Opinion
Malveaux: Leaving Bennett College
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W
hen I went to Bennett
College for Women in
2007, I declared that I
was “on fire” for the institution. I
still am. And I also yield to the
biblical verse that says for every-
thing there is a season, a time for
everything unto heaven. I had a
season to build four buildings in
four years, to increase enrollment,
to influence curriculum shifts, and
to assemble an awesome senior
team, to engage with most of my
students, and to influence young
lives. I also managed the develop-
ment of a new strategic plan, and
I’ve been privileged to be a nation-
al Bennett brand advocate. I’ve
maintained a speaking schedule
partly because it enhances Ben-
nett’s visibility, and wherever I go,
I meet potential students, parents,
and others, that want to engage me
in Bennett matters.
I most value the ways we have
looked at our campus foci – entre-
preneurship, leadership, global
studies and communications. If a
young sister masters these, she can
operate in almost any arena. The
number of students who have trav-
eled internationally has increased
exponentially during my leader-
ship.
Personally, I’ve taken
students with me to Copenhagen,
Haiti, and Nigeria, as well as to
many sites in places in the United
States. I am also grateful to have
had support for the development
of our entrepreneurship program.
Given the job market, there is a
point in time when many of us will
be entrepreneurs, whether we want
to be or not. I have had a team to
develop this concept and to inte-
grate it into Bennett’s curriculum.
So why go? Things are going
well. We had a bump and were put
on SACS probation when a major
donor defaulted on a large pledge,
and when we had to pay (go figure
– and that’s another column) the
government more than a million
B ENNETT
C OLLEGE
Julianne
Malveaux
dollars on a prepayment penalty.
We overcame that in just six
months and are in the clear with
SACS until 2014, when we have a
five year review. We celebrated
the removal of SACS probation in
January and it was, indeed, an
exciting moment.
mitment. The United Negro Col-
lege fund has slashed its
appropriations to private colleges
by more than 50 percent. When I
looked at the factors in play, I saw
an uphill climb. And five years of
working at full speed, wearing
myself down, convinced me that I
didn’t have the energy for another
uphill climb.
When I first came to Bennett a
valued staff member chuckled at
my pace. It’s not a sprint, she said,
it’s a marathon. I replied that it is
a sprinting marathon. Now I yield
to her wisdom. Impossible. You
can’t run at the pace that I tried to
run without paying a price. I did.
Do I have the stomach for spending
80 percent of my time raising money?
Why go? Because it’s time.
Because leading the college is
easy and fun, but raising money is
hard. In order to move into the
next phase at Bennett, somehow
we need to both enhance our
endowment and raise enough
moment to implement the strategic
plan I led. Do I have the stomach
for spending 80 percent of my
time raising money? When asked
the question, I had to go into deep
prayer and meditation.
The
answer? No.
External forces work against
HBCUs. President Obama has
been great in managing to keep the
Pell grant level, but it needs to be
larger. In North Carolina, the pri-
vate colleges have been excluded
from state lottery funds, reducing
the money Bennett students can
bring to the college. Key stake-
holders committed for four years
and may or may not renew com-
I so fully appreciate the difference
between being 53 and being 58. I
fully understand the toll that
stress, sleeplessness, and diabetes
can take on one’s life. I fully
understand that while I talked
about balance, I never practiced
it. And I fully understand that my
need to go is as much a result of
my own exhaustion as anything
else.
I am not an HBCU graduate, and
I had I been, I would likely have
been a very different person. At
my undergraduate college, African
American students fought to
establish their intellectual chops,
while at Bennett, the development
of intellectual chops is applauded
and encouraged. Without being an
HBCU graduate, I am an HBCU
fan, and my experience at Bennett
convinces me that I will always
be. I love my college so much that
I hate to leave it, but it’s time.
When I say that I have never had
a job for more than five years, I’m
being flip. I wrote for Black
Issues for 15 years, have been
affiliated with USA Today since
1986, and have written columns
(my first love) since 1984. But I
am a free sprit that rebels against
structure, and I accepted the struc-
ture of leading a college, I realized
that conformity would be a stretch
goal. I stretched for five years.
