Congresswoman Alma Adams
Rep. Alma Adams‘ re-election to North Carolina’s 12th congressional district was never in doubt this election year. Republicans didn’t even put forth a challenger to face the popular incumbent in the solid Democratic district.
Now the United Negro College Fund’s vice president of public policy and government affairs suggests Rep. Adams might be a good fit for the top education post in the Biden administration.
Inside Higher Ed reports this week:
Organizations representing historically Black colleges and universities said Tuesday they will be suggesting someone with at least ties to the institutions be considered as education secretary.
Lodriguez Murray
And Lodriguez Murray, the United Negro College Fund’s vice president of public policy and government affairs, said that if asked by the transition, he’d suggest Alma Adams, a Democratic congresswoman from North Carolina who was instrumental in pushing to make federal funding for HBCUs permanent and a former professor at Bennett College, a historically Black institution for women in Greensboro, N.C.
Murray said he didn’t know if Adams would be interested but said she’d be “a very formidable secretary who has shown the ability to work across the aisle. At a time when African Americans are disproportionately affected by COVID and racial unrest, she’d provide a steady hand.”
Harry Williams, president of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, said on Tuesday the group, which advocates for public historically Black colleges and universities, would be raising the idea of naming a former or current HBCU president as the education secretary with members of Biden’s transition team, building on the pride in the Black community over the election of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, a graduate of Howard University.
“It would be an amazing choice,” he said. “Historically we’ve never had anyone in that role from the HBCU community.”
Others speculate the person who will replace Betsy DeVos as education secretary will come from K-12 education.
Politico reports that Lily Eskelsen Garcia, an elementary school teacher and former president of the National Education Association, might top Biden’s list.
But there’s no denying Rep. Adams commitment to HBCUs and students.
In 2015, she founded the first bipartisan Historically Black Colleges and Universities Caucus in Congress.
Most recently she has pushed congressional leaders to ensure that our nation’s HBCUs have equitable access to federal research and development funds in the COVID-19 relief packages.
Read the full article “Speculation Over Biden’s Education Secretary” here.
