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Earlier this month, Morris Brown College’s Board of Trustees abruptly laid off the historically Black college’s president, Kevin James, after seven years at the helm. James took to social media and decried the board’s actions, noting that the college regained accreditation during his tenure and the institution couldn’t afford instability with an upcoming meeting with the accreditor.

A week later, the board announced his reinstatement, even as allegations against James surfaced in local media. Channel 2 Action News reported that it obtained multiple employee complaints against James, including claims of harassment and retaliatory behavior. An alumni group has since called for his re-firing.

“After careful review, the Board determined that Dr. James’ separation from the College did not fully comply with the procedural and contractual requirements outlined in his employment agreement,” a statement from the board read. The board also acknowledged worries about James, noting that “retaliation against individuals who raise concerns in good faith is not acceptable.”

The board promised to ensure “appropriate processes” for expressing concerns and “take additional steps to review governance practices and institutional processes, with the goal of restoring and strengthening trust, transparency and accountability across the Morris Brown community.”

While a unique and still-unfolding situation, Morris Brown’s whiplash moment of leadership instability quickly sparked a larger conversation about HBCU leadership churn and governance. A flurry of op-eds and articles came out, debating the causes of HBCU presidents’ often-short tenures. Some placed the blame on fractious boards, presidents or both. Others suggested institutions need more clearly delineated governance roles and bylaws.

Before the allegations against James came out, Erin Lynch, president of the education nonprofit QEM Network, described him as “a charismatic leader with strategic vision” whom the board “unexpectedly dismissed at a turning point of stability for an institution that has been without it” in an op-ed for EduLedger on board–president tensions at HBCUs.

“Dear Boards, it’s y’all,” Lynch wrote. “We know, board inconsistency impacts our institutional reputation, [and] it steers would-be effective leaders from schools with the most need.”

In recent years, multiple HBCU presidents left after brief stints. Ben Vinson III, Howard University’s 18th president, stepped down in August after just two years in the role. A former president of Spelman College, Helene Gayle, also spent just over two years at the helm before the board announced a leave of absence followed by the news she wouldn’t return. Including acting presidents, Jackson State University had four presidents in five years. The Mississippi university has had an interim president since its last leader, Marcus Thompson, suddenly resigned last May after less than a year and a half on the job.

Leadership churn and governance woes are hardly unique to HBCUs. Inside Higher Ed covers board and leadership drama in just about every higher ed sector, and presidents’ term lengths over all have been trending downward. But HBCU presidents do tend to have shorter terms than their peers at predominantly white institutions. The United Negro College Fund recently released a new report on HBCU leadership—unrelated to the goings-on at Morris Brown—which found that HBCU presidents spend, on average, 4.22 years in their roles. (UNCF’s member institutions, 37 private HBCUs, had an even shorter average at three years.) In contrast, a 2023 report by the American Council on Education found that college presidents over all spend 5.9 years in their roles on average.

Aja Johnson, the author of the report and senior program manager for executive leadership at UNCF’s Institute for Capacity Building, said it’s critical to not just diagnose the problem but also identify proactive solutions because of the toll leadership turnover can take on HBCUs and their students.

“If you have constant turnover, it’s really hard for an institution to keep having transformation, to keep up with the strategic plan,” Johnson said. “It’s not just about institutional stability. It’s about the lives that the institution touches. It’s about student morale, faculty morale, the community that our HBCUs serve.”

Felecia Commodore, an associate professor of education policy, organization and leadership at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who studies HBCU governance, agreed that the stakes are high.

“It’s so important for us to get this right in the HBCU sector, because these institutions are so important to the lifeblood of higher education access in this country,” she said.

Assessing the Problem

Experts pointed to a range of causes for HBCU leadership churn.

Walter Kimbrough, UNCF’s executive vice president of research and member engagement, said the president’s role is hard at any type of institution. But at HBCUs, incoming presidents are sometimes ill prepared for the challenges of running colleges low on resources, as many HBCUs are, he said. He believes first-time presidents in particular often “underestimate” the strains.

