The Daily Signal - What the Trump Administration Is Doing to Boost Historically Black Colleges

Episode Date: January 24, 2020

Leonard Haynes, an official at the Education Department, has years of experience in the education field. "President [Donald] Trump has done an outstanding job in assembling a team of dedicated and committed individuals who are willing to ask the hard questions, turn over the rocks, and to raise the issue of how do we make [historically black colleges and universities] more competitive so that they can address the priorities of the nation," he says. We also cover the following stories: President Trump is slated to make history as the first president to attend the March for Life. The Trump administration moves to curb "birth tourism." Veteran journalist Jim Lehrer has died. The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, Apple Podcasts, Pippa, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, January 24th. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Kate Trinco. Today we'll feature an exclusive interview from our colleague, Rachel Del Judas. She spoke with one of the speakers at a forum at the Heritage Foundation about historically black colleges and universities. She talked with Leonard Haynes, a senior advisor in the Department of Education. Don't forget if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. and please encourage others to subscribe.

It really does make such a huge difference. Now, on to our top news. Today marks the 47th annual March for Life, which is expected to draw tens of thousands of pro-lifers to Washington, D.C., to march in support of the lives of unborn babies. President Donald Trump will appear at the march and speak the first time any president has done so. When President Trump addressed the march previously,

he did so from the Rose Garden via video. On Thursday, the Senate impeachment trial continued. One of the House impeachment managers, Representative Jerry Nadler, made the case that it was irrelevant if President Trump had committed an actual crime or not via NBC News. The president's lawyers argue that impeachment and removal are subject to statutory crimes or to offenses against established law, that the president cannot be impeached because he has not committed a crime. This view is completely wrong. It has no support in constitutional text and structure, original meeting, congressional precedents,

common sense, or the consensus of credible experts. Nadler also said this, playing an old clip of Senator Lindsey Graham. And I might say the same thing of then-house manager Lindsey Graham, who in President Clinton's trial flatly rejected the notion that impeachable offenses are limited to violations of established law. Here is what he said. What's a high crime? How about if an important person hurts somebody of low means? It's not very scholarly, but I think it's a truth.

I think that's what they meant by high crimes. It doesn't even have to be a crime. It's just when you start using your office and your actions, acting in a way that hurts people. You've committed a high crime. There are many reasons why high crimes and misdemeanors are not and cannot be limited to violations of the criminal code. We address them at length in the briefs we have filed and the report of the House Judiciary Committee respecting these articles of impeachment. President Trump, meanwhile, tweeted about a possible witness swap. Some have proposed that if

Democrats allow Hunter Biden to testify, Republicans allow John Brown. Bolton, the former national security advisor, to testify as well. Trump wrote in reference to Representative Adam Schiff, a key figure in the impeachment proceedings. The Democrats don't want a witness trade because Shifty Schiff, the Biden's, the fake whistleblower, and his lawyer, the second whistleblower, who vanished after I released the transcripts, the so-called informer and many other Democrat disasters would be a big problem for them. The Trump administration is changing regulations to make it harder for non-citizens to visit the U.S. and give birth, thereby securing American citizenship for their children.

The State Department noted on its website, U.S. consular officers overseas will deny any B visa application from an applicant whom the consular officer has reason to believe is traveling for the primary purpose of giving birth in the United States to obtain U.S. citizens. for their child. The White House said in a statement, the birth tourism industry threatens to overburden valuable hospital resources and is rife with criminal activity as reflected in federal prosecutions. Closing this glaring immigration loophole will combat these endemic abuses and ultimately protect the United States from the national security risks created by this practice. It will also defend American taxpayers from having their hard-earned dollars siphoned away to finance the direct and downstream costs associated with birth tourism. The Wall Street Journal reports there were about 10,000 births

in 2017 to foreign residents in the United States, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Nanyahu and Ben Yance, the top political rival of Nanyahu, are coming to Washington to discuss a peace plan for the Middle East. President Trump tweeted, the United States looks forward to welcoming Prime Minister Nanyahu and blue and white chairman, Gantz, to the White House next week. Reports about details and timing of our closely held peace plan are purely speculative. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos spoke at the Heritage Foundation Thursday during a forum focused on historically black colleges and universities. Here's what she had to say about what President Trump's administration. is doing to help such colleges known as HBCUs.

