Trump’s Focus on Black Colleges May Seem Unexpected, but the Conversation Started Months Ago

After barely speaking about higher education during his campaign, President Trump and his administration are giving one portion of the sector — historically black colleges and universities — an unexpected spotlight.

Last week, BuzzFeed News reported that the White House was considering an executive order on HBCUs that could direct the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities to operate from the White House, not the Education Department. Also last week, Betsy DeVos visited Howard University and met with its president, Wayne A.I. Frederick, on her second day on the job as secretary of education.

College leaders say the attention is welcome, but they are proceeding with caution to make sure policies and students, not politics, are the central focus. And administrators are mindful that the opening days of the new administration are a key time to ensure that their priorities, like more robust funding and federal support, are heard.

Omarosa Manigault, director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison at the White House, may be partially behind the increased attention. Ms. Manigault, the former reality-television star, is a graduate of two HBCUs, Central State University and Howard University. She hosted a listening session with HBCU leaders and Mr. Trump last week where administrators discussed, among other topics, the possible executive order about HBCUs.

Though a spotlight on HBCUs may seem unexpected, Johnny C. Taylor Jr., president of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, said the Trump campaign first reached out to his organization in June 2016 with an in-person meeting. The campaign later held another meeting with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, which represents 47 HBCUs. Staff members from the fund and Mr. Trump’s campaign also had three phone calls in the meantime, where they exchanged ideas and questions about such policies as how the college fund felt about charter schools and how HBCUs could be included in the next reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign was also in contact with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, Mr. Taylor said, but the communication wasn’t as frequent as it was with Mr. Trump’s.

Mr. Taylor expects the attention to eventually turn into policies and funding. He said the federal government should fund infrastructure on campuses that suffer from deferred maintenance, and should also include HBCUs in government contracts and increased federal-grant opportunities.

He’s also pushing the new administration to move the White House Initiative on HBCUs, an effort that began under President Jimmy Carter, from the Education Department to the White House to signal that black colleges are a priority for the administration, Mr. Taylor said. (Among other things, the initiative reviews and identifies which federal programs can help HBCUs, and helps the colleges participate in more federally sponsored programs.)

It’s also important to emphasize policies that benefit all students, like changing the structure of Pell Grants, said Walter M. Kimbrough, president of Dillard University, a historically black liberal-arts institution in New Orleans. Allowing students to use the grants over the summer and increasing funding for the program would help students at all institutions, he said.

Mr. Kimbrough said he wants to see changes to President Barack Obama’s College Scorecard, an accountability system that allows users to compare colleges based on graduation rates and student-loan debt. Colleges have distinct issues that may put them at a disadvantage under the scorecard, Mr. Kimbrough said, so it’s not fair to show their graduation rates without explaining the context. For example, when the scorecard first came out, he explained to families considering Dillard that the graduation rates they were seeing were for the cohort that started the fall semester that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. “When you use data like that it has to be interpreted.”

College leaders expect to face criticism if they work with the Trump administration, given the president’s divisive rhetoric about African-American communities. For instance, when Talladega College announced that its band would be marching in his inaugural parade, alumni and critics nationwide urged the college to back out. Mr. Trump won less than 10 percent of the black vote.

Marybeth Gasman, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Minority Serving Institutions, said the president has no genuine interest in HBCUs and warned that these initial meetings could be intended to silence critics in black higher education. “It’s hard to critique these folks when they’re giving to you.”

Her suspicions aren’t about a partisan divide, she said. Mr. Trump has addressed the needs of black Americans only when he speaks about gang violence or desolate conditions in urban areas, she said.

HBCU leaders know about the potential criticism for working with Mr. Trump, but they should forge ahead, said William B. Harvey, a distinguished scholar at the American Association for Access, Equity, and Diversity. The Trump administration may not know a lot about the significance or needs of HBCUs, but now more than ever, college leaders should be proactive.

“You have essentially what might be interpreted in this moment as a blank slate,” Mr. Harvey said. “There are two ways to approach this: You wait for the folks in the administration where they are and where they need to go and you respond to that, or you adapt the proactive strategy, meet with those folks as frequently as you can and as early as you can.”

Some of Mr. Trump’s remarks have made Mr. Kimbrough and his students uncomfortable, he said, but ultimately it’s what the president does that matters. He doesn’t typically meet with college presidents about policy, and while Mr. Kimbrough doesn’t expect that to change, he does want to see a shift in investments that would affect all HBCU students.

John Silvanus Wilson Jr., the departing president of Morehouse College, said a sunnier relationship with the federal government wouldn’t mean HBCUs would stay silent about measures that violate their principles.

Mr. Wilson led the White House Initiative on HBCUs during Mr. Obama’s first term. In that role, Mr. Wilson said, his primary focus was a strong push for “record breaking” funding. He called the proposal to move the initiative to the White House “odd.”

If the White House does take control of the initiative, Mr. Wilson said, he hopes the move isn’t purely symbolic but is backed with an increase in funding. “No matter who is in power in Washington, you have to see our core work as good for the nation and the world,” Mr. Wilson said. “That means that this conversation has to go on with each and every administration.”

Fernanda Zamudio-Suaréz is a web writer. Follow her on Twitter @FernandaZamudio, or email her at fzamudiosuarez@chronicle.com.

Correction (2/15/2017, 4:34 p.m.): This article erroneously stated that John Silvanus Wilson Jr.,
who led the White House Initiative on HBCU’s during President Barack Obama’s first term, said that the idea of moving the initiative from the Education Department to the White House never came up during Mr. Wilson’s tenure. In fact he said that the proposal was “odd.” The article has been corrected.