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After a tenure marked by eye-catching announcements, as well as faculty and student unrest, Wayne A.I. Frederick, president of Howard University, said on Wednesday that he will step down in the spring of 2024.
Frederick, 50, has led the historically Black college since 2013, when he was named interim president after the sudden retirement of Sidney Ribeau. Frederick was named to the post permanently the following year.
His tenure at Howard, founded in 1867 to educate freed slaves who were moving to the North, has been at times both troubled and triumphant. In both 2017 and 2018, the university’s Faculty Senate voted no confidence in Frederick; the latter vote came in response to concerns that he was mismanaging the institution’s finances and facilities.
It wasn’t just faculty members who were concerned: Before the 2018 no-confidence vote, students had staged an eight-day occupation of the university’s main administrative building, angry that six employees were found to be pocketing money meant for low-income students, and over living conditions in campus dormitories.
In November 2021, students again staged a sit-in, this time for more than a month, to protest housing conditions at Howard. Last month, the university averted a strike by adjunct and non-tenure-track faculty members by agreeing to a new labor contract, which had been in negotiation since 2018.
But Frederick has also been lauded for several major accomplishments, including the move to bring the Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones to the university as a tenured faculty member and endowed Knight chair of race and journalism. Hannah-Jones, author of “The 1619 Project,” is also leading the university’s new Center for Journalism and Democracy.
At the same time, Howard created another endowed chair in English for Ta-Nehisi Coates, a Howard alumnus and the author of Between the World and Me, which won the 2015 National Book Award for nonfiction.
In March, the university announced a $785 million plan to upgrade campus facilities, hailed as the “largest real-estate investment” in the university’s history.
“Because of the tremendously enhanced financial posture we have worked so hard to achieve,” Frederick said in a news release, “the state of the university has never been stronger.”
The university’s announcement of Frederick’s retirement made no mention of his plans after he leaves he presidency.
In addition to Frederick, two other prominent HBCU presidents and influential leaders have recently announced their departures: Walter M. Kimbrough of Dillard University, in Louisiana, who plans to leave in 2022, and Ruth J. Simmons of Prairie View A&M University, who will step down as soon as a successor is named.
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