Hilmantok University: A Project That Prioritizes Black Voices

Professor Leah Barlow ignites an online network to build Hilmantok University. Adapt, Teach, and Innovate in these times.

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Hilmantok University: A Project That Prioritizes Black Voices

By Remy Tumin
From The New York Times

Leah Barlow, a liberal studies professor at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, prepared to teach her Intro to African American Studies class this semester as she always does: She put together a syllabus, mapped out assignments and created a TikTok account to make the material as accessible as possible.

She posted a video on Jan. 20 welcoming her 35 students to the course. By the next morning, it had surfaced in the algorithm of enough TikTok users that 250,000 people had subscribed to her channel.

Within days, Dr. Barlow’s videos had unintentionally inspired a loosely affiliated network of Black educators, experts and content creators to form what has become known as Hillmantok University, a free — and unaccredited and unofficial — online take on the country’s H.B.C.U.s, or historically Black colleges and universities.

In lectures delivered in TikTok-length bursts, and in longer sessions over TikTok Live, instructors are teaching classes in gardening, organic chemistry, culinary arts and other subjects. On the receiving end, organizers say, is an audience of about 16,000 registered users.

“I think that this has been in the making,” Dr. Barlow said in an interview last week from her office in Greensboro, N.C. “You have accessibility, not just because of TikTok but you also have people who don’t have to be in the ivory tower to have the ability to speak. That is something that I find both beautiful and necessary.”

The appetite for information also comes at the dawn of a second Trump administration. Dr. Barlow posted her video hours after President Trump was sworn in and swiftly set about dismantling federal programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion. Many academics fear a trickle-down effect across education.

“I certainly think the political time and the environment is rife with a lot of contention,” Dr. Barlow said, adding that Mr. Trump’s assault on diversity programs had given “fresh urgency” to a project that prioritizes Black voices.

Cierra Hinton, a former math teacher in Augusta, Ga., and a founder of Hillmantok, watched Dr. Barlow’s original post and some of the early videos inspired by it. “Did I wake up in Hillman?” she recalled thinking, referring to Hillman College, the fictional H.B.C.U. featured in “The Cosby Show” and its spinoff, “A Different World.” A name for the movement was born.

Kennddrick Pringley, a publicist and D.J. in Tampa, Fla., also was among the thousands of TikTok users who stumbled onto Dr. Barlow’s original post. Now he’s Hillmantok’s student union president and part of a group of about 40 content creators-turned-volunteers who saw an opportunity to organize.

In the face of the uncertainty over the future of education policy under a second Trump administration, Mr. Pringley said a “social media university” could provide a space to counter the misinformation circulating online.

“Education is becoming limited, covered up, muted and silenced,” he said. “This is a moment and a movement that can teach the masses everything that they really should know.”

Hillmantok’s organizers built a website, complete with a course catalog and registration page, and started delivering regular updates on the Hillmantok TikTok account. There is a board of trustees and student governing board; many members of both bodies spent long nights on Zoom creating a formal structure for Hillmantok.

“We’re marching together to make sure that everyone has a chance at a free and fair education,” Mr. Pringley said.

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