic, colleges nationwide are facing an imperative: Change trajectory. Enrollment is down and falling, and Pew’s 2023 Parenting in America survey found that only 41% of parents say it’s important for their children to have a college degree – down from 94% in 2012. Even before COVID-19, smaller colleges from Green Mountain to Mount Ida already were closing or being bought out by larger institutions that wanted campus real estate but not their professors or students.

But for the 101 accredited Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the United States, this moment is particularly portentous. Undergrad enrollment is up 2.5%, compared with a decline of 4.2% for colleges overall – one of the only bright spots noted in the 2022 National Student Clearinghouse. While the pandemic dealt blows to some colleges that have never recovered, HBCUs say they were able to make use of the shared relief to do everything from covering lost wages to forgive their students’ debt. 

And although HBCU funding is not a monolith, several presidents interviewed for this story say, their schools are used to creating their own success recipes in the midst of the larger issue of systematic underfunding on the state and federal level since their founding.

Some say this contrasts with predominantly white institution counterparts, which have received a disproportionate share of government funds and an abundance of private and philanthropic donations. What’s different today, they say, is that people outside of HBCU circles are starting to notice the inequities. And new support from alumni and non-alumni alike is beginning to help some schools dig out of a long history of being overlooked financially.

“You should be giving them more money,” says Marybeth Gasman, associate dean for research in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University, and an HBCU researcher.

“I think what happens for some funders and some lawmakers is they have this idea that HBCUs should be grateful for what they get, and things have shifted on the part of HBCUs where they are saying, ‘We’re not going to just take scraps.’”

Hyosub Shin/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP/File

A sign is displayed at Spelman College on Sept. 26, 2018, in Atlanta. Historically Black Colleges and Universities, including Spelman, have benefited from pandemic relief money and new grants, and also from individual donations and strong enrollment.

Receiving “scraps” has had a wide-ranging negative effect for decades. A 2022 Forbes Magazine study found that 18 HBCUs, mostly in Southern states, were underfunded by almost $13 billion compared to their counterparts. That data covered the period between 1987-2020, the earliest record available. Land grant HBCUs, which states are mandated to fund, didn’t start receiving state funding until the 1970s, nearly a century after some of them were established. This neglect compromised research, academic scholarships, faculty recruitment, and physical facilities maintenance and construction, the study found.

Fifty years later, the COVID-19 infusion provided more in a two-year time span than HBCUs had received from the government in the previous 10 years combined, a report from the United Negro College Fund found in 2022. HBCUs received $6.5 billion in pandemic aid – split more than 100 ways. The schools used that money to cover technology support, augment distance learning, make up for lost revenue, relieve student debt, and provide laptop computers to students who didn’t have them.

“That still is a drop in the bucket if you’ve been underfunded since inception,” says Lodriguez Murray, senior vice president for public policy and government affairs at the United Negro College Fund, a nonprofit that has raised billions in scholarships for students to attend HBCUs, as well as for the institutions themselves. 

After the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police in 2020, HBCUs faced both a record number of bomb threats and a wave of financial support. Many schools saw historic fundraising years and increases in corporate partnerships and philanthropic donations.

MacKenzie Scott, former spouse of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, made front-page headlines when she pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to HBCUs, citing a desire to spend her money where there was the most need.

Looking at the data

One of those HBCUs was Dillard University in New Orleans. Former Dillard President Walter Kimbrough says the significance of Ms. Scott’s $5 million gift was that it was unrestricted money for their endowment. He used $4 million to restore campus buildings damaged after Hurricane Ida wiped out power for a week.

“That’s the money that just sits and builds on interest and then you spend a portion of it every year to do whatever you need to do, but we have a lot of HBCUs that have hardly any endowment, less than $5 million,” Dr. Kimbrough says.

Gerald Herbert/AP/File

Dillard University graduates celebrate in New Orleans, May 13, 2017. Dillard graduates more physics majors – and more women physics majors – than far bigger schools. Those kind of data-driven stories can help Historically Black Colleges and Universities find financial success, says former President Walter Kimbrough, who doubled Dillard’s endowment during his tenure.

Dr. Kimbrough knows about endowments. He raised Dillard’s from about $50 million to $105 million, from 2012-2022 during the years he served. He also increased alumni giving from 4% to 23%.

He built interest in Dillard by sharing its story.

“When I first got to Dillard and I found out Dillard was No. 2 in the country for producing African Americans who get undergraduate degrees in physics, I told that everywhere,” he says. He was featured on a podcast hosted by journalist and author Malcolm Gladwell. And that first year alone, he traveled to 17 cities to introduce himself to alumni.

“I didn’t really ask them for anything,” he recalls. “I just wanted to say, ‘This is who I am, this is what I see, and here is what we’re going to focus on. I need your support.’”

