This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Jason Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. So delighted to have with me. Dr Wayne Frederick, the President of Howard University, joining me on the phone from Washington, d C. Dr Frederick, President Frederick, Really nice to talk with you. How are you. I'm doing well, Thank you, Thanks for having me. I hope you're staying safe and healthy as well. We're doing the
best week can all of us are? Right? Um, So tell me about what's going on on your campus when it comes to reopening. We've talked so much about it. I know that there are meetings and zoom calls and all sorts of contingency plans. How are you thinking about the fall right now? So we are thinking that we will be identify our campus by and by that I mean we have ten thousand students. We don't anticipate having
that many, certainly not more than four thousand students. We have students in UH schools and colleges UH that that need the faith to faith interactions such as medicine, dentistry, um et cetera. So so we we have to bring students back for that. The students with clinical practical comes that will be there with We are looking at dorm assignments as well to see if we can go down to single rooms as well. We're going to have a
hybrid um some online. We also are going to have UM the Faith to Faith classes live streamed as well, so students can participate. We want to be also cognizance of the fact that we have students from about seventy one countries and forty six states, so at the time, zones challenge and we have to make sure that we can make accommodations there, so you know, a lot lots of precautions, UM, lots of ppe and and making sure that we have the right barriers and social distancing in
the classroom. And you know, Dr Frederick, it's interesting, I feel like we all, especially in the media, talk a lot about students. And maybe it's because you know, I have almost college age, a teenager, so we talk a lot about it from the students perspective. Talk to me about your faculty and the conversations you're having with them individually and as a group, and their concerns about coming back. Yeah, well, academic deans have been engaging them, UM, the faculty have
been fantastic. You know, they have really going about the business of standing up the online instruction uh and and that has been really fantastic to watch. The other thing that they have been UM doing that I think is very very helpful is being thoughtful about the classes that don't naturally fit UM, you know four online with instance, like a physics lab. We because African Americans five times
more likely to drown. As an example, we have a requirement to take a swimming class and how would actually to graduate, So trying to think creatively of how we do that. At the same time, we have a significant number of faculty who's sixty five and over and faculty
who have cool mobilities we hire. We employed more African American faculty than any other single institution higher institution America, and so that also poses a challenge because we recognize that we have an employee base that there's more at risk for contracting this UM virus and also having a bad outcome. So we are being very thoughtful UM about managing that, and they were making sure that we understand
their concerns as well. So talk to me about testing, because I know that you're offering testing at one of your locations for your faculty. Tell me about how that extends, how it works and and the role that you're playing in the broader community. Yeah, that's a good question. You know. We we have a facility that we have stood up in conjunction with a partner out in Wards seven. So it conceived the Residents Awards seven and eight that African
American UM. We also at a hospital. When we look at the patients that we've been seeing, the vast majority came from these Wards. So looking at and putting those together, we decided that we really needed to get information out there and to get UM testing UM out there as well, and so Bank of America gave us a grant of one million dollar grants. I told Hours to stand up a testing site there and it has been oversubscribed very early on. It We didn't need a doctor's note or
anything like that. We have a lot of frontline workers who lived there and therefore we felt that their exposure was significant and we wanted to really uh system. So it has been really important for us to do that. At the same time, I also want to remind everyone that the elective clinical care that we were providing there was also suspend did and Therefore, that gave us an opportunity as a group to really put those healthcare workers to work, and they really wanted to see their communities.
So I also want to thank our staff who, while UM we did not have regular clinical activity, really volunteered and stepped in and stepped up to do this. And I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you what is it like in Washington right now with this virus? Because I feel like we're dealing with all these hotspots around the country. What are you seeing in your community? The man in Washington d C. I think has done a fantastic job, and so what we're seeing is continued decline.
