Early this year, the board of trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning in Mississippi named Thomas Hudson as acting president of Jackson State University. This came in the wake of then-president William Bynum Jr.’s resignation after he was one of 17 people arrested in a prostitution sting operation conducted by the police department in Clinton, Mississippi.
Now President Hudson was been given the job on a permanent basis. The board praised President Hudson’s performance guiding the university through the early days of the COVID crisis almost immediately after his appointment.
“I am extremely appreciative and beyond humbled for the opportunity to continue to build upon Jackson State University’s extraordinary legacy,” President Hudson said. “I recognize that it is an honor to serve in a leadership role, but it is an extreme honor and privilege to serve Jackson State University and the community I grew up in. My focus remains the same and that is to ensure the success of our students, faculty, and staff and the long-term viability of JSU.”
Before being named acting president in February, Hudson had been serving as special assistant to the president and chief diversity officer at the university. He has been a member of the Jackson State staff since 2012. Earlier, he served as an equal employment opportunity specialist for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Hudson holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Jackson State University and a law degree from the University of Mississippi.
Regardless of who is the president of Jackson State University it will still be under the neocolonial master more affectionately known as the Institutions of Higher Learning (IHL). The facts remain, the collective Black community in Mississippi are still implicitly and in some cases explicitly treated as if it’s still in the early 1900s.