Over a dozen HBCU leaders met with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence Monday to discuss black colleges and what they need. The President says the “schools will be an absolute priority for the White House”.
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United Negro College Fund President and CEO Michael L. Lomax praised the decision to move the HBCU initiative into the White House but noted the group’s funding recommendations were not included.
The President said the schools will be a priority in his administration.
Since President Carter in 1980, every president has signed an executive order reorganizing the initiative. As such, many people are taking issue with the idea that HBCUs were set up to help “school choice” but many say segregation meant that there was no choice in the matter. Nearly 80 percent were black. “Black students did not “choose” HBCUs over all White colleges-they were barred from attending due to their race”, he wrote. Under Trump’s executive order, the initiative now will be housed in the Executive Office of the President.
“Historically black colleges and universities are incredibly important institutions woven into the fabric of our history just about like no other”, he said. Cooper was succeeded by Dr.
Trump “was praising the incredible work of HBCU presidents… he was laughing and shaking hands and meeting each of the presidents”, she wrote in an email. As far as our legacy goes, I’m not sure if we have a history of administrators and university presidents standing up for what’s right, but we definitely have a legacy of Howard students and Howard alum and our professors coming together to reassert what Howard stands on, reassert our core values and never allowing the people who lead us forget what it is we believe in.
“There’s need for infrastructure, there’s need for increasing the ability for opportunities for students capacity”.
“It was appreciated by the 100 historically black colleges and universities to have their presidents and chancellors invited to the White House to have conversations with the new administration”, Tisdale said. The director is in the best position to help HBCU presidents locate resources within the federal government help them run their institutions better.
The senior White House official added that the administration wants HBCUs to serve as partners in the President’s urban agenda and that the administration also wants to increase the private sector’s role in supporting and strengthening their participation in federal programs. This action on HBCUs is not sufficient to hold up to promises made by this administration. In 2009, the Obama Administration failed to renew a two-year appropriation for HBCUs of $85 million a year.
Today, in a luncheon with numerous HBCU presidents present when Kellyanne Conway put her feet on the couch, DeVos worked to walk back her statements, first by educating (since she’s the secretary of that) learned black men and women about Mary McLeod Bethune, and then by saying, “HBCUs have always been more than simply institutions of higher learning”. Education Secretary Arne Duncan apologized to HBCU leaders in September 2013 for the way the loan decision was communicated, the article noted. Taylor pointed out that two-thirds of such schools are in red, or Republican-controlled states, and that the colleges are heavily reliant on federal and state funding to survive.
Among the reportedly close to 90 other presidents in attendance were Walter M. Kimbrough, president of Dillard University, and William Harvey, president, Hampton State University. Therefore, either the nation needs three times as many HBCUs or the existing HBCUs should be three times larger.
SHAPIRO: I understand that HBCUs generally were not entirely satisfied with President Obama’s policies.
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ROTC support, Harvey said, has been down over the past five or six years. “It happened with Pell”. He spoke with us from the Library of Congress here in Washington.
