Joe Biden said he would invest in Black colleges. They hope Kamala Harris can help
Leaders of historically Black colleges and universities say they hope high-profile graduates in the Biden administration, including Vice President Kamala Harris, will push for increased federal support for their institutions.
Harris attended Howard University in Washington, D.C., and is the first HBCU graduate to occupy the vice president’s office. Another high-profile HBCU graduate, Michael Regan — the new Environmental Protection Agency administrator — attended North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro.
“I think we are cautiously optimistic that the presence of HBCU graduates in this administration and Cabinet really sends a strong signal that these institutions will be prioritized,” Roslyn Clark Artis, president of Benedict College in Columbia, S.C., said in an interview.
As a candidate for president, Joe Biden pledged more than $70 billion to the 101 schools that were established before 1964 for Black students and other minority-serving institutions. This month’s massive coronavirus relief package awarded $3 billion in emergency assistance to those schools but not enough to fulfill Biden’s campaign promise.
HBCU leaders say they do not doubt Biden’s commitment and are encouraged by the number of graduates serving in his administration, but they said he needs to take action on several key fronts.
In April, Biden is expected to submit a budget that is likely to include new money for HBCUs and indicate how those programs will be funded.
He has yet to name a new executive director to lead the White House Initiative on HBCUs. Like most political appointees, the previous executive director resigned when Biden came into office.
Former President Donald Trump’s handpicked chairman of the presidential advisory board on HBCUs, Johnny Taylor, has stayed on in the Biden administration.
Taylor told McClatchy that he called the head of Biden’s Presidential Inaugural Committee in January and offered to continue in the role until Biden appointed someone new. He said he has not heard from anyone working with the White House.
“I’m not suggesting they’re sitting on their hands,” said Taylor, noting that Biden was still getting his Cabinet approved. “But this is priority work and we would continue doing the work until such time that they appoint their own board if they would simply tell us that.”
“But we’ve heard nothing despite repeated outreach by me to say, ‘What do you all want here?’ ” said Taylor, a former president of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF).
Trump met with HBCU leaders about a month after taking office. During the meeting, he signed an executive order that moved the federal initiative on HBCUs out of the Department of Education and into the White House.
Rep. James Clyburn, the third-highest ranking Democrat in the House and a top ally of Biden’s on Capitol Hill, said that when funds like those in the new COVID-relief law are added to the tally, HBCUs are likely to get more than what Biden promised.
“Every time there is a bill coming up, we are looking for a way to make HBCUs a part of it,” said South Carolina’s Clyburn. “We will get to more than $70 billion for HBCUs.”
I don’t recall when exactly I stumbled onto a Carl Hiaasen column. I was (and still am) an avid Dave Barry reader. So maybe it was one of those Sunday’s when Barry’s Tropic treat — which skewed to boogers and noogies — was on hiatus, that I skimmed the rest of the Herald, and there was Hiaasen’s column.
I was hooked instantly. He loved South Florida as much as I did, and his columns were an expression of that love. Just as a mother defends her young, he defended us against everything corrupt and crazy.
His column was a mustread to see who or what was about to get skewered, and with an unequaled and unrelenting sarcastic wit and humor. His columns were a pithy encapsulation of his fight — our fight — to preserve what was special.
Hiaasen is as important to South Florida as he is funny to all his readers.
His columns will be missed.
– Mark Diaz, South Miami