 Former Tennessee State University President Dr. Glenda Glover has written a book documenting how Tennessee allegedly underfunded the HBCU by as much as $2.1 billion under federal law, and the efforts state leaders made to avoid paying it.
Glover has released “How Dare You,” a book that draws on legislative records, state and federal documentation and TSU research to document the state of Tennessee’s alleged underfunding of TSU.
The book traces back to a 2022 legislative hearing, where a state senator publicly questioned why Black students attend TSU, and to the long history of TSU becoming the “segregation-era” alternative to integration.
“This is a book about elected and appointed state leaders and the decisions they made that inflicted lasting harm on TSU,” Glover writes. “It is not about a fight with TSU. It is about my fight for TSU — for the truth that was hidden, the inequities that were protected, and the lengths to which some were willing to go to keep that truth from coming to light.”
The underfunding is alleged to have occurred under the Morrill Act of 1890, a federal law governing land-grant university funding.
The book also situates TSU’s funding dispute within a broader national reckoning, including the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement, which Glover says prompted lawmakers to begin confronting chronic funding disparities.
“How Dare You” is described as a call to action. Glover has launched a national advocacy effort aimed at closing funding gaps at land-grant HBCUs across the country, which she describes as “the next educational civil rights battle.”
