Lezli Baskerville, president and CEO of the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO)
Advocates say they await the next director and outline why the position matters, what could be at stake the longer the job goes vacant, and how to make sense of the delay.
“The HBCU community is eagerly anticipating the selection of the executive director for the White House Initiative on HBCUs, and time is of the essence,” said Lezli Baskerville, president and CEO of the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO), an advocacy organization for HBCUs and Predominantly Black Institutions.
The Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF), a nonprofit organization that supports publicly-funded HBCUs, reiterated Baskerville’s point.
“This position is critically important, helping to shape policy and deploy resources to better serve the students, faculty, and families of the greater HBCU community,” said Dr. Harry L. Williams, president and CEO of TMCF and the former president of Delaware State University. “TMCF looks forward to the President’s selection of the executive director for the White House Initiative on HBCUs as well as continuing our productive working relationship with the White House.”
Dr. Marybeth Gasman, the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Endowed Chair in Education and distinguished professor of education at Rutgers University, said that the delayed appointment loses out on HBCU momentum. With Vice President Kamala Harris as a graduate of Howard University, a well-known HBCU, many see this as a prime time moment for these institutions to seize.
“If the executive director is empowered by the administration, then the role is very important and can have considerable influence,” said Gasman, an expert on HBCUs as well as other minority serving institutions (MSIs). “And it’s very important to have the role filled right now—in fact, we are seeing a bit of a missed opportunity given the high visibility of HBCUs right now.”
