Morehouse College, the storied Atlanta school, named F. DuBois Bowman as its next president on Tuesday, as historically Black colleges grapple with the Trump administration’s intentions for campuses nationwide.
Dr. Bowman, who will start on July 15, has been dean of the University of Michigan’s public health school since 2018. He is poised to assume Morehouse’s helm at a fraught moment in higher education, as President Trump seeks to upend academic life and stamp out diversity, equity and inclusion efforts that had become common on campuses.
Leaders of historically Black colleges and universities, such as Morehouse, have been left to weigh Mr. Trump’s stated devotion to their schools with the actions of his administration, including a proposal to cut $64 million in funding for Howard University, the lone federally chartered H.B.C.U.
“The outlook for the future is uncertain for all of us,” Dr. Bowman said of the higher education sector in an interview, when he acknowledged that “the uncertainty, in many ways, is so wide-ranging that it’s difficult to plan for.”
“I think it’s important, really, for the college to try to position itself and control what it can control,” he said. “That is, grounded and rooted in its basic mission, its basic business model, if you will, and really trying to ensure a wonderful academic experience for its students.”
Morehouse, an Atlanta sanctum for Black men whose alumni include the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is among the most hallowed of the country’s H.B.C.U.s. and is widely regarded as an incubator of activism and social change. But Dr. Bowman suggested that he expected that the college itself would carefully choose its moments to speak out — a posture of many presidents but one that could frustrate people who have called on campus leaders to be more forceful defenders of higher education and liberal democracy.
