HBCUs Reel as Trump Cuts Black-Focused Grants: ‘This Is Our Existence’
By Jasper Smith June 25, 2025
Cuts at Tennessee State University include those to tuition and housing for students in agricultural research.TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY
Days after President Trump’s administration began to cancel thousands of diversity- and equity-related grants, Tennessee State University’s Quincy Quick found himself in a virtual meeting with other vice presidents of research from around the country trying to make sense of their new reality.
In less than three years, Quick helped raise $100 million in research grants, launch an AI research center, and bring Tennessee State significantly closer to becoming the second historically Black college and university to receive Research I status. But many of those grants focused on serving Black students and Black communities, a core part of the land-grant institution’s mission.
As the VPs fretted over how they would retain vital research grants, one administrator quipped, “HBCUs won’t be affected because they don’t look at HBCUs as DEI.”
Quick, the only HBCU administrator in attendance, recalled thinking, “That’s ridiculous, and it’s absolutely naïve. We absolutely would get hit. … And that’s exactly what has happened.”
The cuts at TSU account for close to a fifth of its research budget over the last two years, Quick said. Canceled grants include a $2.5-million grant to tackle the declining enrollment of underrepresented engineers and $14 million out of an $18-million grant from the USDA to help, among other things, cover tuition and housing for agriculture students.
As a result of the cuts, Quick said he has paused all spending on research at the university. He now fears the university will lose its Research 2 status.
half-century-long federal effort to turn more than a dozen HBCUs into Research 1 powerhouses has been significantly set back by Trump’s attack on so-called DEI-related research, according to administrators and advocates.
Over the last two decades, federal agencies have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into HBCUs to produce more Black scholars and increase the amount of research being conducted on economic, social, and health disparities in Black American communities.
Those grants are now being paused or terminated by the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health as part of efforts to end all racially exclusive programs.
Despite Trump publicly touting his love of HBCUs, the grant pauses and terminations at the 13 HBCUs seeking Research 1 status have resulted in institutionwide budget cuts, potential layoffs, and the loss of scholarships. The colleges collectively serve 40 percent of all HBCU students.
NSF terminated more than $11 million in grants at Howard University, the nation’s only Research 1 HBCU. That includes a $3-million grant for a program dedicated to increasing the number of Black and other minority students in the STEM fields.
North Carolina A&T University has lost more than $24 million in federal grants in recent weeks, its administrators told The Chronicle.
“We are still calculating our loss,” Melissa Hodge-Penn, NCAT’s interim vice chancellor for the Division of Research, said. “Because we have been receiving … terminations each week.”
In total, the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation have canceled more than $140 million in grants at HBCUs since March, according to a Chronicleanalysis of two databases tracking grant cancellations.
Some federal agencies told HBCU administrators to change the language in some of their grant applications that explicitly focus on Black people or else lose federal funding, one HBCU administrator said.
For many, that would be a betrayal of their federally designated mission to serve the Black community and provide a safe space for Black students to academically thrive.
“If we abandon our mission … we will regret it,” Crystal DeGregory, an HBCU historian, said.
Jim Crow laws and the state and federal underfunding of Black colleges stunted research on Black communities and the production of Black people with research degrees, according to Claudia Rankins, a former HBCU program director at the NSF.
During the Jim Crow era, Southern states refused to build graduate programs at their Black land-grant institutions, openly defying “separate but equal” statutes. Black people interested in the research field had to travel to a handful of integrated research universities in the North, using state-funded scholarships known as “segregation scholarships.” (States diverted funding from their land-grant HBCUs to pay for the scholarships.)
The federal government didn’t make substantial investments in research at HBCUs until after the civil-rights movement, Rankins said.
In 1980, Jimmy Carter signed the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities through an executive order that encouraged federal agencies to invest in HBCUs. Since then, Congress has established a number of grant programs in the NSF, NIH, and Department of Energy to provide research and training grants to HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions.
The HBCU Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP) and the HBCU Excellence in Research program (HBCU EiR) currently provide HBCUs with nearly 490 grants totaling more than $300 million in funding, according to a Chronicle analysis of active grants from the programs.
The programs have funded research on health disparities in minority communities, provided thousands of scholarships for HBCU students, and helped establish several research centers. (NSF has terminated at least three HBCU-UP and HBCU EiR grants since April, according to the grant-cancellations tracker.)
Federal funding and philanthropic efforts accelerated after the 2020 killing of George Floyd and advocates and researchers began questioning the root causes of disparities in Black communities.
After the American Council on Education simplified the Carnegie Classificationrequirements this spring, Howard University became the only HBCU to achieve R1 status.
“As a leader in the evolution of next generation HBCUs, we are dedicated to ensuring that the benefits of discovery and progress reach all communities, including those historically overlooked and underrepresented,” Howard University’s president, Ben Vinson III, said in a statementannouncing Howard’s research status.
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fukk you mean, so? Hes killing higher ed. Colleges do more than educate students. They are hubs for scientific and medical research and support all kinds of local industry.
