What if?
What if Walter Kimbrough gets his way and Texas Southern gets a less-than-stellar president?
What if Joe Biden is the guy to beat Donald Trump in a general election, but reverses Trump’s course on federal support of HBCUs?
What if Wilberforce earns enough to avoid merger or accreditation loss? What then?
What if you subscribed to the Digest this week before the free trial ends on Friday?
— JCS
Walter Kimbrough Goes Berserk On Another HBCU Board of Trustees
For the second time in four years, Dillard University President Walter Kimbrough has taken to public space to criticize the work of a historically black college’s board of trustees. Four years ago, it was Kimbrough taking the University of Lousiana System board to task after firing former Grambling State University President Willie Larkin.
This time, the executive target is Texas Southern University, where he takes an unprecedented step in warning potential applicants for the presidential vacancy that the job isn’t worth it.
But this can be rectified? The entire board must be replaced. Immediately. All Texas Southern supporters should pressure Governor Greg Abbot to make this happen.
But let me issue this public warning to anyone who would consider being president at Texas Southern. Stay away until they clean the board. Don’t get caught up in the idea of wanting to be a president, because any president working under this board is asking for a tenure filled with micromanaged misery. Chances are you will suffer a similar fate, and there will be no one to advocate on your behalf. Fit is critical to a successful presidency.
I have been blessed to work with two great boards, at Dillard and at Philander Smith College. I know a great board when I see it. And I have watched colleagues crushed by bad boards. This is a bad board.
If you are thinking about this job, or get nominated, heed my warning.
Don’t.
A case can be made for a sitting HBCU president publicly sticking up for a colleague, and in the necessity of boards being put on notice about the blurred lines of ego and executive privilege.
And a case can also be made against a sitting HBCU president using his platform and title to publicly interfere in the search process of another institution, and in seemingly disqualifying himself from any other HBCU presidency led by trustees who will stick up for their fellow colleagues at Texas Southern.
Texas Southern is being targeted by the University of Houston and the University of Texas Systems respectively for mission creep, student poaching and the usurping of public resources. It is the flagship historically black institution in one of America’s fastest-growing cities, and responsible for the training of many of the black attorneys and judges in the region. It is a major cog in the economic engine of Houston’s Third Ward and the major player in racial politics within the city.
And this is a school for which no good candidate should apply to be president?
But Kimbrough’s piece should also lead us to a discussion on how we interpret governance, and why we label some boards as ‘bad’ and others as ‘good.’ Bad HBCU boards are typically labeled as such when incompetence, selfishness and ulterior motives are on public display.
Are all bad boards the same? If they were, why was Kimbrough silent over the last 10 years on similar actions at Florida A&M University, Morehouse College, Morgan State University, Bethune-Cookman University, Howard University, Saint Augustine’s University, Bennett College, Norfolk State University, Southern University, South Carolina State and Fisk University in the midst of their own board controversies?
What makes one HBCU more deserving of a legitimate presidential search than another? What makes one board’s foolishness more intolerable than another? Perhaps it is the public disclosure of the foolishness, the lack of transparency, or the longevity of the nonsense.
But all of these elements share a common question of intent; do we think that every board at every HBCU which has ever faced down controversial presidential transition has done so because of outright ignorance and a lack of merit for dismissal?
Basic math says the answer is no. What if we pair that hypothesis with the knowledge that no one, and sometimes not even presidents, knows all of what any given board of trustees knows? For all of the data and narratives that a board and its president may share, only the board members individually know their own motivations for leadership and the collective conscience which shapes their deliberations.
And if we believe these things to be true about boards, could the same elements be applied to the leadership roles belonging to presidents and chancellors? Could boards do a more effective job of understanding the pressures and considerations of the presidency? Could presidents have a higher appreciation for the institutional aspirations of alumni?
Could everyone consider that faculty and students should have more of a role in shaping institutional policy and vision?
Every group within the ecosystem of an HBCU campus community has a leadership role to fill and issues powering their leadership objectives. Some groups may hold more direct influence over how large those roles loom in executive boardrooms and in public discourse, but they are all equally important in sustaining the destiny of an institution.
HBCU stakeholder groups don’t understand each other. It is hard enough for each faction to understand its own motivations, pressures, causes and outcomes; so much so that they never get a chance to pay attention to the same desires of the other groups. This is how you wind up with a campus culture in crisis.
This is how you wind up with an HBCU president calling out another institution’s leaders for wavering on the same tightrope upon which he stands.
Joe Biden Runs Away With HBCU States on Super Tuesday
All of the coverage across the networks carried the same message late into Tuesday night; former Vice President Joe Biden made the democratic national primary a two-man race and African Americans helped to push everyone out of his way.
As of this writing, every HBCU state with a Super Tuesday primary was captured by Biden, a candidate with a lot of blemishes on HBCU and African American policymaking, but constant face when it comes to willing trust in white power structures among black voting blocs.
Now that the media is on the record about black voting power saving the democratic party’s chances of defeating Donald Trump in 2020, and HBCU states are at the heart of these victories, shouldn’t we start showing Trump’s HBCU receipts to Biden now, so that he knows just how to return the favor if he lands in the Oval Office?
UNCF’s State of the HBCU 2020
The United Negro College Fund held its second annual ‘State of the HBCU’ meeting in Washington D.C. today. That’s all I’ll say about that to avoid being popped again by Wiley College President Herman Felton.
Wilberforce Nets $10 Million Partnership with Atlanta-Based Chime Solutions
Wilberforce University will reboot its workforce development co-op program in partnership with a national customer service outsourcing firm headed by a WU graduate.
The Dayton Business Journal profiles the partnership, which was forged with the newly-created Wilberforce University Foundation to help secure additional funding for the school.
“This focus on college-to-career readiness and entrepreneurship through the Co-Operative Emerging Leaders Program and business partnerships will result in two very critical outcomes: the creation of the next generation of African-American corporate leaders and entrepreneurs, and the development of alternative revenue streams for the University, thus eliminating our sole dependence on enrollment and philanthropic support,” (Wilberforce President Elfred Anthony) Pinkard said in a statement.
