While this time of year is supposed to be one of celebration for students and their families, Morehouse School of Medicine’s graduation is being overshadowed by controversy.
Some students at the HBCU are protesting the school’s decision to invite a Republican lawmaker as this year’s commencement speaker on May 16.
U.S. Rep. Rich McCormick of Georgia, an emergency room physician who is a 2010 alumni of the medical school, was announced as the commencement speaker in April. Since then, students have held a protest on campus, wrote an open letter to the administration, and started a petition that has received more than 1,000 signatures. Students say that McCormick’s political views are in opposition to the mission and vision of their school.
In the student’s open letter, they outlined McCormick’s support for legislation restricting gender-affirming care for transgender youth and reproductive healthcare, including abortion, and his support for legislation capping loans for medical students, which they say many low income students rely on. The students also highlighted comments he made opposing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, as well as remarks calling undocumented immigrants “invaders” and “dangerous people.”
For Onyinye Okonma, getting his medical degree was a hard fought journey. The 32-year-old said he took the medical school admissions test seven times and applied to medical school five times before getting into the Morehouse School of Medicine.
“It’s really disappointing to see our school invite him on the most important day of our lives at this point to try and lift us up and give us advice, and do all these things when he has such a hurtful and dangerous rhetoric regarding underrepresented minorities, immigrants, diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives that affect multiple institutions around the country,” the soon-to-be internal medicine doctor said.
Another graduating student, Mari Chiles, who plans to go into pediatrics, said that she and other classmates are uncomfortable with McCormick as the speaker because his views are in “direct contradiction” with the school’s mission, which is to increase the diversity of the health professional and scientific workforce.
“For somebody who got their education from a primarily-Black institution, I think it is pretty crazy to just negate all of the things that have put Black students in an inferior position when it comes to obtaining these careers in higher education,” Chiles said.
Students pointed out in their open letter that McCormick said DEI initiatives “create racism” in a podcast in 2025.
“We’re already redistributing income. We’re already doing the DEI thing openly,” McCormick said on the Jedburgh Podcast in January. “It’s like, ‘If you’re a certain race, you get in. If you’re not, you don’t. If you’re an Indian, too many successful Indians can’t come to this college. If you’re Black, we don’t have enough of you. You get to come into this college.’ It creates racism, in my opinion.”
In a video from 11Alive, McCormick said during a town hall meeting in Alpharetta that the protests against him were “hurtful.”
“That’s my alma mater. That’s where I graduated from. I was student body president there. I got protests in the last couple of days, and it was hurtful since I’ve already given a commencement speech there as student body president,” McCormick said. “But they’ve made a lot of assumptions because we have this thing where if you’re on the other side, I’m gonna demonize you and call you names and make assumptions about your character.”
MSM students told Capital B Atlanta that administrators held meetings with students to listen to their concerns and answer questions, but they are standing firm in their decision to have McCormick speak.
In an email to Capital B Atlanta, a spokesperson for MSM, Jamille Bradfield, said the school respects the students’ concerns and acknowledges the “seriousness” of their position.
“MSM is a nonpartisan institution, and Dr. McCormick was invited because of his distinction as an alumnus. Our mission to advance health equity remains unchanged, and that mission is reflected in the graduates we send into the world each year,” Bradfield said.
Students weren’t consulted
Multiple students told Capital B Atlanta that the school did not include student leadership in the decision-making process this year when picking the commencement speaker, as they had done years prior.
Okonma served as the MSM Class of 2025 president from 2021 to 2024. During that time, he said the administration would notify the student government about their commencement speaker decision. He said the school administration admitted they dropped the ball on consulting student leadership this year.
“They would at least run it by us, just to see what we feel, and usually they’ll do that in January. Our student leadership, they didn’t hear anything. They didn’t get a vote,” Okonma said. “I feel like they knew that the backlash would come. So it’s like, ‘Let’s just ignore the whole process, and we’re going to do what we want to do anyway.’”
Bradfield said in a comment to Capital B Atlanta the following about excluding students from the process:
“In past years we have given students the opportunity to voice their opinions about the commencement speaker. This year we had the unique opportunity to have not only one of our alumni but a past SGA president and the only graduate to become a member of Congress.”
HBCUs and Republican politicians
Morehouse isn’t the only HBCU facing backlash from students for inviting a conservative speaker to commencement this graduation season.
South Carolina State University students protested their school’s decision to invite Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, a Republican who has been a proponent of President Donald Trump’s attacks on DEI initiatives in higher education, to deliver their commencement address on May 8.
The university replaced Evette as the speaker with Yolanda Williams, the school’s National Alumni Association president, and Zaria Tucker, the Student Government Association president.
After the school rescinded Evette’s invitation, citing security reasons, she responded on social media, saying that she “must be doing something right because woke mobs are coming after me for being a champion of eliminating radical DEI scams on college campuses.”
Some South Carolina Republicans are now calling for the state to defund the HBCU.
While students may see HBCUs maintaining relationships with conservative politicians as antithetical, Adrienne Jones, a former political science professor at Morehouse College, said she believes some of these selections are about survival.
“We saw how Trump did in fact in his first term support HBCUs,” Jones said. “So there could be some contradictions, right? Trump is extremely MAGA, he is the epitome of MAGA and yet, at least ostensibly, appeared to be supportive of HBCUs during his first term.
“So you can imagine that a school like Morehouse is taking all of that into account in terms of its ability to get federal funds, its ability to stay an entity, and be able to serve the students that it seeks to serve.”
McCormick, who was endorsed by Trump for reelection in January, joined with other lawmakers to introduce the HBCU Research Capacity Act in April. The bill aims to increase federal research funding for HBCUs.
“In order to maintain an HBCU for 100 years, you gotta have some political flexibility there, especially in an age where they’re literally cutting DEI,” Jones said.
Alexander Weheliye, a professor of modern culture and media at Brown University with a background in Black studies, said that HBCU support from white, conservative politicians dates back to the schools’ inception.
“At the end of the 19th century, there was a lot of support by white conservatives for someone such as Booker T. Washington and the idea of Black people having a separate education, but not support for Black people being admitted to predominantly white institutions, especially elite ones,” Weheliye said.
For Brandon Parkinson, a graduating MSM student who plans to practice family medicine, he said he could understand the school’s efforts to bolster their relationship with McCormick as a strategic necessity. However, he said he believes the act weakens the school’s integrity.
“Morehouse is a wonderful institution. I understand there are plans to continue expanding its footprint, I think that’s amazing,” Parkinson said. “But, you know, I don’t agree with the costs. … if this is a way to assist with that, I don’t agree with that.
“There could have been other ways to have conversations, I think but I don’t agree with having this person representing us on a grand stage in front of the public.”
Staff writer Alecia Taylor contributed to this report.