Because the success of students at HBCUs and the success of all students is a top priority for this administration, for President Trump, and for me. Ours is a valued partnership. With you, we are building a strong record of action for HBCUs and their students every day. Look no further than the Future Act. Working closely with our congressional allies, we brought this historic bill to to the president's desk and ensured consistent funding for HBCUs for years to come. While others tried half measures or short-term fixes, we took the bold steps necessary

to help students succeed in the long term. Importantly, the act also simplifies the FAFSA for students and their families, making applying easier and reducing the compliance burden. And let me assure you this implementation of the FAFSA simplification, simple is a top priority for us at the department. We also took action to resurrect the HBCU Capital Financing Board and increased investments in HBCU programs. And we ensured that this includes faith-based colleges and universities,

which had previously been unconstitutionally excluded. We expanded Pell Grant eligibility to allow students to attend classes year-round and increase the maximum student award. Jim Lair has died at the age of 85. The veteran journalist was a longtime anchor at PBS where he hosted the news hour with Jim Lair. His journalism career spanned decades and included covering the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Watergate, and President Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. Between 1988 and 2012, Laird moderated 12 presidential debates. Next up, we'll feature Rachel's interview with Leonard Haynes.

Tired of high taxes, fewer health care choices, and bigger government, become a part of the Heritage Foundation. We're fighting the rising tide of homegrown socialism while developing conservative solutions that make families more free and more prosperous. Find out more at heritage.org. We're joined today on the Daily Signal podcast by Dr. Leonard Haynes. He's the senior advisor to the Undersecretary of Education. Dr. Haynes, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you. Well, can you just start off by telling us about how you got involved working in higher education?

Very good. Well, I'm sort of a product of colleges and universities in many ways. My father, who I'm named after earned his doctorate at Boston University, in 1947, that was the year I was born. And then we moved south, and he was between a college and United Methodist Church for most of my life. So I knew as early as the sixth grade, I'll probably be going in. higher education because I was on a college campus. So when I graduated from college at Southern University and I went on and got my master's degree at Carnegie Mellon and my doctor at Ohio State University, and from there I just went into either I was a professor or I was in college

administration. So most recently, as you mentioned, you served as the distinguished adjunct professor for the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at Ohio State. What was your time in Ohio State like? Oh, my time at Ohio State was really great. I always had a great admiration and respect and love for the university. As I said, my Ph.D. is from the Ohio State University. And I also have an honorary doctorate from Ohio State. I'm very, very close to the university.

And the John Glenn School is, of course, all about public policy. And when they asked me to teach for them, it was a great honor. because I knew Senator Glenn. As a matter of fact, he gave me the Distinguished Public Service Award in 2006 here in Washington. And that was a high honor because when I was growing up as a boy, I never imagined that America's first astronaut would give me an award for anything. So anyway, so when I was asked to teach at the university, I said, this would be great. So given all of your time working in Ohio State working higher education, what's your perspective on the current state of higher education?

Where do you think we're doing well and where do you think there's room for improvement? Well, I will say on the positive side, the United States higher education system is one of the best in the world. Indeed, how do we know that? Foreign nationals who come here for study always say this is the first place they wanted to come study. So that tells you something when there are other people who are offering higher educational opportunities. So the university system that we have well over three, almost 4,000, well-defined. The 1862 land-grant schools do an amazing job, 146 of them. And you've had the 1890 land-grant schools, which are the HBCUs.

