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Fifty thousand signatures on protest petitions. 

 to resign. People on Twitter saying they're mailing back their degrees.


It's probably not what the leadership of Bethune-Cookman University was expecting when they announced their speaker for today's commencement ceremony. But Education Secretary Betsy DeVos seems to bring a unique level of controversy almost everywhere she goes. And that's especially true when it comes to historically black colleges like Bethune-Cookman.

"real pioneers when it comes to school choice,"

 a remark she was forced to walk back after protests; in fact, these colleges were founded as the only option for students, when other colleges were still legally segregated. Just this week, DeVos found herself 

 by President Trump that seemed to suggest that a key form of funding for HBCUs 

In announcing the invitation last week, Bethune-Cookman's president, Edison O. Jackson, said DeVos' "mission to empower parents and students resonates with the history and legacy" of Mary McLeod Bethune, the college's founder.

Trinice McNally holds both a bachelor's and master's degree from BCU. She said that she and many other alumni "were outraged" both by the invitation and by the allusion to Bethune's legacy. "It's a complete insult. There is no comparison."

Rachel Gilmer is with the Dream Defenders, a Florida-based progressive-leaning youth organization that is among the many groups on and off campus organizing against DeVos. "This is a person who's planning to privatize our schools. They're planning to gut many of the steps taken to protect student borrowers by Obama ... she has made it clear in her words and her actions that she doesn't care about the futures of black people."


BCU did not immediately respond to requests for comment from NPR. The school has been active on social media, posting 

a picture of empty cardboard boxes on Twitter

 with the hashtag "#Deception?" — presumably referring to the petition drive — and posting a video on 

Listen to the Story


On the same day that it announced DeVos, May 1, the university 

 in response to the widespread blowback. This time, President Jackson invoked academic freedom. "I am of the belief that it does not benefit our students to suppress voices that we disagree with, or to limit students to only those perspectives that are broadly sanctioned by a specific community.


Protests of speakers, particularly conservative speakers, have raged lately on campuses from the 

. They have sometimes turned violent, and sparked a heated debate about free speech and modes of dissent. DeVos, meanwhile, often encounters protesters and is the first education secretary to 

receive security protection from the U.S. Marshals Service.


Commencement speakers, though, are more commonly chosen for celebration and uplift than for provocative messages. (See 

 for some examples.)
"Graduation is a really big deal for our kids and for their families," as the grandmother of one Bethune-Cookman graduate commented 

. "That spotlight should be on them and not on the controversy of the speaker that has been invited." Her name? Evelyn Bethune. She's the granddaughter of the college's founder.
Organizers would not say whether any disruption of the speech is planned Wednesday. Dream Defenders and other groups are using the hashtag #BackstoBetsy online. "I hope they take a stand," McNally said of the new graduates.  Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Education News

Politics and Government News

Anya Kamenetz

Author

There is an outcry over the secretary of education's invitation to speak at the commencement of a private, Christian, historically black college in Florida.

DeVos commencement speech draws protests

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