EOHBCU
President Trump's zany tweets provide clues about his
intentions. His executive orders, which
initially seem to be straightforward, upon inspection reveal forking
paths. His officially announced
strategies and tactics are trickster pipers .
Following the music, one is rewarded with confusion. A fine example is his executive order of
February 28, 2017 "on The White House Initiative to Promote Excellence and
Innovation at Historically Black Colleges and Universities."
Revoking President Barack Obama's Executive Order 13532
of February 26, 2010 on "Promoting Excellence, Innovation, and
Sustainability at Historically Black Colleges and Universities," Trump's
order deleted the word "sustainability" from the title. This is an omen. So too is deletion of 2020 as a benchmark
year for obtaining the general goals of Obama's initiative. Trump's order evicted the initiative from the
Department of Education, where it had been housed for more than three decades,
and relocated it to the Executive Office of the President. The move increases the possibility for Trump
to tweet more directly about his initiative, his HBCUs, and his African
Americans. The possibility begs us to
have anxiety and to ask why "sustainability" was deported. Will Trump in the near future revoke Obama's
executive order of July 26, 2012 on the "White House Initiative on
Educational Excellence for African Americans"?
Anxiety grows when one notices that Section 2. (b). (i) replaces
the "five core tasks" specified in Executive Order 13532 with
"two primary missions" which focus on
(i) increasing the private-sector role, including the role
of private foundations, in
(A) strengthening HBCUs through enhanced institutional
planning and development, fiscal stability, and financial management; and
(B) upgrading institutional infrastructure, including the
use of technology, to ensure the long-term viability of these institutions; and
(ii) enhancing HBCUs' capabilities to serve our Nation's
young adults…..
There is some legerdemain involved in transferring the
onus for building a "cradle-to-college" pipeline from the Federal
government to the private sector. The
private sector is not bound by Constitutional law to comply or cooperate. Philanthropic foundations have their own agendas, which may
or may not be correlative with Trump's intentions.
To some extent, the signing on February 28, 2017 was
little more than a public relations opportunity, purchased with the chagrin of
HBCU presidents misled by the music to expect less ceremony and a more serious
event for substantive dialogue with President Trump. Wrong from the start. Trump's behavior from January 20 to February
27, 2017 should have been a clear signal that HBCU presidents would be use to
impart credibility to an episode of American political reality television . It would not do for the show to lack color.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr. March 6, 2017
This hits the nail on the head.
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