A new study in the Harvard Educational Review is highlighting how some black male college students are overcoming those challenges, and the reasons for their success. Shaun Harper, a professor and executive director of the Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education at the University of Pennsylvania, surveyed more than 140 students at 30 predominantly white public and private colleges. While high-achieving black male students aren't immune from racial stereotypes, they have found a way to push back against them — often through taking on confidence-building campus leadership roles that can change perceptions of them among their white peers and faculty. Columbia University psychology and education professor Derald Wing Sue has researched the stress-producing slights and insensitivities tinged with bigotry, or microaggressions, cited in Harper's study. In his four years at Lafayette, a small, private liberal arts college in Easton, Pennsylvania, Wanda has served as a resident assistant and president of the computer science and anime clubs. Gary Gordon, a math professor at Lafayette who mentors minority students, recalled a class discussion where race became part of the conversation and he caught himself resisting the urge to ask the lone black student in the class to speak for her race.