Vice President Kamala Harris attended an event at her alma mater, Howard University, in 2022.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, will host an election night event next Tuesday at her alma mater, Howard University, a university spokesperson confirmed in an email to Inside Higher Ed.
The Harris-Walz campaign will host an event on campus as the votes come in. Classes will be held remotely on Monday and are canceled on Tuesday to encourage student voting, according to The Hilltop, Howard’s student newspaper. The campus will be closed to the public Tuesday.
The historically Black university in Washington, D.C., has been a key part of Harris’s candidacy since she announced she would be replacing President Biden on the ticket in July. Her sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, has mobilized alumnae members to campaign for her, and she had a debate prep session there in August before her debate against Republican nominee Donald Trump. When she announced her candidacy for the Democratic nomination in 2019, she did so from Howard.
Harris’s alma mater has long occupied a special place in her life—and the narrative of her path to the vice presidency. In her memoir she wrote that at Howard, “You didn’t have to be confined to the box of another person’s choosing.”
“At Howard,” she wrote, “you could come as you were and leave as the person you aspired to be.”
On Tuesday night, she may leave campus as the first HBCU graduate elected president of the United States.
