Baltimore — Black scholars must continue to conduct research as an act of resistance against efforts by the Trump administration to stifle diversity and hide the nation’s history of oppression from public view.
That was the heart of the message delivered Sunday to a bevy of scholars at a higher education conference here, as well as by the son of historian John Hope Franklin during a signature event to bestow an award named after Franklin.
“We must resist and continue to conduct our research, publish and teach,” John W. Franklin, principal at Franklin Global LLC, told attendees at the annual conference of the American Association of Blacks in Higher Education, or AABHE.
“Every day I read and learn more about our history,” Franklin said. “Our knowledge helps us grow and remain strong. Our ancestors have endured worse than this.”
Franklin – saying he was speaking from his vantage point as a trustee at the University of Tulsa – lamented that the past year has been a “difficult year for higher education in the United States.”
“Visas have been denied to our foreign, full-paying students. Student loans have been shifted to the Department of Labor,” Franklin said, ticking off a laundry list of moves by the Trump administration to reshape higher education in the U.S.
“Scientific and medical research has been vastly curtailed. Universities have lost hundreds of millions of dollars in federal money,” Franklin said. “Our scientists are leaving the country to conduct their research elsewhere.
