You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
The United Negro College Fund added its voice Wednesday to calls from other supporters of historically black colleges for the White House to delay the HBCU Week conference set for September.
In a letter to the White House, UNCF President and CEO Michael Lomax urged the Trump administration to reconsider its decision to go ahead with the conference. Lomax said the administration should instead focus on appointing an executive director of the White House HBCU Initiative and developing concrete commitments to black colleges.
"UNCF and our member institutions believe that these actions would best actualize the administration's commitment to HBCUs in lieu of the convening planned for September," Lomax wrote. "Further, UNCF will not release, as part of the conference, an important national HBCU economic impact study that we have commissioned if the conference occurs as planned."
The letter from Lomax follows calls to postpone the conference from Representative Alma Adams, the North Carolina Democrat who chairs the House HBCU caucus, and Johnny Taylor Jr., the president and CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. Omarosa Manigault-Newman, an assistant to the president and director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison, said in response that the conference will go ahead as planned Sept. 17-19.
