Classes were called off at Atlanta’s Spelman College on Tuesday after the school received its third bomb threat this year. This was the first time the historically Black women’s school stopped students from going to class after one of the threats.
The campus was on lockdown for four hours while officials completed a thorough sweep of the campus.
It comes on the same day the Southern Poverty Law Center held a panel discussion to discuss what it calls “abhorrent acts of hate.” More than a dozen similar threats have been made against other historically Black colleges and universities in the past few weeks.
Michelle Asha Cooper is deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs at the U.S. Department of Education. She was on the SPLC panel, and sat down with WABE’s “All Things Considered” host Jim Burress to give her perspective on the threats.
Lily Oppenheimer contributed to this report.
