When Justice Singleton was growing up, her father, the late director, writer and producer John Singleton, didn’t go out of his way to show her his movies. For a while she thought he was a football player because he talked about how he was “drafted into the industry.”

But when the now-27-year-old attended a summer program for incoming freshmen of color at Loyola Marymount University, the group was shown a movie of her father’s she’d never seen — “Higher Learning,” about the struggles of freshmen at the fictional Columbus University in Los Angeles.

“When you go on a campus as a black person,” Justice Singleton says, “it can be really fearful, eye-opening.”

The slang, fashion and soundtrack may date “Higher Learning” as a distinctly 1995 product, but it’s striking how many of the topics that shape the film are still being grappled with on college campuses and in society. “Higher Learning” examines the rise of white nationalism among young men, the pervasiveness of rape culture, school shootings, racist policing policies, the high price of a university education, binge drinking, sexual fluidity and the treatment of minority athletes in college athletics.

Presaging the culture wars that followed NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s sideline protests just a few years ago, there is even a scene in which Fudge, a politically mindedsenior played by Ice Cube, asks track star Malik Williams, played by Omar Epps, whether he would stand for the national anthem at a football game if he was surrounded by an all-white crowd.

“These issues are still so prevalent in our society,” Epps says today, “and [Singleton] was cognizant of all of it.”

John Singleton celebrated his 27th birthday five days before the January 1995 release of “Higher Learning.” Despite his youth, it was already his third project for a major film studio.

Singleton, who died last year at 51 from a stroke, had established himself as a formidable talent when Columbia Pictures put out his debut feature, “Boyz N the Hood,” in July 1991. The movie received a rapturous response after it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, made over $57 million domestically off an estimated $6.5-million budget and earned the young filmmaker Oscar nominations in the director and original screenplay categories. Critic Roger Ebert famously included Singleton as part of the vanguard of what he declared “the black new wave.”

Singleton’s follow-up, “Poetic Justice,” was a road film and love story that starred Tupac Shakur and Janet Jackson. Bringing in $27.5 million, it wasn’t as successful as “Boyz,” but Singleton’s career was still on the rise.

“He pretty much had carte blanche,” says Stephanie Allain, who was then senior vice president of production at Columbia. “He could do what he wanted.”

What he wanted was to make “Higher Learning,” which was partly based on what the South-Central native witnessed during his time as a student at USC.

The film focused on Epps’ character, Malik, an arrogant member of the track team who becomes increasingly attuned to the forces that shape the black experience in America. Ice Cube’s character, Fudge, served as the film’s Afrocentric conscience. Laurence Fishburne portrayed political science professor Maurice Phipps. And rapper Busta Rhymes played a student who got into clashes for playing his music too loud.

Kristy Swanson, who had just starred in the titular role of the original “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” movie (five years before the Joss Whedon TV series), played Kristen Connor, a naïve Orange County-born woman who begins to explore feminist activism and her sexuality in the aftermath of a rape. Regina King was Kristen’s roommate, Monet; Jennifer Connelly played lesbian activist Taryn and model Tyra Banks was a track star who became a love interest for Malik.

Pivotal to the film’s conflict was Michael Rapaport’s character, Remy, an awkward and lonely transplant from Idaho who joins a group of neo-Nazis led by Cole Hauser as Scott Moss. As the school year progresses, racial tensions increase among the student body, eventually exploding in violence.

To watch “Higher Learning” 25 years after its release is to watch a messy and complicated movie. After all, it was trying to cover many messy and complicated subjects in just over two hours.

“This issue of tribalism and everybody separating into their little groups, it’s something that we might want to tease ourselves that we’ve gotten past in this country, but I feel like now more than ever, it’s obvious that we haven’t,” says Jay R. Ferguson, the “Mad Men” and “Briarpatch” actor who made his film debut in “Higher Learning” playing the frat boy Billy.

Allain, who is preparing to produce the 92nd Academy Awards show with Lynette Howell Taylor next week, wasn’t just one of the few black executives who worked at Columbia Pictures in the early 1990s, she was one of the few black executives in the entire film industry. She was responsible for bringing the “Boyz N the Hood” script and Singleton to Columbia, and shepherded his two subsequent movies at the studio.

