Black HBCU Leadership Faces Corporate Frameworks: How Market-Driven Models Undermine Historically Black Institutions' Mission
Original framing: “This Millennial University President Sees Running Grambling State Like an Enterprise” — Bloomberg
HBCUs emerged during Reconstruction as Black-led institutions of resistance to white supremacy, filling gaps left by systemic exclusion. Their funding has been chronically undercut by state and federal policies, from the Morrill Act’s land grabs to today’s unequal allocation of public resources. The 1965 Higher Education Act initially provided parity funding, but disparities persist due to ongoing racialized budgeting. This history reveals how market-driven solutions are a recent imposition, not a neutral response to financial strain.
The framing of Dr. Lemelle’s leadership as an 'enterprise' reflects a broader neoliberal assault on HBCUs, institutions that were founded to resist systemic exclusion and uplift Black communities.
This corporate paradigm erases the historical missions of HBCUs, which align with Afro-diasporic traditions of communal education and liberation, while obscuring the systemic underfunding that has plagued these institutions since their inception. The trickster-like inversion of resistance into commodification reveals how neoliberalism co-opts even the symbols of Black autonomy, turning Grambling State’s leadership into a case study in the erasure of communal values. Solutions must center reinvestment in HBCUs as public goods, adopt governance models rooted in Afro-diasporic traditions, and develop alternative metrics of success that prioritize equity over efficiency. The long-term viability of HBCUs depends on rejecting the corporate frame entirely and reclaiming their roles as engines of social transformation.