HBCUs

Black Alliance For Peace Says No To Cop City In Baltimore

September 29, 2023 Black Alliance for Peace - Baltimore. Resist! Baltimore, Cop City, HBCUs, Police abuse

The Black Alliance for Peace Baltimore Citywide Alliance strongly opposes the proposal for a new $330 million joint training facility for Baltimore’s police and fire departments on West Baltimore’s Coppin State University campus. The contradictions of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) fostering growing relationships with the state are sharpened with this proposal on a campus with access to the Department of Defense 1033 program budgets, which transfers military equipment to civilian law enforcement agencies. Any potential existence of a joint training facility for a police department currently under a consent decree, that names violations of civil liberties, not only serves to create and sustain tensions negatively impacting the overall campus climate but the surrounding predominantly Black, working-class communities of West Baltimore.

Black University, White Power: HBCU Covers For US Imperialism

February 1, 2023 Erica Caines, Black Agenda Report. Educate! HBCUs, Howard University, Militarization, US Imperialism

The crisis of identity-reductionism has led to the overwhelming placement of Africans in positions to serve empire and double down on patriotism. Most recently, Howard University President Wayne A. I. Frederick, M.D., MBA, hosted U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III, and U.S. Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall who awarded the university with a $90 million contract to serve as the 15th University Affiliated Research Center (UARC). The cultural and social significance of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) dominates almost all aspects of conversations centered on Black schools. The UARC award will enable Howard to lead a consortium of HBCUs in creating a pipeline for students from elementary to post-graduate education with the UARC infrastructure, the university arm of the Department of Defense.

Howard University Faculty Are Ready To Strike

March 23, 2022 Peter Lucas, Jacobin. Resist! Education, HBCUs, Strike, Worker Rights and Jobs

After more than three years of negotiating their first contract since they unionized, 150 full-time lecturers are expected to strike at Howard University beginning this Wednesday. Unless an agreement is reached in the coming days, they will strike alongside almost two hundred adjunct professors hoping to secure their second contract. Established not long after the end of the Civil War, Howard University is widely regarded as the nation’s top historically black college or university (HBCU). Its rich intellectual history attracts accomplished academics from around the world. Unfortunately, according to strike-ready faculty, Howard also has a history of underpaying and arbitrarily terminating nontenured professors.

An HBCU Roundtable On Violence And Accountability

February 26, 2022 Ko Bragg, Scalawag Magazine. Educate! Black America, HBCUs, Higher Education, Violence

Historically Black Colleges and Universities, most of which are concentrated in the South, hold contrasting legacies as both safe havens for Black students and frequent targets of violence. Last week, Scalawag hosted a live Twitter conversation with journalists who are both current and former students of HBCUs to discuss the broader contexts they have experienced and written about around student safety. This is a conversation with renewed urgency: As panelist Adam Harris, a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of The State Must Provide, pointed out, there hasn't been a week in February this year without a bomb threat at an HBCU. The latest string of threats began in January at some schools, with at least 14 HBCUs reporting bomb threats on the first day of Black History Month. Two weeks ago, the FBI identified as many as six suspects—all juveniles—but no one has yet been publicly charged in connection with the threats, and no explosives found.

Howard University Sit-in: A Struggle For Democracy At An HBCU

October 22, 2021 Jamal Rich, Black Agenda Report. Resist! Black America, HBCUs, Higher Education, Student Activism

On late Tuesday, Oct. 12, Howard University students began staging a sit-in demonstration at the Blackburn building in front of the historic Yard. Students brought sleeping bags and food and began demonstrating and making demands that the university protect their health on campus. In the past month, as students returned to the school after more than a year under COVID conditions, a Twitter video went viral showing a puddle of water filling the floor of a kitchen in a dorm room. Later reports confirmed pooling water in students’ closets and bedrooms as well. The university responded to the apparent lack of maintenance and upkeep, saying, “There have been rooms in select residence halls that were affected by mold growth.”

Book Argues That HBCUs Are Owed Reparations

August 24, 2021 Keenan "higz" Higgins, NewsOne. Create! Education, HBCUs, Higher Education, Reparations

The idea of reparations for Black people as restitution for the slavery of our ancestors is a conversation we’ve been collectively having for decades now — many different points have been made as to when and how money is actually distributed. With Adam Harris’ new book, “The State Must Provide,” that conversation is brought up once again, this time directing those funds towards the education system at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). The author, an HBCU man himself from Alabama A&M University, was inspired to make the argument after he saw the stark differences between his own predominately Black campus and the University of Alabama in Huntsville — a PWI university with a small fraction of Black students in attendance.