“We have to tell data-driven stories,” Dr. Kimbrough continues. “My criticism has always been that HBCUs lean into their platitudes of ‘we’re a family environment, your professor knows you, or we turn lemons into lemonade,’ but it’s time to show that lemonade. If you did something, we gotta show it, and that will get people excited and make people want to donate and be a part of something.” 

Applying business principles

Cheyney University also has a story to tell. It was the country’s first Black institution of higher learning. Its founding in 1837, when the majority of the United States’ Black population was enslaved, was a challenge to the country’s ethos. The Fugitive Slave Acts put its Pennsylvania students in the crosshairs, 25 miles away from the City of Brotherly Love.

More recently, it faced financial ruin: After an earlier administration mismanaged funds, it owed $35 million to the state of Pennsylvania. Enrollment was down.

Then in 2017, Aaron Walton arrived as president after 40 years in the corporate world. Faced with a $7.5 million deficit, he made several tough decisions. Among them: Eliminating the football team, saving almost $2 million, and getting rid of open admissions, which had resulted in hundreds of students in remediation. He also secured grant money to demolish four buildings the school was not using but was paying to maintain.

Today, the budget has been balanced for four years and counting, and enrollment is up from 469 at the end of his first year to 707 students. The state has forgiven the $35 million.

“I’m not a person that wants to depend on other people for my fate,” Mr. Walton says in an interview. “There’s some basic business principles that you have to apply to an institution because you’re running a small company.”

Mr. Walton says his business background, and the fact that he didn’t hail from academia, is what helped him implement a strategy for incremental growth at Cheyney, which includes profit-sharing agreements with corporate tenants who occupy unused buildings on campus and rental agreements from others. He has a mandatory condition for those who want to do business with Cheyney: Each company has to provide internships to students. Companies on campus include cancer research, agriculture, biotech, pharmaceuticals, solar panel management, and 3D printing.

“That’s actually the perspective that we came to Cheyney with in terms of, how do we monetize the assets that Cheyney has and change the trajectory of where we’re going?’” he says.

Jose F. Moreno/The Philadelphia Inquirer/AP/File

Aaron Walton, Cheyney University president, announces a fundraising campaign and continued partnerships to ensure the school's financial future, March 5, 2019, in Philadelphia. The nation's oldest Historically Black College, which had struggled with plummeting enrollment and financial woes in recent years, has balanced its budget for four years and counting, and enrollment is up by two-thirds from its low.

The first $1 billion HBCU

Other presidents see things similarly. Howard University President Wayne Frederick has worked tirelessly to raise money for the school. He leveraged university-owned property into lease agreements and fostered an environment where faculty and students seek research dollars. He also says that it is in his best interest to engage Congress to secure funding annually. In 2022, Howard set a record, raising $122 million in research funding. (In the interests of disclosure, this reporter is an alum of Howard, from before Dr. Frederick was president.) 

“Having friends who show up and give you a $20 million dollar gift or a $40 million dollar gift is important, and part of the reason they do that is because of the excellence they see. We received $40 million from MacKenzie [Scott], but an undertold part of that story is that MacKenzie Scott was once a teaching assistant for Toni Morrison, so her familiarity with Howard University is very strong. Toni Morrison won’t get credit for alumni giving, but her excellence led to an impression that I’m sure she left with MacKenzie Scott,” Dr. Frederick says.

In 2020, Howard raised $170 million in private donations, which was a record, and Dr. Frederick believes it was from the work that Howard students have done throughout the world, which he considers a part of alums giving back, whether they can write a large check or not. For his part, Dr. Frederick wants that work to count. He plans to start a day of service on Juneteenth for students and alums.

“People take that ‘truth and service’ motto seriously. I think our alums go out into the community doing some kind of service, and I would say that is just as important, if not more important, than the dollars,” he says.

Dr. Frederick expects Howard, whose endowment is currently around $900 million, to be the first HBCU to hit the $1 billion mark in the next 12 to 18 months.

Additionally, Howard just started a $785 million campus building and renovation project. The school has already secured $300 million in bonds for this. Howard also wants to replace its hospital, which will cost $600 million, and Dr. Frederick says $100 million of that has been secured.

As his tenure closes, Dr. Frederick says his intention all along has been to put the school in a better position financially by raising its credit rating, managing debt, and operating efficiently.

“I would say it’s a potpourri of different funding types. But it means that you have to fundamentally block and tackle in all quarters when you’re Howard University, because of the complexity of this campus, and what we’re doing to get there is we have to lead with excellence.”

Every Tuesday evening, as streetlights flicker on in downtown Buenos Aires, a man named Charlie tidies a section of sidewalk, preparing for his visitors.

Charlie lives on the street. The volunteers who regularly check in on him as part of their recorrida nocturna, or night route, are an emotional lifeline.

