HBCU Initiatives
HBCU Initiatives
A Brief History of HBCUs
Historically Black colleges and universities were established to educate Black students before 1964, during an era when segregation and discrimination were legal in the United States. Despite limited funding, they have been pivotal in producing Black professionals, leaders, and changemakers who have been instrumental in making the nation and the world more innovative, advanced, equitable, and just. Today, HBCUs act as a catalyst for personal, professional, and economic advancement at a higher rate than most institutions of higher education, even though they make up less than three percent of colleges and universities across the country.
As a result of the nation’s history of separate and unequal systems of education, HBCUs have often been underfunded and excluded from the benefits that many other universities enjoy. In spite of this long-standing disparity in treatment, Harvard, like other major universities, has greatly benefitted from the enrollment of HBCU alumni in its graduate and professional programs. These students have added immeasurably to the quality of education afforded all students at Harvard and have expanded knowledge and understanding in many disciplines.
Partnering with HBCUs
Recognizing the important role these institutions play in our society and at Harvard, the University is deepening its relationships with HBCUs by working towards implementing Recommendation 3 in the Report of the Presidential Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery to “Develop Enduring Partnerships with Black Colleges and Universities.”
As it does so, team members from the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative and other units across the University have engaged alumni, faculty, and leadership from research-intensive HBCUs to better understand their needs and shared strengths in order to co-create, support, and inspire meaningful partnerships. Below are a few of the Initiative’s many current HBCU-focused partnerships.
HBCU-Focused Partnerships
Since 2008, the HBCU Digital Collection platform has been hosted by the Atlanta University Center (AUC) Robert W. Woodruff Library and is heavily utilized for research, new scholarship, teaching, and learning. In addition to hosting the digital collection platform, the AUC Woodruff Library provides robust services for contributing HBCUs through its Digitization Hub.
With a shared goal to deepen capacity and advance open, public access to Black archives and special collections, the HBCU Library Alliance and Harvard Library partnered in 2023. Funded by the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative, the libraries developed the HBCU Digital Library Trust to expand existing services and scale up and strengthen capacity for the digitization, discovery, and preservation of more HBCU collections.
The Du Bois Scholars Program creates opportunities for HBCU students to experience a unique and expansive summer research program with Harvard faculty mentors. Launched during the summer of 2024, this program is a fully funded, nine- to 10-week research internship at the Harvard College Summer Undergraduate Research Village for a cohort of rising junior and senior college students from select R1, R2, and research-focused HBCUs.
In the summer of 2024, the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative and Harvard Graduate School of Education launched a partnership with the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Executive Leadership Institute at Clark Atlanta University to invest in the next generation of HBCU presidents. Participants of the HBCU ELI who attend the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Seminar for New Presidents are provided with hands–on experiences to hone their skills and readiness to lead in operations, budgeting, alumni relations, fundraising, development, board governance, and human resources management. This strong foundation of skills ensures that these new leaders will be prepared to provide effective leadership and pave the way for a more inclusive and equitable future in higher education. Harvard welcomed its second cohort of the HBCU presidents to the program in 2025.
In 2024, the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative partnered with Harvard Business Publishing to offer the inaugural “Teaching with Cases” seminar for HBCU business faculty, hosted on the Harvard Business School campus. This seminar trains cohorts of business faculty from participating HBCU schools on how best to engage with their students through the case method, a framework that makes complex concepts accessible, especially when there are a variety of opinions and perspectives on an issue. Harvard welcomed a cohort of business faculty to this program in the summer of 2025.
To contribute to the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative’s commitment to developing enduring partnerships with HBCUs, then-FAS Dean Claudine Gay, with the support of divisional deans, instituted the inaugural FAS Dean’s Visiting Professorship Program in 2023. Visiting professors who participate in the program are faculty members at various HBCUs. The program provides opportunities for Harvard faculty and students to learn from leading HBCU scholars while simultaneously amplifying the HBCU professors’ research and providing opportunities for them to collaborate with Harvard colleagues.
The inaugural visiting professors were Asem Abdulahad, associate professor of chemistry at Xavier University of Louisiana, Nicole Dezrea Jenkins, assistant professor of sociology and criminology at Howard University, coleman a. jordan [ebo], assistant professor of architecture and planning at Morgan State University, and Carmen Luz Cosme Puntiel, assistant professor of Spanish & Afro-Latin American and Caribbean studies at Xavier University of Louisiana.
Read more about Visiting Professor Jenkins’ research on natural Black hair, and why it matters.
![Asem Abdulahad, Nicole Dezrea Jenkins, coleman a. jordan [ebo], and Carmen Luz Cosme Puntiel](https://legacyofslavery.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/15/2025/01/4-images-transparent.png?w=650)
Harvard University Information Technology and the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative, in partnership with MS-CC, are excited to offer the Technology Enablement Initiative, a six-month, cohort-based peer mentorship experience. This program is intended for IT Professionals (e.g., staff and administrators working in technology roles) at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Participants will engage in IT Academy core courses, peer mentoring, and collaborative learning opportunities that promote knowledge sharing, skill development, and cross-institutional collaboration
Frequently Asked Questions
HBCUs are historically Black colleges and universities that were founded before desegregation so that Black Americans could have the opportunity to obtain a postsecondary education.
The Carnegie Commission on Higher Education categorizes institutions of higher education as R1 if they annually, on average, grant 70 or more doctoral degrees and spend more than $50 million on research and development. Institutions of higher education are categorized as R2 if they annually, on average, grant 20 or more doctoral degrees and spend more than $5 million on research and development. An R1 or R2 HBCU is an institution that meets or exceeds R1 or R2 categorization requirements.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, there are 107 HBCUs.
The first HBCU was Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, founded in 1837.
I2 stands for “Internet2”. Read more here.
We look forward to hearing from you. Please contact us at legacyofslavery@harvard.edu.