“John basically taught me how to produce, how to protect the auteur’s vision through a lot of arguments,” Allain says. “I worked for the studio, but I really worked for him too. His passion and his intellect pulled you in.”

Singleton typically wouldn’t start writing a film until he was finished with the one he was directing, but his ideas for “Higher Learning” were forming as he worked on “Poetic Justice.” While shooting, he was also emotionally contending with the Rodney King verdict and the riots that followed.

“It’s gonna be hard. ’Cause I’m pissed off,” he told Times writer Patrick Goldstein on the set of “Poetic Justice.” “It’s going to be the first movie I do that has white characters. Because I’m going to have to deal with a lot of bigger issues, economic issues, issues of class as well as race.”

Dr. Todd Boyd, then a young professor who had recently moved to Los Angeles to join USC’s film department, remembers it as a particularly exciting cultural time in the city. “Black filmmakers were hot at that moment,” he says. “John was in the center of it. Spike [Lee] is from New York and his movies were New York movies … But John brought a West Coast sensibility to it. When you consider how N.W.A and Ice Cube and [Dr.] Dre and Ice-T brought the West Coast into the hip-hop equation, John was doing the same kind of thing in film.”

Since “Higher Learning” would be Singleton’s first movie without a predominantly black cast, it was perceived that there would be broader marketing possibilities; Columbia didn’t hesitate when he brought them the concept.

“Oh, my God, they were happy,” says Allain. “Are you kidding? They’re like, ‘OK, we have some white people in this one!’

As casting for the film began, the only actors attached were Ice Cube and King, who had made their film debuts in “Boyz N the Hood.” King, who won an Oscar last year for her role in Barry Jenkins’ “If Beale Street Could Talk” and recently starred as the detective at the heart of HBO’s “Watchmen,” also played a supporting role in “Poetic Justice,” while Cube says he turned down the part that eventually went to Shakur in that film.

The offer to play Fudge in “Higher Learning” coincided with Cube’s increasing interest in black history and the Nation of Islam. He was reading books by Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad as well as learning about the history behind the Black Panthers and Los Angeles gangs. “It was a highly political stage in my career,” says Cube. “I was ready to do a movie and put out a visual match to what I was rapping about.”

Fishburne had played Furious Styles in “Boyz N the Hood,” a role based on Singleton’s father. After Sidney Poitier and Dustin Hoffman turned down the role of the political science professor in “Higher Learning,” Singleton turned to Fishburne, who was only 34 at the time. They aged Fishburne’s appearance by whitening his hair and beard, but the actor developed his own distinctive approach to the character.

“[Singleton] explained to me that it was kind of generational, the difference between the student’s point of view and this professor’s,” Fishburne says. “I thought about [how] Poitier was from the Caribbean and I thought that would be kind of the way in. I said, ‘Let’s make him West Indian, so at least there’s a cultural difference.’”

Epps’ part of Malik was originally going to be played by Shakur — Singleton told Vibe magazine at the time that he wanted the two of them to have a creative partnership like Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese. But as the film went into production, Shakur faced charges of sexual assault that eventually sent him to prison. Epps, later known for his starring role in “Love and Basketball” and his long run on “House,” had broken through with the film “Juice” and had replaced Wesley Snipes in the sequel to “Major League.” Still, this film felt different. “It was my first time working with a filmmaker who was just so entrenched into the story and the bigger voice of the film,” says Epps.

Even before the script for “Higher Learning” was done, Swanson, who was repped by the same agency as Singleton, reached out to meet with the director. Like the character she went on to play, Swanson is from Orange County.

“Even though we were both from Southern California, we were able to talk about how we came from very different sorts of lives,” Swanson says. “There was a lot of humor in our conversation and getting a feel for each other. I could tell he was really studying me and how I spoke and what I had to say.” She believes that their conversation ended up shaping the character, even down to her name, Kristen.

Swanson is now one of the entertainment business’ most vocal supporters of Donald Trump, waging daily campaigns on his behalf on social media and getting messages of gratitude from the president’s Twitter account.

