The Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked educators, policymakers and advocates to share what they deem the most important priorities for the upcoming 2025 General Assembly. Their answers are included in a collection of guest columns. This is the latest of these columns.
Georgia state Sen. Sonya Halpern, D-Atlanta, forged a partnership between her office and the HBCU Brilliance Initiative, which aims to enhance funding, resources, and opportunities for historically Black colleges and universities and empower them to continue to make substantive contributions in their respective communities. In 2023, Halpern introduced Senate Bill 235, which aims to elevate and support Georgia’s 10 HBCUs. The bill, though, did not pass through the Legislature last year.
Our political milieu may be correlated with the present uptick in enrollment for many HBCUs. To be sure, this increase in interest in attending HBCUs is welcomed with open arms. Georgia is home to 10 HBCUs and each, through producing stellar graduates and serving as additional state resources, make profound social, political and economic impact within the state and throughout the country.
HBCUs consistently produce social advantages incommensurate with its financial support and solvency. Nonetheless, their intellectual and professional output exceed these considerations. These laudable educational exploits notwithstanding, advocacy for HBCUs must be paramount to any legislative meditations on higher education in the state. Support of HBCUs is a practical and substantial gesture toward fortifying our democracy.
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
Tangible results from legislative support for public HBCUs may take the form of earmarking funding for the development of their infrastructure and community enhancements, for example residential housing, campus research facilities and private economic amenities. Private HBCUs could receive financial assistance through capital matching grant programs.
Many Georgia HBCUs occupy valued land along with buildings that hold significance in the rich and comprehensive history of this state. When these factors are taken into account, there is immediate value in these institutions, and they garner higher credit ratings that translate into better financial health assessments for our HBCUs.
Moody’s market profile of a college or university are predictors of their ability to successfully compete for students, faculty and financial support. Moody’s additional three categories of evaluation — operating performance, wealth and liquidity, and leverage, may also be sources for the Georgia Legislature to consider. What is of keen interest here is the recent inclusion by Moody’s methodology of reputation and operational factors. These two factors lie outside the financial purview of evaluation and influence and avail themselves of the rationale for state advocacy for HBCUs in similar ways the state of Georgia places great value on its other cherished historic reputable historic sites, such as the Etowah Indian Mounds, the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park, and the Swan House at the Atlanta History Center.
Georgia HBCUs enrich the historical legacies of the state. Legislators must be attentive to these institutions’ resplendent reputations as a requisite reflection for determining how to best advocate for these invaluable resources.
Advocacy for institutional support and development of HBCUs is mutually beneficial to all Georgia citizens and should not be deemed mutually exclusive from the advocacy of Georgia’s public institutions of higher education. To the degree to which the diversity of educational modalities enriches the state’s primary and secondary schools, the diversity of colleges and universities is as necessary and rewarding to the citizens of the state.
Serious deliberations regarding fundamental advocacy for endorsing thriving HBCUs here in Georgia must receive pride of place in the legislators’ evaluations. Advocacy for HBCU empowerment is not a simple matter of political largesse through allocated funding, but one that demonstrates fidelity to an ongoing development of democratic principles that aver the virtues of the contributions these institutions of higher education make to this state and beyond.
HBCUs serve as beacons of productive educational thought, illuminating the intricate relationship between education and democracy. They explore every facet of democracy and education from the vantage point grounded in a distinctive history and rich legacy. An HBCU education is both a democratic and a moral imperative. These institutions promote ways of being in the world that embrace difference as a virtue; the difference as virtue is foundational to any democracy.
HBCUs are not mere institutions for the transmission of knowledge but are crucial elements of the democratic fabric of this nation. The impending legislative session should inform legislators to deliberate upon what assistance will be offered to embolden sustained promotion of HBCUs and how they should rely upon an interpretation of these institutions as democratic exemplars and laboratories for democratic living.
Illya E. Davis is a professor of philosophy at Morehouse College. He is the college’s director of Freshmen & Seniors’ Academic Success and director of its Accelerated Academic Program/Pre-Freshmen Summer Program.
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