They are experts in taking the message of the university of the community. As a matter of fact, you know, they solved the food problem in the world. world by the research and stuff that they did over the years. We're doing well, I think, in the STEM area. One of the concerns we do have is the growing cost of higher education for most people. They're having to borrow large sums of money, indeed. The last research that we looked at, we have about $1.6 trillion in student loan debt out there. And that's not sustainable over time.

what can we do to control costs so that the average American can aspire to be in higher education without going into severe, very debt? So that's an issue. The other issue is, of course, I mentioned the foreign students who come here. Many of them are enrolled in our top research programs, the 100 top research universities, including Ohio State, has large numbers of foreign students enrolled. And they're primarily in the areas of STEM, science, technology, engineering, math, and in business. And the fear that we have is if for some reason those students leave our graduate schools tomorrow morning, half of our schools would have to close. Why?

We have not trained enough Americans to go into the field. And that's one of our concerns. Are we doing enough to encourage American students to go into these fields and persist and go on and advance to the terminal degrees? Because we need them desperately. The new field of artificial intelligence is just coming online. And we only have three universities, I think, that specialize in that's MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and Stanford. And we need many more institutions that get engaged in that if we're going to be competitive. And that's the issue for us today.

As a country, we need to be competitive in everything that we do. And we need to have all of our citizens who value the importance of getting a good education. And they need to respect this football analogy that I use sometimes. time to time. We don't want to start the season playing for last place. Well, thank you for sharing that. You mentioned earlier a little bit, talking about the cost of higher education and how that's deterring people and, you know, causing a lot of debt. Are there certain ways you're looking at this problem saying, oh, these are some things we can do to help mitigate this problem? Well, one thing I think that we need to look at is making good choices about where to go to school.

Just because you pay a lot of money to go to school doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get access to a fine education. And somehow it's out there in the society that the more you pay for something, the better off it is. That's not necessarily true when it comes to education. And we need to have citizens better informed about the quality of education and what they would like to get out of it. And I think that's important. And institutions need to reflect on are they pricing their academic curriculum at a fair price when compared to their competitors? Indeed, you know, everybody's in competition.

So I think institutions need to be able to demonstrate what are their competitive advantage? In other words, why should anybody enroll in your institution? What do you expect for them to look like when they finish? We have not always done a good job in sharing that information. Higher education is one of the great mysteries in life. If you don't ask you any questions, it won't tell you anything. Before your current post at the Department of Education, you previously served there multiple rules, including Assistant Secretary for Post-Secondary Education,

director for the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges Universities, and Senior Director of Institutional Service for the Office of Post-Secondary Education. What is your perspective on the White House's work with historically black colleges and universities? Well, I will say this. Under the current administration, President Trump has done an outstanding job in assembling a team of dedicated. and committed individuals who are willing to ask the hard questions, turn over the rocks,

and to raise the issue of how do we make HBCUs more competitive so that they can address the priorities of the nation? This is a first for us. Executive Order 13779 that the president signed in 2017. I played a role in drafting that executive order. and for the first time in the history of the White House Initiative, which goes back to Jimmy Carter, the first president's signed an executive order. We now have a focus on which the executive director of the office now has a seat on the domestic policy council.

And that's never happened before. And the incumbent that we have now, Mr. Jonathan Hollafield is doing an outstanding job in implementing the executive order. So I think we're making tremendous progress. President Trump, the HBCU agenda during his recent visit to Davos, Switzerland. And that was historic because the first time in American history, an American president mentioned HBCUs on the world stage. And that opens up, you know, all kinds of possibilities.

And it says, hey, HBCUs, here we are. We know that you're there. We want you to step up. We want you to do your part so you can make a positive contribution in advancing the common good and in the common good. and in support of the United States of America. So you're speaking at a panel at the Heritage Foundation today talking about historically black colleges and universities.