Virginia State University Unveils Student Debt Cancellation Initiative

August 10, 2021 News One. Create! COVID-19, Education, HBCUs, Student Debt, Virginia

The debt elimination effort was financed through the CARES Act. For scholars who attended the institution during 2020 and spring 2021, all debt owed to the school will be erased. Donald Palm, Ph.D., who serves as Senior Vice President of Academic and Student Affairs, says the effort will play a pivotal role in shaping their financial futures. He also mentioned students should be solely focused on learning without feeling the burden of unaffordability. “We care about our students and their academic success and want to provide them the privilege of moving forward with a zero balance,” he said in a statement. “We believe that relieving them from these balances will provide much-needed relief that will allow our scholars to focus more intently on their academics and degree completion.”

The CIA Goes HBCU

October 11, 2019 Glen Ford, Blackagendareport.com Educate! CIA, HBCUs, Higher Education

The Southern University System has opened its arms to the CIA with an agreement to allow the agency to recruit operatives and shape classroom workshops and curriculum on the system’s five historically Black campuses in Louisiana. According to a press release featuring the smiling faces of Southern University president-chancellor Ray Belton and agency operatives, the super-spooks hope to “foster ongoing relationships with key university staff and personnel” and gain access to “a qualified and diverse applicant pool.”

HBCU Scandals Don’t Die, They Multiply

November 12, 2018 Dominica Dunbar, Blackagendareport.com Educate! HBCUs, Higher Education

HBCU scandals don’t die, they multiply like vultures stalking a starving child. Black misleaders prey on Black students and faculty for their own advancement. Pretending they represent autonomous Black institutions, independent values, and cooperative development, they are, on the contrary, an embarrassment in how they wield respectability politics to discipline Black youth for purported future success. These college leaders openly preside over bankrupt educational standards, sexual impropriety, theft of student’s financial aid, repression and misdirection of student activists in pursuit of personal wealth. The heat is on.

Hampton University Students Take To The Streets Over Campus Conditions

March 30, 2018 Eddie Conway, Therealnews.com Resist! HBCUs, Higher Education, Student Activism

Yeah, there’s a number of student protests taking place on campus. Variety of issues that students are trying to get addressed. One is Title IX compliance issues. Another is quality of food service on campus and housing issues, certain deficiencies with mold and mildew and things like that in rooms. And the administration has been working to respond to a lot of the students concerns. They’ve had a number of public meetings. The students have also been vocal on social media on expressing their displeasure with some of the conditions, or the concerns, and their efforts to try to reach out to administration to work with them to solve them. So it’s a very unique issue for Hampton. There are a lot of HBCUs that confront these kind of things every year, but it’s very rare for Hampton as an institution and as a student body to be so out front publicly on these kinds of issues.

James Comey’s Rough Reception At Howard University

September 23, 2017 David A. Graham, www.theatlantic.com Resist! FBI, HBCUs, Higher Education

By David A. Graham for The Atlantic - The former FBI director has been at the center of controversy for months, but protestors at the historically black university on Friday focused on his history of comments about race and policing. The start of the school year can be tough for anyone, even if you’re the 56-year-old former director of the FBI. While James Comey has found himself at the center of the country’s major political controversy this year, on Friday he was the object of protest for reasons that had nothing to do with Russia, Michael Flynn, or Donald Trump. On Friday, Comey addressed Howard University’s convocation, the ceremony starting the year and welcoming the new freshman class. As a prominent public figure who’s teaching at Howard this year as the Gwendolyn S. and Colbert I. King Endowed Chair in Public Policy, Comey could look like a natural pick. Or maybe not. When Comey came to the lectern at Cramton Auditorium in D.C. on Friday, he was met by cheers, jeers, and singing. For several minutes, as the enormously tall Comey stood quietly and awkwardly, a group of students protested his appearance. They sang civil-rights songs—“We Shall Not Be Moved”—and chants: “I love being black.” Other demonstrators gathered outside. Comey eventually got started, speaking through more disruptions. However much Comey made sense as a convocation speaker, it makes sense that he’d face protests too. Even setting aside Comey’s specific background, Howard is a particularly engaged campus even among historically black colleges.

Maryland HBCUs Fight Almost 50 Years Of Discrimination

March 6, 2017 Staff, www.popularresistance.org Resist! discrimination, Education, HBCUs, Racism

By Popular Resistance. Maryland's four Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have never been desegregated. Despite findings by the Department of Education and Federal Court that the HBCUs have not received adequate funding when compared to Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) and have had their programs duplicated by PWIs, drawing students and faculty away from the HBCUs, the state has refused to make amends. Below you will find a timeline of this struggle and an interview with two alumni, Rashad Staton and DeJuan Patterson, who are organizing to raise awareness of this injustice. The current court case is the most significant discrimination case in education since Brown v the Board of Education, yet it is receiving little attention in the media. And this fight goes beyond equity in education

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