For the skinhead Remy, Rapaport and Hauser were each up for the part.

“I had actually just done a role in a film called ‘Skins’ where I played a skinhead, so I already looked the part. When I walked in and met John, he kinda looked at me and I think he really thought I was a skinhead,” says Hauser, who got the consolation part as the head of the neo-Nazis. He is currently one of the stars of Kevin Costner’s Paramount Network series “Yellowstone” and conducted the interview for this story while riding his horse, Duke.

The irony was not lost on either of the actors that they were both Jewish.

Though Hauser said he got along with cast members like Ice Cube and Busta Rhymes on the “Higher Learning” set, his physical appearance caused some uncomfortable moments.

“John was one of those guys, especially early on, who was doing this more than anybody, where the crew is black — down to the catering and the drivers.” he says. “He was doing a lot for the African American community, especially in Los Angeles at that time. So to be walking around with a shaved head, with tattoos of ‘Invisible Empire’ on my neck, it’s not the most, I guess, inviting atmosphere.”

With his comedies “Friday,” “Ride Along,” “Barbershop” and their sequels in the future, Cube, who at the time of “Higher Learning” was still actively making music in his post N.W.A career, says he learned “everything” about screenwriting and directing from Singleton. Hanging out together at Singleton’s home in Baldwin Hills, the filmmaker told Cube that if he could tell stories so well in his lyrics, he should be doing it in scripts. Singleton not only guided him toward buying his first computer and Final Draft screenwriting software, he coached him through several scripts until he finished “Friday.”

“Higher Learning” was shot on the campus of UCLA during the first half of 1994. (USC denied Singleton’s request to film it at his alma mater.) Columbia Pictures released the film in January 1995. These days, January is known as a time studios dump the movies they don’t have faith in, either critically or commercially, but the executives interviewed for this article say that wasn’t the case for “Higher Learning.”

“Nobody thought we better bury this,” said Sid Ganis, Columbia’s then head of marketing who had also worked on Singleton’s previous films. “Not at all.”

The film opened on Martin Luther King Jr. weekend and made over $13 million, taking the second spot in the box office rankings, just behind “Legends of the Fall.” It eventually grossed $38 million in theaters — more than “Poetic Justice” but less than “Boyz N the Hood.”

Response to “Higher Learning” was mixed. Critics admired Singleton’s desire to confront societal problems but felt he relied on too many clichés and shallow depictions to do so. As Kenneth Turan wrote in his review for The Times, “Because he accomplished so much so early, it is easy to forget how young John Singleton is. ‘Higher Learning’ reminds us.”

Singleton spent this century specializing in action films like “Shaft” and “2 Fast 2 Furious.” “Baby Boy” from 2001 marked the last of his so-called “hood films.” In 2017 he took a deeper look at the L.A. unrest that had initially inspired “Higher Learning” by producing the documentary “L.A. Burning: The Riots 25 Years Later.” And he returned to the Los Angeles of his youth as the co-creator of FX’s series about the 1980s drug trade, “Snowfall.” His death came three months before the premiere of the show’s second season.

“Higher Learning” ends with the word “Unlearn” appearing over the American flag before the screen fades to black. These days, similarly optimistic phrases of the era like “Erase Racism” and “No Colorlines” get little play in discussion of racial dynamics. The emphasis is on getting people to acknowledge the inherent prejudices and biases within themselves, then working to challenge them.

When “Higher Learning” was released, The Times held a screening of the film for 10 local college students. Afterward USC’s Dr. Boyd moderated a conversation between them and Singleton. The director had only graduated a few years earlier, but already the students questioned why he didn’t focus more on systematic racism and wondered why his film didn’t include the experience of Latino and Asian students.

Recent incidents on college campuses, such as the May 2018 call to campus police by a white student about a black Yale graduate student sleeping in a residence hall’s common area, have forced the people of the United States to examine their own feelings and assumptions about race. In this political climate there’s also been the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and white supremacist incidents, as well as a continued battle over the U.S. immigration policies, all forcing difficult but crucial conversations.

As Justice Singleton says, “The way the world is, is kind of like a college campus now.”