Let me be clear before I say anything else: I understand the argument for ideological diversity. I understand that our students will enter a world that does not share their values, that they will have to negotiate with people who do not have their best interests at heart, and that learning to engage across difference is part of what an education prepares you to do.
I understand all of that. And I am still saying this: HBCU leadership needs to do better when it comes to who they invite to pour into our young people on commencement day.
This is not a small thing. Commencement is not a policy seminar. It is not a debate. It is a moment when an institution looks its graduates in the eye, on one of the most important days of their lives, and says: this is the voice we chose to send you into the world with.
That choice matters. And right now, in the spring of 2026, when Black people in America are under sustained, coordinated attack from political forces that have the power to dismantle the infrastructure our community depends on, that choice matters more than it has in a very long time.
Two cases have put this conversation front and center this spring. At South Carolina State University, Lt. Governor Pamela Evette was initially invited to deliver the commencement address. Students pushed back immediately.
Evette is a Trump ally and students argued that she is a driving force behind efforts to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives on college campuses across the state. These very initiatives help ensure students who look like the SCSU graduating class have a fighting chance at opportunity. The invitation was eventually rescinded.
The students were right to protest. And then South Carolina Republican lawmakers moved to threaten the university with defunding as retribution. Let that sink in. Students exercise their right to say this person does not represent our values, and the response from the political establishment is to threaten to take the money.
At the Morehouse School of Medicine, Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA), an alumnus of the school, is scheduled to speak at the May 16 commencement. Students have launched a petition now signed by over 1,100 people, citing his voting record and his support for legislation that would cap student loans for low-income students, students exactly like the ones at Morehouse School of Medicine, who have relied on that access to afford medical school in the first place.
McCormick says he plans to attend regardless. He said his character should be judged on merit, not politics. But here is the thing: in 2026, politics is personal. The policies these representatives vote for are not ideas. They land on real people’s bodies, bank accounts, and futures.
Let us talk about the world these graduates are walking into. Black unemployment in the United States is running at roughly twice the rate of white unemployment, a gap that has persisted across administrations and economic cycles and that represents a structural failure.
The Supreme Court has just gutted one of the central provisions of the Voting Rights Act, making it harder to challenge maps designed to dilute Black political power.
Prices are at historic highs. The cost of housing, food, healthcare, and education has created a financial environment in which young Black people are starting their adult lives with extreme costs.
And at this moment, some of our HBCUs are inviting the architects and enablers of those conditions to stand at a podium and give the charge. There is something wrong with that. A commencement speaker is not just a voice for an afternoon. They signify what the institution values, who it considers an ally, and whose vision of the future it endorses for its graduates.
I want to ask HBCU leadership a direct question: What is the commencement speaker for? Is it to expose students to diverse viewpoints? Because there are four years of coursework for that. Is it to show that the institution has relationships across the political spectrum? Because there are board meetings and donor dinners and legislative hearings for that.
Or is it to honor the graduating class with a voice that speaks to who they are, where they come from, and what they are being sent into the world to do?
If it is the latter, and it should be, then the calculation has to include an honest accounting of what these speakers have done with their political power and how those decisions have affected the community these schools exist to serve.
Rep. McCormick supported legislation that would make medical school harder to afford for low-income students. Lt. Governor Evette has worked to dismantle DEI programs. These are the documented records of the people being handed the microphone.
One MSM student, Kiara Huff, shared in a statement to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
“As future physicians, we realize that we’re going to interact with diverse patients who have different perspectives, but we feel that someone who’s championing us on our graduation day and giving us a charge to move forward with the future should also uphold our values and the morals that we uphold.”
What happened at South Carolina State after students successfully had Evette’s invitation rescinded should not be dismissed; it is exactly what intimidation looks like. Republican lawmakers threatened to cut the university’s funding. That is not a coincidence. That is a pressure campaign designed to make HBCU leadership afraid to say no.
This is the landscape. HBCU leadership is being pressured from one side by political forces that do not share the values of their students and that have the power to cut their funding, and from the other side by their own community asking them to make decisions that reflect who they are and whose interests they serve.
That pressure is real. But so is the responsibility. These schools were built, many of them, in direct response to a society that said our students did not belong in its institutions. The entire founding premise is that we deserve better. That premise does not stop being true at commencement.
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