Kentucky State student vows to fight for scholarship stopped by Elon Musk, Donald Trump
Editors Note: A few hours after this story was published, the U.S. Department of Agriculture web page on the 1890 National Scholars Program was updated to say the program had been reopened and applications will be accepted through March 15.
Growing up on the north side of Lexington, Anthony Jackson Jr. didn't have an agriculture background, but his education at Carter G. Woodson Academy and the Locust Trace AgriScience Center soon changed that.
He started in veterinary science, but soon turned to food systems, like how to wrestle with the food deserts in rural and urban America. He was such an exemplary student —with a 4.0 GPA and ACT score of 27 — that as a student at Kentucky State University, he won an 1890 National Scholars program award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Only 94 students at 19 schools currently have the prestigious full-ride scholarship, all of them attending 1890 land grant institutions, sometimes known as Historically Black Colleges and Universities. In his three-and-a-half years at Kentucky State, the program allowed Jackson to intern with the USDA, travel to Rwanda, meet politicians and policy makers and research food systems all over the world.
Then this weekend, he was alerted to a message on the USDA site: 'The 1890 Scholars Program has been suspended pending further review.'
'I was shocked,' Jackson told me.
He was relieved to find out that USDA authorities believe his scholarship, and those of other current students, will be honored. But now he's worried the program that has supported so many students into important agriculture work will be axed.
He's starting a social media campaign to get the program reinstated. As he said in one statement: 'I have promoted the possibilities of my scholarship to so many that I cannot imagine not passing the baton to the next eager scholar ready to feed the world.'
Like so many other things right now, the program is a victim of an unelected South African billionaire's slash and burn rampage through the federal government. It's all a game to Elon Musk and Donald Trump, part of what looks like an attempt to purge women and people of color — and the programs that might help them — out of the government.
'Throughout history, African-Americans have been significantly cut out of agriculture,' Jackson said. 'This program gives people who have equal qualifications this platform they need to be successful. I would say that I feel as if every single person who has the scholarship has qualified for the opportunity at hand.'
HBCUs were created as part of the Morrill Act of 1890 to force Southern states practicing Jim Crow segregation to offer educational opportunities to Black citizens, who in the post-Reconstruction South, were treated as second-class citizens.
Aaron Thompson, president of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, said it's important to remember that over time, those schools have widely opened up to everyone, along with the 1890 Scholars.
'It's a prestigious scholarship, and these young people are going into essential places that USDA felt were important to nation and the state,' Thompson said. 'So those scholarships have helped tremendously to get more kids interested in agriculture, to be scientists and business leaders.'
The USDA website describes the program as being aimed at 'increasing the number of students from rural and under-served communities who study food, agriculture, natural resource and other related sciences.
'Scholars attend one of the 1890 land-grant universities and pursue degrees in agriculture, food, natural resource sciences, or related academic disciplines. The scholarship may also include work experience at USDA.'
The Kentucky General Assembly is still trying its own path of eliminating diversity, of course. So far, the bills that failed last year and are back again this session, are mostly aimed at organizational structures like DEI offices in public higher education.
But at the federal level, it appears that the DEI purge could be significantly more dire.
On Feb. 14, the U.S. Department of Education sent a letter to get rid of any programs that even might be related to helping historically marginalized groups. The letter said 'Educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon 'systemic and structural racism' and advanced discriminatory policies and practices.'
Some have concluded these policies and practices could include Black fraternities and sororities, or an Asian club. Or they could start to come after curriculum, like classes in the history of the civil rights movement, which is, in fact, predicated on the very real premise of 'system and structural racism.'
'We want all students to be able to come on our campuses and explore the opportunities we offer to see themselves belonging there,' Thompson said. 'I would not want any law or bill to stop closing gaps, or stop us from the ability to move our state, and all of our students, forward as a whole.'
In a way, it's brilliant. Take programs that were aimed at helping historically marginalized people and say instead the programs are discriminatory, not the world itself.
In Trump World, there's only room for white men, men like Darren Beattie, a Trump hire in the State Department who wrote on X: 'Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.'
That's why we end up with mediocre white men like Pete Hegseth, the least qualified Defense Secretary in U.S. history who just fired the Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Navy's top officer, who is female.
But why stop there? If you want to go after expensive programs that get federal funds and help minorities, why wouldn't you go after historically Black schools themselves?
It's not hard to see what's going on here.
As writer Adam Serwer noted in The Atlantic this week: 'The nostalgia behind the slogan, 'Make America Great Again,' has always provoked the obvious questions of just when America was great, and for whom. Early in the second Trump administration, we are getting the answer.'
And the answer is that young people like Anthony Jackson, Jr. are going to pay the price for this cruel war on imaginary demons. Jackson himself will be OK. He'll graduate, get a great job and be an asset in our world by trying to fix food deserts.
He's worried about everyone else.
As he said, 'DEI doesn't hand out opportunities to the unqualified. It ensures that the qualified individuals, who have historically been excluded, get the recognition, access and opportunities they have rightfully earned.
'I stand firm in my request for Secretary Rollins and President Trump to reconsider this abrupt suspension.'
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