On April 23, President Trump signed a new executive order “to promote excellence and innovation at historically Black colleges and universities.”
First, the order establishes a new White House Initiative of HBCUs housed in the Executive Office of the President. The initiative has four key focus areas aimed at enhancing HBCUs’ capacity to deliver high-quality educational opportunities for students:
- Prioritizing private sector partnerships, institutional development, and workforce preparation in high-growth industries
- Implementing the HBCU PARTNERS ACT, fostering research and program excellence, improving affordability and retention, and building pipelines for students to attend HBCUs
- Addressing barriers to federal and state grant funding
- Developing an annual White House Summit on HBCUs to foster collaboration and address key priorities for HBCU success
Second, the order establishes the President’s Board of Advisors on HBCUs within the Department of Education. The advisory board will consist of leaders from philanthropy, education, business, finance, entrepreneurship, innovation, private foundations, and current HBCU presidents.
“Today’s executive order serves as strong reaffirmation of President Trump’s support of investment of historically Black colleges and universities,” said Dr. Harry L. Williams, president of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. “This executive order should serve as a call-to-action for corporations, foundations, members of Congress and state lawmakers to redouble their efforts to support HBCUs and their students. TMCF looks forward to continued engagement with the administration and Congress to deliver results for HBCUs and the students they serve via appropriations and other legislative actions.”
The new executive order prioritizes private sector partnerships not government agency partnerships with HBCUs that were common under the Biden administration. Also no mention was made of direct financial support for HBCUs from the federal government.
This so-called HBCU executive order is more to do about nothing because it’s literally No Damn different than what the ‘Jim Crow Joe’ Biden and rapacious neoliberal Obama administration did. As such, if the reckless Pres. Trump was truly serious about HBCU education he immediately demands that each state that has HBCUs to pay the damn BILLIONs they owe them immediately. Anything less is simply contextual symbolism of the highest order. Too bad the spineless HBCUs Presidents/Chancellors along with the do nothing Congressional Black Carcass (ok, Caucus) will not respond Pres. Trump executive order publicly and collectively. Then, HBCUs wonder why they continue to be on the receiving end of disparate treatment.