The Final Call

Disappointing Trump meeting with HBCU leaders

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President Donald Trump points toward Scott Turner, Executive Director of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council, after inviting Turner to speak at the 2019 National Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Week Conference, Sept. 10, in Washington.

“We want to help each student have the experience needed to get a tremendous job, enjoy a rewarding career and join our great, big national effort to rebuild America,” Mr. Trump said. He acknowledged Jonathan Holifield, executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Bowie State University President Dr. Aminta Breaux and a number of other HBCU officials and leaders of nonprofits who were present, and he took credit for a number of initiatives to benefit the schools, and insisted that no other administration has done more for them than his.

“Fierce dedication to strengthening historically Black colleges and universities is a core part of my administration’s unwavering focus on the project of national renewal,” Mr. Trump said Sept. 10 in his 30-minute address. “We’re working every day to make decisive decisions to avoid the failures of our past, made by politicians in both parties who put the needs of other countries and special interest before Americans.”

The president called HBCUs “pillars of excellence” and “engines of advancement,” and said his administration was “protecting and promoting and supporting HBCUs like never before. Bigger, and better and stronger than any administration, by far,” he said.

The speech, at a hotel in downtown Washington was marked by little applause and was greeted at times with awkward silence. Mr. Trump read from a teleprompter as he touted the low rates of poverty and unemployment for Blacks in this country.

“The fierce dedication to strengthening HBCUs is a core part of my administration’s unwavering focus on national renewal,” he said, adding later in the speech, “African Americans built this nation through generations of blood, sweat and tears, and you are entitled to a government that puts your needs and families first.”

Mr. Trump made some news when he announced that the Justice Department published an opinion eliminating the restriction against faith-based institutions of higher education from tapping into federal funding for capital improvement projects. The opinion was sparked by the recent Supreme Court decision in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v Comer, which held that denying a grant to a religious preschool for playground resurfacing violated the First Amendment.

“They were unfairly punished for their religious beliefs,” Mr. Trump said, noting that the Justice Department’s new opinion will apply to 40 HBCUs. “From now on, faith-based HBCUs will enjoy equal access through federal support.”

While HBCU officials have welcomed the funding, they’ve also been quick to point out that White House efforts to decrease funding for other federal programs like work-study and college counseling for low-income students and to eliminate the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants would cancel out any good done by increased institutional funding.

“There were a lot of things to fact check in his speech,” Pamela Bingham, a consultant to various HBCUs, who attended the luncheon, said in an interview. “I had gone to these conferences for probably a decade or more and they’re different with different presidents. But I wrote down, a few things (he said) that I was going to personally check into that I just did not believe were true.

“He took credit for an increase in funding to Howard (University). I believe he took credit. He said that he has been the best president for HBCUs, but you know, he always says that everything that he does is the best,” Ms. Bingham continued.

“He said that he made sure that there was Hurricane Katrina loan forgiveness for Southern and Xavier and Dillard. I think we need to check that. There was so much to be fact checked,” Ms. Bingham continued. “He said he was responsible for the most funding and he took a lot of credit for a lot of things that I just didn’t feel were necessarily true.

“The response was pretty tepid most of the time and I really felt like people had to be there because their institutions are involved with all the federal loan programs and the federal grant programs and Title III. They had to be there, but I didn’t feel that they were incredibly supportive.”

The president’s comments about religious schools, Ms. Bingham fears, may have been a wolf in sheep’s clothing, really aimed at helping large, White, conservative, evangelical schools instead of the HBCUs. The statement “concerned me greatly because if that’s true, it’s probably not for HBCUs, it’s probably for schools like Liberty University, or Oral Roberts, and some of these evangelical schools that you know have some discriminatory policies.

“So he’s taking credit for something that really stokes his base while attempting to make it seem as though it was something that benefits (Black people). I immediately thought of the AME. They are African Methodist Episcopal churches. They support Wilberforce and Payne and maybe a couple of other schools, but I was not aware that they were ineligible for federal funding, and there was so much to be fact checked.

“He said he was responsible for the most funding and he took a lot of credit for a lot of things that I just didn’t feel were necessarily true and everything is nuanced with him. I was really concerned about that, but my first gut reaction, was that this was to help his base evangelical schools.”

Historically Black colleges and universities account for just 3 percent of all higher education offerings, but they have an enormous impact on the success of Black students and on the workforce as a whole.

More than 20 percent of Black college graduates receive their degrees from an HBCU, according to Department of Education, and those schools are responsible for producing a significant proportion of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) degrees earned by Black students, including 31 percent of biology and math degrees.

The president did not actually meet with any HBCU presidents, and there were few of them trying to get close to him, according to Ms. Bingham. “We were told we had to get in the room, eat lunch and stay in the room. The audience was not particularly enthusiastic, but it was sort of a voyeurism thing,” she said.

“I did feel that people did not feel they could speak freely and there were definitely people from the administration and supporters of the president in the audience who were actually clapping. They were like professional clappers. That’s what really struck me.

Most folks, “I think they knew they had to be there. It felt very forced and uncomfortable, and people just felt like they needed to get it over with. There wasn’t any rousing applause at the end, and people just kind of did it, and left.

“People didn’t want to be in the photo op like the last time. So a lot of people like me sat in the back. I actually walked out at some point because it was so ridiculous. The comments were so ridiculous. I just, I couldn’t take it anymore and I didn’t have to be there. So I left, and several others left,” Ms. Bingham said .

A report released earlier this year from the American Council on Education found that HBCUs rely more heavily on federal, state and local resources than do other institutions. Those resources account for 54 percent of total revenue at HBCUs but only 38 percent at other colleges and universities, a point which researchers suggest makes the Black schools more susceptible to economic downturns and policy changes.

The report found that all colleges and universities experienced a decline in federal funding per student between 2003 and 2015, but HBCUs experienced the steepest decline, dropping from $4,300 per student to just $2,500 during that period.