At the 2009 National Historically Black Colleges and Universities Conference this week in Washington D.C., the baton of leadership at the White House Initiative on Black Colleges and Universities will switch hands. Bush administration appointee Dr. Leonard Haynes will pass the baton to Dr. John Wilson, an Obama administration appointee.
In July, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced Wilson executive director of the White House Initiative. As executive director, Wilson will work with the presidentially appointed HBCU Board of Advisors and assist Duncan in advising President Barack Obama on important matters concerning Black colleges.
And while both Haynes and Wilson are Black college graduates who care about preserving the legacy of these institutions and sustaining their future, pundits suggest that the change in leadership could represent a new and more progressive agenda for the nation’s Black colleges and universities.
“While there has been strong Republican support for HBCUs, I don’t necessarily think that the Bush administration had HBCUs as a focal point. One of the things that I noticed about Obama is that he is not the typical product of the Civil Rights Movement,” says Dr. Marybeth Gasman, associate professor of higher education at the University of Pennsylvania and conference attendee.
“In his soul he believes that supporting Black colleges is incredibly important. But he realizes, as a pragmatic person, that they must offer the best education possible. Obama is saying we are going to make sure that you are treated fairly but you also need to pull your weight.”
During his first address to a joint U.S. Congress, President Obama expressed the need for the U.S. to regain its lost ground and have the highest proportion of students graduating from college in the world by 2020. In this address, the president encouraged every American to pursue at least one year of higher education. HBCUs will play a pivotal role in educating the next generation of college graduates, Wilson says.
“I think that we are going to see an enormous opportunity to advance while this administration is in place,” Wilson says. “We have an opportunity based on the context that has already been set by Barack Obama who is inarguably the education president and the transformation president.”
