Boston City Council Hears Public Testimony on HBCU Satellite Campus Proposal

BOSTON — July 16, 2026 — Boston City Council takes public testimony on proposal to bring an HBCU satellite campus to the city. The Education Committee hearing on docket 1283, co-sponsored by District 4 Councilor Brian Worrell and Council President Ruthie Louie Jen, drew more than a dozen testifiers and revealed both strong community support and unresolved questions about feasibility, cost, and cultural authenticity. Worrell cited Black student enrollment drops of up to 67 percent at Boston universities since the Supreme Court's 2023 anti-affirmative-action ruling and Massachusetts Taxpayer Foundation projections showing a potential $20 billion state revenue gain from closing the Black-white graduation gap. The hearing's most consequential moment came from Roxbury Community College President Dr. Jonathan Jefferson, a Morehouse and Cornell alumnus and former dean at Clark Atlanta University, who announced RCC would sign an articulation agreement with Johnson C. Smith University two days after the hearing — including exploration of a satellite HBCU campus at RCC — and declared, "We are your HBCU. If you want your HBCU, then build it at the one that you already have." Baker Blanding, a Howard University alumnus representing the HU Alumni Club of Boston, entered formal questions into the record challenging the council to define projected costs, identify partner institutions, and articulate which specific elements of HBCU student life the initiative would preserve, warning that "just collecting a group of black people, putting them into whatever campus or satellite you have, conferring a degree to them in four years does not constitute an HBCU."