Now I need to exhale.
There is a Japanese haiku that
my sister, Mariette, shared with
me. My barn has burned down,
now I can see the moon. Bennett
has been the space that I chose to
come to because I am committed
to African American people, to our
education, to college access. I
thrived at the college, and yet I am
mindful of the concept of season.
My barn has burned down, and the
moon that I see is spaceless and
endless. Bennett will always have
a piece of my heart, and yet, for so
many reasons, this is the season
for my departure. I am leaving my
college with satisfaction with my
accomplishments, and with a
sense of poignant reflection on
that which has been done, and that
which might have been done. I
leave my college enriched,
informed, and regarded in the fight
for social and economic justice. I
am leaving my college – it will
always be my college—because it
is time, because God is good, after
you’ve done all you can, you just
stand. I’m standing in the power
of education. Standing in the
power of access. Standing in the
energy of HBCUs. Standing
grateful and strong. Standing,
ready for the next chapter of my
life.
Julianne Malveaux is President
of Bennett College in Greensboro,
North Carolina
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GOP: Circle of Clowns Playing with Fire
I
t is difficult to watch the spec-
tacle of the Republican
primaries and not agree with
whoever it was that originated the
description of those candidacies as
nothing more or less than a ‘circle
of clowns.’ At each moment one or
the other candidate seems to go
deeper into the swamp, whether
through denigrating science,
attacking women or attempting to
ridicule President Obama for sup-
porting college education. With
this evolution of the campaign it
feels as if we are going deeper and
deeper into a new ‘dark age’ with
mysticism, fear, militarism, racism
and misogynism as the defining
characteristics.
What never ceases to amaze me
is the manner in which these
politicians have, with the excep-
tion of the right-wing libertarian
Ron Paul, jumped up and down on
the band-wagon in favor of war
with Iran. In concert with an ele-
ment of the Israeli political
establishment and their supporters
in the USA, they have been beat-
ing the drum for military strikes
against Iran as a means of stopping
the alleged efforts of Iran to
achieve a nuclear weapon. Never
Page 4 The Portland Skanner March 14, 2012
T RANS
A FRICA
Bill
Fletcher Jr.
mind that no one has been able to
establish that the Iranians are
structing weapons of mass
destruction. Never mind the fact
that retired and current US mili-
tary officials (and actually
substantial numbers of Israeli mil-
itary officials) oppose any
discussion of military strikes on
Iran, seeing such strikes as nothing
short of foolhardy. The circle of
clowns ask us to ignore this and to
proceed forward with a disastrous
war with Iran. This, all based on
the crazy rhetoric of the Iranian
The circle of clowns ask us to ignore
this and to proceed forward with a
disastrous war with Iran
doing anything more than they
propose–to develop nuclear power
for peaceful purposes–and never
mind the fact that Israel possesses
nuclear weapons, is not a signato-
ry to the Nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty, and assisted
apartheid South Africa in con-
regime and the possibility of what
they might be able to do.
Think about it this way. Let’s say
that you had a neighbor who did
not like you. You go and buy a gun
because you are a hunter. Your
neighbor concludes that you
bought the gun to get them, so
they come into your house and kill
you. Besides you being in a grave,
where do you think that this would
end? How many courts–unless
race were involved–would ever go
for an argument that it was fine to
attack you because the neighbor
thought that you might attack. Yet
this is the same logic that the cir-
cle of clowns are operating on and
this must be repudiated.
While it appears that President
Obama is not interested in, at least
for now, a war with Iran, he has
fallen over himself to demonstrate
his loyalty and support to Israel.
This is unsettling; US foreign pol-
icy should not be based upon
supporting Israel on everything
that they do. For that reason, if the
voices of the people of the USA
are not heard loud and clear, the
banter from the circle of clowns
may prevail and we could be look-
ing at events that will spiral out of
control.
Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a Senior
Scholar with the Institute for Poli-
cy Studies, immediate past
president of TransAfrica Forum,
and the co-author of “Solidarity
Divided.”