What is your perspective on how these institutions can compete successfully when it comes to their global reach? Thank you very much. A very good question. Again, we go back to the competitive imperative of the United States. As you know, we're in competition with other societies. China, for example, as one of our major economic competitors now, the European Union.

And we know if jobs and the quality of life are going to advance in this country, it's going to require the work of every American citizen who sees this as an opportunity to do their part. In order to do their part, they've got to get a good education. And one of the keys to that, and I think we're missing this in this country, and I wish we have to restore it, we've got to have more people. people who are intellectually curious about things, who ask questions and ask questions why. And we need more people who are willing to make the sacrifice to be the best.

You just don't get there without dedicating yourself in rigor and the like. Because, you know, when you go to a medical doctor, for example, for a treatment, I know I do this all the time. my first time, I always ask them the doctor, how did you finish in medical school? Were you a C student? or you're a student. Because if you'll see students, you can't touch me. I mean, we've got to ask the hard questions.

We want access to the best, but then we've got to be prepared to do our best so that, you know, we can move forward. We've accepted mediocrity so much in this country that is almost debasing the quality of the education that we have today. And that's a concern. Again, as I said minutes ago, too many Americans who have not placed a high value on the importance of getting a good education.

And we need to change that. And I think the work of heritage is right on point because they talk about that issue all the time. Well, during President George H.W. Bush's administration, you were the first African-American to be appointed to the position of U.S. Assistant Secretary of Post-Secondary Education and Director of Academic Program. the United States Information Agency. What was it like to be the first African American to hold that title? Well, it was a high honor and a great joy. I never thought that I would be in position

to be nominated by the President of the United States and confirmed without any objections, 100 to zero by the United States Senate. And I knew I was in for a great experience when Senator Thad Cochran at the time, was in the U.S. Senate from Mississippi, and I had to go through my Senate confirmation and meet with the senators before I got confirmed, and Senator Cochran said to me, I'll never forget this. Haines, if you have any problems with your confirmation, I will personally go to the floor and demand that you be confirmed.

It showed me that America is a great country. I never expected a U.S. Senator from Mississippi to say that to me. but it just says the power of opportunity and what you can do if you focus on being the best of what you can do. And I was just a great honor to serve on the president of George H.W. Bush. I just have great admiration for him and was pleased that the family asked me to attend his funeral last year as a guest of the family. So that's a high honor. Well, thank you for sharing that moving story. You've served on the faculty at Howard University. we talked about your time at the Ohio State University.

You were at the University of Maryland, Southern University, the Brookings Institution and George Washington University. So you've been serving in a lot of different universities and different capacities. What are some things you've learned about education and also leadership while you've been in these rules? One thing, as I pointed out, that I'm intrigued with people who have this intellectual curiosity.

I grew up under my father's tutelage, My dad had a PhD in philosophy, so our house was full of books and asking questions all the time. He would always say, why not? And then I couldn't answer. He said, you've got to answer that question, why not? And then one day he had a group of students over to his house, and I said, Dr. Haynes, why do you have all these old books in your house? Why don't you throw them away? And he would say, well, they're new to you or you haven't read them.

So I remember these little messages and I reflected on that because he's right. You know, education is a thrilling place to be. It's the only immortality field that you have. And because what you teach lives long after you die. And that's why I would always try to do my best in the classroom and, you know, always challenge students to be the best at what they could be. because, you know, that's what an educator does. And it gives me great joy when former students are running to from time to time

come up to me and say, Dr. Haynes, thank you. I learned a lot in your class. And that's what you want. Well, Dr. Haynes, we've learned a lot on this podcast here talking to you. Thank you so much for being with us on the Daily Signal podcast. Well, thank you very much for having me. That'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast,

brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or Spotify, and please leave us a review or a rating on Apple Podcasts to give us feedback. Rob and I will be back on Monday to bring you the Daily Signal podcast. Have a great weekend. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, the Leah Rampersad, and Mark Geinney.

For more information, visit DailySignal.com.