The months following a ceremony that would move the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities from the Education Department to the West Wing have been rife with controversy. Now, a forthcoming event that has not historically been political is getting caught in the crosshairs, and the Trump administration’s commitment to black colleges is again being called into question.
Last week, Rep. Alma S. Adams, Democrat of North Carolina, and Johnny C. Taylor Jr., president of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, separately called for the event — the annual conference for Historically Black Colleges and Universities — to be postponed. “In this current environment,” Ms. Adams said in a statement, “and with zero progress made on any of their priorities, it would be highly unproductive to ask HBCU presidents to come back to Washington.” UNCF joined the chorus on Wednesday and called for the event to be rescheduled until after an executive director of the White House Initiative on HBCUs has been named.
The conference has been hosted under every president since Bill Clinton, and its purpose is to foster relationships between federal agencies and black colleges. It is typically coordinated by the executive director of the White House initiative.
Omarosa Manigault-Newman, assistant to the president and director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison, said the conference would proceed as planned. “President Trump’s commitment to the HBCU community remains strong and unwavering,” she said in a written statement.
“Registration is currently at capacity, and we are looking forward to welcoming HBCU presidents, students, and guests,” said Ms. Manigault-Newman, who has led the administration’s efforts on black colleges. She added that an announcement about the initiative’s executive director and board of advisers would be made during the conference.
Hope and Fellowship
Uncertainty and unfulfilled promises have made several black-college leaders wary of attending an event that they have seen as useful in the past.
Attendance at the conference fluctuates from year to year, said Leonard L. Haynes III, who served as executive director of the HBCU initiative during the second Bush administration. Under his direction, the number of presidents that attended topped out at 63. More important than the number, however, were the relationships built between federal agencies and black colleges, said Mr. Haynes, who also was assistant secretary of postsecondary education in the Education Department during the administration of the first President Bush.
Michael Sorrell, president of Paul Quinn College, in Texas, agrees.
Mr. Sorrell acknowledged that the conference has never been something all of the historically-black-college presidents attend. And it would be a mistake, he said, to assign political meaning to whether or not university leaders go.
With zero progress made on any of their priorities, it would be highly unproductive to ask HBCU presidents to come back to Washington.
The conference, Mr. Sorrell said, has always represented a fair amount of “hope, camaraderie, and fellowship.” Like many conferences, the annual meeting, held in the Washington area, has been a time to refuel, network, and, for many presidents, to visit their legislators on Capitol Hill. “When you are a young president,” he added, “it is another opportunity for you to become educated, and continue to develop your craft.”
“Now we are in a strange environment where the conference is being planned without a leader, without a head of the office. And in the time that has existed since the meeting that a lot of the presidents went to, the world has changed,” Mr. Sorrell said. “So, do I think that there’ll be some people who won’t go because the world has changed? Absolutely.” Several leaders, he said, won’t attend simply because it doesn’t mesh with their schedule.
Still, Mr. Haynes, who was invited to serve on a panel at the conference by the Department of Labor, is optimistic about the conference because, even though it has taken on a political edge, its purpose remains the same.
At the end of the day, he said, the conference will be a success if black-college leaders are able to make connections that will increase and expand their institutions’ participation in federal government programs.
The uncertainty about the conference and the White House initiative is not limited to the leaders of black colleges; it is affecting students as well. Though the conference is not specifically designed for students, a group of them, known as the White House Initiative’s HBCU All-Stars, traditionally attends.
Tiffany Brockington, a recent graduate of Howard University who served as an HBCU All-Star last year, finds it worrisome that the next class of All-Stars has not yet been announced. In years past, the administration announced who the selections were well in advance of the annual conference. The fact that no announcement has been made is cause for concern, she said.
“Since there was no press release there is no actual record of these new ambassadors being chosen,” she said, which would make it easier for the program to go away.
Competition?
On Monday, after the White House confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the event would be going forward as planned, Representative Adams released a second statement, which noted that she would be hosting an event that coincided with the national conference. Her event will be an “HBCU Braintrust,” to be held in conjunction with the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Annual Legislative Conference, in September.
The administration took the announcement as a slight. “They’re doing an event to compete against the White House because they don’t want President Trump to have a victory,” an anonymous White House aide told Politico on Wednesday.
The forthcoming session of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s legislative conference will be the 47th time this event has taken place in Washington in the fall. Almost 50 members of Congress are scheduled to attend, according to a spokeswoman for Ms. Adams.
“Let’s make sure that we keep the focus on HBCUs and the students they serve,” the spokeswoman said on Thursday. “Perhaps this is just another miscommunication within the administration.”
Marybeth Gasman, a professor of higher education at the University of Pennsylvania, has studied black colleges for decades and is director of the Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions. “The thing we have to keep in mind is that this isn’t normal,” she said. “When someone says ‘normally this is just a conference that isn’t really political,’ I don’t think anything right now can not be political.”
Along with the spotlight the administration has placed on black colleges, recent events in Charlottesville, Va., and the response to them from President Trump give the conference added political weight this year.
The president has been criticized for not forcefully denouncing white nationalists and the Ku Klux Klan, and for seeming to equate counterprotesters with white nationalist demonstrators in the aftermath of the Charlottesville violence.
And as the apolitical becomes increasingly political, Ms. Gasman said, “we do need our colleges and universities over all to be speaking up.” She added that HBCUs are in a particularly vulnerable position given that a large portion of their funding comes from the federal government.
In the current political climate, however, she does not see much benefit for presidents attending this year’s event.
Adam Harris is a breaking-news reporter. Follow him on Twitter @AdamHSays or email him at adam.harris@chronicle.com.
