The Trump administration’s wars on federal research funding and DEI initiatives have resulted in dozens of canceled grants to historically Black colleges and universities. For the nation’s biggest HBCUs, the loss of that funding is another roadblock impeding a decades-long effort to obtain the coveted “Research 1” Carnegie classification.
More than $140 million in grants to Black colleges have been terminated since Trump took office. The grants, from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, supported projects like a center focused on Black maternal health and mortality, research on Alzheimer’s disease among Black Americans, and scholarships for Black undergraduate students pursuing careers in STEM.
The mission of historically Black colleges — focusing education and research on the Black community — overlaps with what the Trump administration classifies as “illegal DEI.” Citing Trump’s executive orders banning DEI in government grants, federal agencies said that research supported by the federal government must be open to all, and cannot privilege or exclude any demographic groups.
HBCU presidents argue their institutions’ research is beneficial to everyone. The standard explanation administrators often see in grant-termination letters is that their research or grant proposals “no longer align to the priorities” of the federal agency.
- Howard University, the nation’s only HBCU currently classified as Research 1, has lost at least $11 million in federal grants.
- Tennessee State University has lost more than $20 million.
- North Carolina A&T, on the brink of R1 status, has lost more than $24 million. “We are still calculating our loss,” said Melissa Hodge-Penn, the university’s interim vice chancellor for research, “because we have been receiving … terminations each week.”