The team of six sit with Charlie in a semi-circle on the pavement, offering juice, yerba mate, and conversation. They chat about the weather, current events, the neighbors, and when the laughter lulls, they ask Charlie about more immediate concerns, like his health, upcoming medical appointments, and how the police have been treating him.

There are thousands of people like Charlie living on the streets across the capital, and 43% of the country’s population lives in poverty. It’s a reflection of the unrelenting economic crisis and sky-high inflation that’s enveloping this South American nation. Some 600 volunteers take part in these nightly visits organized by the nonprofit Fundación Sí, underscoring a growing movement of volunteers, fueled by young people, who are working to fill the void where government services and the labor market are falling short. 

These volunteers may not be well off – or even interested in staying in Argentina long-term – but they offer whatever they can to lift their neighbors up: a hand, an ear, a meal, or simply some of their time. Argentina isn’t known for high rates of volunteerism, but recent data shows that’s changing. A study published by Voices! Consultancy found that a record 36% of Argentines volunteered last year, including nearly 60% of people between 18 and 24 years old.

Generosity of time and affection is generally reserved for family and close friends in Argentina, says Constanza Cilley, executive director of Voices! Consultancy. But, “there are significant increases [in volunteering] in times of greatest crisis,” she says. It’s “a tool to alleviate a bit of the anguish around the enormous problems facing Argentina.” 

Many here are finding that generosity is not a one-way street, but a relationship that binds.

Erika Page/The Christian Science Monitor

Volunteers Camilo Coy (right) and Maria Ballester (center) speak with Miguel, one of the individuals Fundación Sí visits regularly, Buenos Aires, Feb. 7, 2023.

Stay or go?

This isn’t the first time Argentines have rallied through a crisis. In 2001, political and economic turmoil gripped the country as it defaulted on its external debt and saw poverty and unemployment skyrocket, prompting massive protests to fill the streets. Gerardo Romero, who volunteers cooking community meals each week, remembers the solidarity of those days fondly. It was the height of social involvement in Argentina – more dramatic than anything happening today, he says. Neighbors met on street corners to debate how to solve the emergencies around them. Bartering clubs took root, and collective libraries flourished.

“The country was falling apart, but what was happening in society was incredible,” says Mr. Romero, in his thirties. According to Voices! Consultancy, the last big spike in volunteering hit 32% directly following that economic collapse.

The economy rebounded eventually, but since 2018, soaring inflation and the pandemic have created a protracted sense of crisis. Last year, annual inflation reached 94.8%, sending food prices soaring, and making saving nearly impossible. Most young people no longer expect a higher standard of living than their parents in a country whose social mobility was once a point of national pride. That can cause internal conflict for those who want to do good here.

“I see it and hear it a lot; people who are very dedicated to social causes but who also have this desire to go abroad,” to seek out new opportunities, says Candelaria Badino, a university student who has been shaped by her volunteer work supporting families and young people through workshops in impoverished regions in the north.

Erika Page/The Christian Science Monitor

Emilia Maguire poses for a photo during an event organized by Fundación Sí for new volunteers participating in the organization’s “recorridas nocturnas.” During these night routes, volunteers offer support and a listening ear to the city's unhoused population in Buenos Aires, Feb. 4, 2023.

Emilia Maguire, a therapist, has considered emigrating for years, tired of the poverty she can no longer ignore – and which she sees as a reflection of distorted political and economic priorities. She recently joined Fundación Sí’s night routes.

“Sometimes I get home tired and distressed,” says Ms. Maguire. “But when you connect with things like this that are gratifying, it’s easier to get by, because your focus shifts. ... It sustains you in this place, so you don’t have to look elsewhere.”

The Voices! study found a correlation between volunteering and general satisfaction. Some 23% of respondents who said they volunteered last year indicated Argentina as the best place for them to live, compared to only 14% of non-volunteers.

“Willingness to help”

On the other side of town from Charlie’s stoop, knives are coming out in a park.

Paring knives and chef’s knives slice through potatoes, onions, carrots, and dig into weathered cutting boards. Every week, volunteers set up a makeshift open-air kitchen in a corner of a cobblestone amphitheater. It’s home to the Parque Lezama Olla Popular, a collective with roots in the neighborhood assemblies that rose from the ashes of the financial collapse in 2001. Each week volunteers cook meals for those on the streets using community-donated ingredients.

The group got their start in 2018 with close to nothing, as the value of the Argentine peso began to plummet once again. They’ve since acquired a gas stove and donations from businesses and farmer’s collectives. They invite those who come to eat to help cook as part of the team.

In the hazy light of a setting sun, the smell of stew grows stronger, catching the attention of people sleeping or chatting on benches nearby.

“The crisis itself pushes people together, uniting in empathy,” says Carmela Pavesi, an organizer in her mid-20s.

