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How the Indefatigable Efforts of Secretary Alexis Herman and NAFEO’s Dr. Wilma J. Roscoe Paved the Way 45 Years Ago for President Trump to follow President Carter and Every U.S. President Since President Carter, and Introduce His Recent Executive Order to Promote Excellence in HBCUs.
As NAFEO and the nation celebrates the homegoing and transformative life of former Labor Secretary, Alexis Herman, trailblazing entrepreneur, and corporate boardroom transformer. The entire HBCU Family owes a special debt of gratitude to Secretary Herman. We owe her tremendous indebtedness for many reasons, but the HBCU Family, those in their service areas, and employers whose labor forces today reflect the richness and the diversity of our pluralistic nation due to her countless contributions are indebted to Secretary Herman because her service created the changes that resulted in these outcomes.
For, unbeknownst to many, while serving in President Jimmy Carter’s Administration, and serving as a close confidant because of their years of service together before he became the 39th President of the United State, Ms. Alexis Herman leveraged her coveted, privileged position of service to President Jimmy Carter and America by responding in the affirmative to Dr. Wilma J. Roscoe when she appealed to Secretary Herman on behalf of the HBCUs to help us get President Carter to issue the first Executive Order on HBCUs, and to establish the White House initiative on HBCUs.
Dr. Roscoe, then the Vice President of NAFEO, the membership and advocacy association for all HBCUs and other equal educational opportunity institutions, and Secretary Herman worked indefatigably to get President Carter to realize a key NAFEO priority of establishing the first White House Initiative on HBCUs and an Executive Order on HBCUs.
Secretary Herman was an alumna and ardent supporter of Xavier University of Louisiana, which is among the top U.S. universities sending black students to medical school. Madame Secretary had the right skills, the right spirit, the right instincts, and sensitivities, including the conviction, and the capacity to educate, organize, and mobilize President Carter’s influencers. Madame Secretary used her signature uncanny instincts for people and politics, her position of trust and service to President Carter and America, her vast network of mutuality, her organization and mobilization skills that were second to none. Her integrity, her “heart full of grace, and soul generated by love,” (Dr. MLK, Jr), to get the job done.
“Well done good & faithful servant.” (Matthew 25:21) Farewell my Dear SiSTAR, Alexis.” May flights of Angels sing thee to thy rest.” (Hamlet).
Former Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman
In keeping with Every President Since Jimmy Carter, President Trump Announced an Executive Order on HBCUs and Proposed to Continue the President’s Board of Advisers on HBCUs
In keeping with Every President Since Jimmy Carter, President Trump Announced an Executive Order on HBCUs and Proposed to Continue the President’s Board of Advisers on HBCUs
While continuing the Executive Order on HBCUs and the President’s Board of Advisers on HBCUs, this HBCU initiative deemed to be affirmatively impactful for all HBCUs and their key stakeholders, and vows to increase the corporate, foundation, and other private sector investments and alliances.
The signing of President Trumps 2025 Executive Order on HBCUs came amid debates on proposed congressional budgets by many of the President’s allies that would eviscerate the federal safety net for the most vulnerable Americans. The budgets would cut hundreds of billions of dollars from Head Start, leaving at least another 500,000 vulnerable students without a key anchor program supporting the cradle through college trajectory for students of least advantage. A $230 billion cut from the Student Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) would leave hundreds of millions of food insecure students wanting for food and nutrition.
Cuts to Pell Grants, and the elimination of all TRIO programs would irreparably fray the safety net that has for decades smoothly carried under-resourced and underserved students through the preparation, inspiration, connection, funding, counseling, and mentoring processes to college completion. The data are unanimous and unassailable. The tremendous cuts to research dollars from HBCUs would forestall the possibility of roughly a dozen additional HBCUs joining Howard University as a Research I (R1) institution. Only 3.7% of American universities meet the criteria to be classified as an R1 research university by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.
As the membership and advocacy association for all HBCUs and PBIs, NAFEO looks forward to meeting with President Trump, to underscore the centrality of HBCUs evidenced by their proven track record throughout the years, to yield a stronger America, to move the nation toward closing the education, economic, wealth, health, sustainability, and justice gaps in America, and creating a thriving economy.
The debate on the congressional budgets continues, as this is being written. Those of us who are the leaders in the HBCU Family, pray that as more is learned about the potential destabilizing impact of many aspects of the current budget cuts under consideration, those who are more caught up in politics than people will hear the words of their spiritual dogma that guides their lives and that their words and votes will be reordered accordingly, and “there will be a complete metanoia (“sea change“) in perspective and direction, and a change of heart.
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