“HBCUs are underresourced institutions serving underresourced people,” Kimbrough said, “so the level of complexity of the job is much more.”

He emphasized that roughly two-thirds of HBCU students are eligible for Pell Grants, the federal financial aid program for low-income students, enhancing their risk of stopping out if they or their families experience any kind of financial hit.

Commodore stressed that HBCU boards and leaders are also under extra pressure because they see themselves as not just representing and serving their campuses but their wider Black communities as an outgrowth of their historic missions. That additional sense of responsibility—and competing visions for how to fulfill communal needs—can compound tensions, she said. She believes other colleges founded to serve particular cultures or identities, like religious colleges, women’s colleges and other types of minority-serving institutions, face similar struggles.

“When we do consider how decisions are made, why decisions are made, the processes, the approaches, there has to be a conversation about cultural influence” and “the history of the institution,” Commodore said. “We haven’t provided that nuance in our evaluation of governance practices at HBCUs as much as I think will prove helpful.”

She added that, like other colleges and universities, HBCU board members don’t always come into their roles with experience in higher ed. Some come from business backgrounds while others come from church backgrounds, depending on the culture of the institution, she said.

That can lead to “diverse understandings of the mission of the school” among board members or disagreements over who should be nominated to the board, outside of public institutions, where board members are appointed by state lawmakers. Also, sometimes board members need help “understanding higher ed governance and how it might be different from your corporation or your church or your civic organization.”

Different personalities and “emotions are always going to be in the room, because we’re dealing with humans, not robots,” Commodore said. “But we can put processes in place that help us get past that.”

Finding Solutions

Johnson, the author of the UNCF report, said it’s time for HBCU experts and leaders to talk solutions.

Her team noticed “so many reports and articles and analyses coming out that just talked about the problem of HBCU presidential tenure and the turnover,” she said, but those reports “never really double clicked further and talked about what are some sustainable practices we could partake in as a collective, from a systems level, to really make sure we don’t have to keep talking about the deficits?”

Kimbrough believes reforms to the presidential selection process could help, including adding former presidents to board search committees. He also stressed that would-be presidents need to think about whether an institution is the right fit.

“When I’m talking to prospective people who want to be presidents, I try to help them figure out, is this a good place for you to go … because if you go to an institution that has a history of instability, you have to ask different kinds of questions,” he said. He also finds that “people crash and burn if they don’t have higher ed experience, if they don’t have HBCU experience” prior to the role.

Kimbrough, who served in multiple long-term HBCU presidential roles, believes the key to his success was maintaining consistent communication with his boards, building up trust and relationships “necessary to be successful.” A core question for him is “How do we get boards and presidents to work better together?”

Commodore argued that boards often shoulder the blame for short presidential tenures, but generally, board members and presidents are both trying to act in a college’s best interests. She believes a lot of board–president tensions can be resolved by creating more robust governance documents to guide board processes—and making sure that board members know the bylaws. And board members and presidents need HBCU-specific training and professional development that accounts for the “unique history and culture that impacts how they make their decisions.”

The goal should be “how do we see each other’s perspectives and buy into a joint vision and properly understand both our roles in achieving that joint vision for the institution?” she said. “Strengthening your governance structures and processes is investing in the long-term health and sustainability of your institution.”

Johnson noted that the report found 11 presidents among UNCF members who, on average, served in their past roles for a decade. Of those presidents,10 had spent eight years on average in their current roles. To her, that signals there are boards and presidents successfully working together and achieving stability. That’s why a future UNCF report, planned for the spring, will interview and study boards and presidents that can serve as models.

“There are models of success,” Johnson said. But “what does it look like? What characteristics do those boards have,” and how do they conduct presidential searches?

“We want to look at those models,” she added, “and then see how we can bring that to the field, so it’s not just all these stories about the board and the president and the chaos that can ensue.”