“You don’t need a lot of money or a lot of things,” she says. “With the people you have nearby, wherever you are, you can do something with what you have.”

Another organizer, Victor Rodriguez, who once lived on the street himself, nods in agreement as he sips on his yerba mate and pulls a giant ladle through the simmering pot. He’s looking at a man sleeping nearby. A new arrival, he says.

“Today there are more people living on the streets, more people in need, more people begging for money or help,” says Eduardo Donza, a researcher with the Social Debt Observatory at the Universidad Católica de Argentina.

Natalie Alcoba

Gerardo Romero and Flor Yciz, volunteers with the Parque Lezama Olla Popular, chop potatoes and zucchini in preparation for a meal they serve each week to those in need in Buenos Aires, Feb. 6, 2023.

The country’s poverty is structural and historic, says Mr. Donza, in large part due to a precarious labor market. Only 35% of the population works in the formal private sector, another 15% in the public sector, leaving half the population doing informal work. Informal workers hang on through anything from collecting materials for recycling to delivery work or cleaning homes. And marginalization goes beyond income: Social exclusion is both geographic, on the peripheries of cities, and generational.

“If we don’t generate more wealth, if we can’t create more good jobs, we’re never going to come out of this,” he says. Volunteering can’t solve these wider issues on its own. “But it seems to me like solidarity has increased. That willingness to help matters.”

Most valuable resource

Economic exclusion has played a central role in the lives of many in Villa 31, perhaps Buenos Aires’ most iconic informal settlement. On a recent afternoon, Cristhian Aquino sends a dozen boys running around a soccer field in the low-income neighborhood, tucked under a busy freeway.

Mr. Aquino, who spent his entire life in Villa 31 and now works in government outreach, packs his free time with activities he says teach local kids “good conduct, teamwork, confidence,” – characteristics that will help bridge their lives to the outside world.

“I know there are lots of things wrong in the neighborhood,” he says. But, by volunteering to guide these youth in his spare time, “things can change.”

Back on Charlie’s stoop, an hour has whizzed by, and the visitors stand to go. A smile lingers on the face of one volunteer, Camilo Coy, as he heads toward the group’s next visit. 

“Our time,” he says, “is the most valuable resource we have.”

Reuters

A Hyundai Xcient truck, fueled by hydrogen, stands at a filing station in Berlin, Germany, Jan. 11.

For decades, climate change activists have called on governments, consumers, and industries to move away from fossil fuels to save the planet. That transition has finally reached a watershed. Global investment in renewable energies reached parity with capital for hydrocarbons in 2022 and is poised to blow past it, according to BloombergNEF.

In crossing that threshold, the world may now be focusing more on the quality of “green” energy projects. Do they cause other environmental harm? Do they upset local communities? A good example of this focus is a decision in Chile to hit the pause button on a massive project to produce hydrogen as a fuel by relying on renewable energy.

Hydrogen is the post-carbon dream fuel. It has the potential of powering long-haul land, sea, and air transportation, solving the limitations of electric vehicles while emitting only water in its use. Although global investments in hydrogen accounted for only a small fraction of the $1.1 trillion put into renewables last year, hydrogen is the world’s fast-growing part of the energy sector.

To be commercially viable, however, the cost of producing hydrogen needs to drop. And for the fuel to be called “green,” or climate friendly, the power source must be fully renewable. Last week, the European Union, which has allocated $5.2 billion for hydrogen projects, sought a way around that limitation by designating nuclear power an acceptable source.

Few countries are better endowed than Chile in tapping renewable energy sources. The country’s southern landscape is sparsely populated and buffeted by near-constant winds. The government promises to become one of the world’s top hydrogen exporters by 2040. It already has 41 green hydrogen projects underway, including a $74 million pilot that makes synthetic gasoline from hydrogen with a single wind turbine. The plant’s foreign investors are planning a second, larger operation.

But the project is on hold to address local concerns. Environmentalists worry about the impact of more wind turbines and busier shipping lanes. Residents have raised concerns about Indigenous land rights and the cohesion of their communities. “We realized there was still more dialogue to be had” with residents and officials, Clara Bowman, chief operations officer at HIF Global LLC, the project’s lead developer, told Bloomberg.

Solving climate change, notes Terry Yosie, former president and CEO of the Washington-based World Environment Center, poses societal challenges at least as large as economic ones. That is also an opportunity. “Whether for selfish or moral reasons,” he wrote in Greenbiz in December, “the greater mobilization of coalitions that can yield climate progress is an essential reaffirmation of our common humanity and the ability of people to govern themselves.”

Managing the green transition means not repeating the kind of mistakes that led to global warming: a low regard for others living on Earth. On Chile’s windy southern pampas, a pause in pursuing renewable energy shows a new emphasis on the bonds of a caring society.