I think just recently we may have had an uptick on one day of cases, which I'm hoping is that strictly due to testing. But she's been really good. She's been open about educating everyone about UM, ensuring that they're wearing mask in public, UM, et cetera. Uh, you know, she's been I think she's she's run a very very thoughtful process. UM that was very engaging as well. I still done her reopening committee and that a chance to speak close up the wood that was was put into
that and the thoughts from this. So all in all that, you know, I think we've been been in the d theory. DC is interesting because obviously you have Virginia, so we really looked at the d MB and the governors of Board Mayland and Virginia wild Um, totally different styles and republic one Republican, one Democrat. Uh. You know, I think again when we put aside of politics and we you know, put the health and safety food, they both have demonstrated
as well, I think very goodly. And we talked a lot in our earlier part of our conversation, Dr Frederick about reopening school. I want to pivot if we can, because I want to take you back to a letter that you wrote on MAT that deals with the other major crisis that this country is facing, in one that you're facing personally as a leader, and I think most notably in this letter as a father, and you write
about talking to your fifteen year old son. And this letter is incredible, and I have to say, incredibly moving, and I recommend anybody who as a child or doesn't and wants to understand more deeply this crisis that we're facing as a country to read it. It struck me very notably because I have a fifteen year old son and the conversation that I have and the conversations I have with him are very different than those that you have with your fifteen year old son. Tell me what
moved you to write this? You know, as as we were thinking about this crisis, and as I myself was experiencing it um with my kids, it really struck me that sometimes we can, you know, in all partisan politics,
lose sight of the humanity that's involved. And at the end of the day, you know, my uh, sixteen year old, as you can imagine, is the world to me, as is my daughter who was enforced in a couple of weeks, and what he is facing as he is about to get his driver's license, and I think of all of those things, it was just really um, it really shook me to the core. I came home and met him watching the television, and I could just see on his face that look of you know, bewilderment, of hopelessness, um
about a circumstance that he could not really understand. You know, why should the color of the skin dictied helps someone interact with him more so than the content of his character, And so that you know, I I talked about the young people who come to Howard very much looked like him. You know, I thought it was important for me to really punctuated with the humanity then, even as the president of Howard and stud practicing surgical on college, just I
am not immune to it, and no all my kids. Well, and you echoed something that I think a lot of Black leaders have said, including the Mayor of Atlanta at Keisha Lance Bottoms, who said something very similar that she thought about her teenage son through all of this. Are enough of these conversations happening right now? And are I guess more importantly, are these sorts of conversations being understood outside of the Black community. I think that's a great
question and also a very very pregnant point. Um. I think these conversations are happening, um within you know, black families, and they have been for some time. But the problem is they can to continue to simply happen there. They must happen outside of our community because ultimately, the full understanding must be a comprehensive engagement of all our communities so that we can understand and see and and I'll
tell you I've had it to experience myself. I went to MBA Anderson Cancer Center as a surgical oncology fellow. I had my attendings who were Jewish, and one day in the upgraating whom I asked one of my attendings, UM, you know what exactly, um, what exactly does quotia means?
And the reason I did that is because I think a lot of times all of us assumes certain things, but we really want to make ourselves uncomfortable enough to ask that question and seem um, you know, either uneducated or ignorant about something, but the reality is we are and unless we do ask questions about how people feel know what they do. And it turned into an unbelievable experience. You know, he explained to me what it meant, showed
me what a kitchen looks like. I mean, it was eye opening, you know, from my prior understanding of it.
And I think more of us um need to do that first to really get a full understanding of what's happening and that have it happened, you know, on a on an episodic basis, Well, I want to end our conversation again on on a slightly happier but but important note, which is you had a big commit as they say, to your basketball program recently, and it's notable in part because of what it may signal in terms of top
athletes committing to historically black colleges and universities. Tell us about the significance of that, you know, I I think it's amazing. Um, this young man. I met him when he came last October to visit, and I was immediately impressed. You know, he wants to come to Howard for the right reasons. He recognized that recognizes that we have a strong,
vigorous academic environment. He recognizes that people will treat him, um, based on you know, who he is and his academic fourth he shut and he very much also is honest about the fact that he's probably a one and done athlete. But what we hope to change as well is that we're really going to encourage him to complete his degree, you know. And and so I am looking forward, um,
you know, to having him engage with us. And while he may not be our traditional students and graduates in four years, we're going to definitely insist and do everything possible to make sure that he ultimately matriculate. He was going to get a world class education, and not just in the classroom, but but outside of the classroom, and about a lot of things that I think would benefit him in his future. All Right, well, good luck to him, and good luck to you. I hope you'll come back
and visit with us. I really appreciate the time. Dr Wayne Frederick, President of Howard University, joining me on the phone from Washington, d C.