Log in to view the full article
When Delaware State University President Tony Allen speaks of his experience as a speechwriter for then-Sen. Joe Biden in the late 1990s, it’s not about dropping the name of a former boss who went on to become the 46th President of the United States.
Rather, it’s about telling the story of how Biden profoundly affected the trajectory of Allen’s career at a critical juncture in his life.
“We met in 1997, when he took a chance on a young, single father completing his graduate studies and asked me to come work in his Senate office as a speechwriter and a liaison to the City of Wilmington,” Allen recounted of Biden in a 2019 essay for Medium.
“What I didn’t know then was that he would become one of the primary catalysts to my life in public service,” Allen wrote. “His very example gave me the confidence and the conviction to serve.”
Since then, Allen — whom Biden appointed in 2021 to serve as the chair of the President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities — has earned a reputation as a skilled higher education leader who prioritizes the needs of students, particularly those who, like him, hail from households of lesser economic means.
Marybeth Gasman, a scholar of HBCUs and education professor at Rutgers University, commends Allen for not letting student engagement fall by the wayside as the university pursues the coveted R1 status – the highest research status an institution can earn within the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.
“What stood out in my conversation with Allen is that Delaware State is building an institution where growth, research, and student success are mutually reinforcing,” Gasman recounted in a 2026 article for Forbes. “As higher education is pulling back from its most vulnerable students, the institution’s stance is both notable and necessary.”
“The substance of any good research enterprise is student engagement,” Allen told Gasman in an interview for the same article. “Growing a research enterprise and serving students in need are not mutually exclusive.”
Allen arrived at Delaware State as Executive Vice President and Provost in the summer of 2017 after having served as a communication executive for Bank of America.
Colleagues credited him with being a changemaker from Day One.
“Tony has proven himself time and again with the imagination, tenacity, and integrity he brought to Delaware State University,” then-Board of Trustees Chairperson Dr. Devona Williams noted in 2020, when Allen was appointed as president of Delaware State.
Among other things, Williams praised Allen for his role in leading the redesign of the University’s academic colleges and consolidating its academic advising assets under the Office of Student Success.
“He was also instrumental in the formation of a Strategic Enrollment Division that, for the first time in the institution’s history, places all front-end student services in one seamless organization,” a DSU article about his appointment as president states.
Allen was also credited with developing a plan to increase the University’s annual research portfolio from $20 million to $35 million in the next five to seven years. Delaware State has since exceeded that goal as its research portfolio stood at nearly $50 million in 2026.
Allen has noted that three out of four students at Delaware State benefit from the INSPIRE scholarship – a four-year, full tuition scholarship for qualifying in-state high school graduates who enroll at the university immediately after high school graduation.
Despite his many accomplishments and accolades – which include the Whitney M. Young Award for Advancing Racial Equality, the highest honor bestowed by the National Urban League – there are times when Allen still wonders how he reached his current station in life.
“Every year since I got my doctorate 25 years ago, I’ve had a recurring nightmare that none of this is real. I’m not president of Delaware State University. No degrees. I didn’t have a fantastic career at Bank of America. I don’t know Joe Biden. I haven’t married Tara,” the father of five told restlessurban regarding his wife and children in 2025. “I attribute that to imposter syndrome — thinking these things are not supposed to be happening to me and that I’m not good enough for them.”
Allen has shared how the experience of not knowing his own father for much of his life has impacted how he goes about fatherhood himself. He credits his son — AJ, who is virtually a mirror image of his father — with showing him long ago that his academic credentials aren’t what’s important.
“When I earned my doctorate, I asked my son AJ, who was probably 9, how do you like Dr. Dad?” Allen told journalist Peter Osborne. “He said, ‘Dad, I don’t care about any of that. I just want you to be dad.’”
“I’ve never forgotten that story,” Allen told Osborne. “It was one of those seminal moments that I hope is helping me become a better man.”
Jamaal Abdul-Alim is a longtime education writer who resides in Washington, D.C. He occasionally teaches journalism and has completed fellowships at the University of Michigan, Columbia University and New America.
This story originally ran in The EDU Ledger's August 6th edition.
