MacKenzie Scott Donated $700 Million To HBCUs This Year
While the affordability crisis has many speaking out against billionaires hoarding their wealth, MacKenzie Scott’s philanthropic efforts have bucked that trend to great effect. This year alone, MacKenzie Scott has donated $700 million across 15 historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
According to the New York Times, MacKenzie Scott donated $19 million to Arkansas-based HBCU Philander Smith University. It was the largest donation in the school’s 147-year history. “This gift is a resounding vote of confidence in our mission and our momentum,” Dr. Maurice D. Gipson, the president of Philander Smith, said in a statement. In addition to Philander Smith, Scott also donated $63 million to Prairie View A&M University in Texas and $50 million to Bowie State University in Maryland on Friday.
Scott donated $80 million to Howard University earlier this year, her largest single donation so far. “It’s a very transformative gift in more ways than one,” Howard University President Wayne A. I. Frederick said in an interview. “Placing that trust and that opportunity in our hands to do what we may consider highest priority is so critical, and especially in a shifting landscape.”
Earlier this year, Scott donated $70 million to the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) to be distributed across 37 HBCUs. Michael Lomax, the president and chief executive of the UNCF, has called MacKenzie Scott’s efforts a “sea change in American philanthropy,” as HBCUs have had to do “more with less for over a century.”
Scott has pledged to give most of her wealth back to society and works with her team to identify organizations that need funding, “with special attention to those operating in communities facing high projected food insecurity, high measures of racial inequity, high local poverty rates, and low access to philanthropic capital.”
Dr. Marybeth Gasman, a professor at Rutgers and the executive director of the Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions, compiled a list of MacKenzie Scott’s donations this year and found that so far, she has donated $700 million to HBCUs. Many of the schools that Scott donated to have praised her for not setting requirements on how the money is spent, giving the institutions the ability to distribute the funding where it’s most needed.
It’s been a surprisingly lucrative year for HBCUs, which have consistently struggled with enrollment and financial stability in recent years. You would think that the Trump administration’s crackdown on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, willingness to defund career training programs like Job Corps, and general disdain for the Department of Education would make HBCUs a prime target for the Trump administration.
In a weird move, the Trump administration injected HBCUs with $500 million in federal funding in September. The reason the move was weird is that the funding largely came through cutting funds to programs supporting schools with significant Latino enrollment and minority students in science and engineering fields.
While it’s objectively good that HBCUs received increased funding, it can’t help but feel messed up that it came at the expense of other minority communities. “They are willing to support Black people in Black institutions, but they are not very comfortable with Black people in white institutions,” Dr. Gasman told the New York Times.
While I’m very much in camp “eat the rich,” I probably wouldn’t be if more billionaires acted like MacKenzie Scott instead of her ex.
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