As Fisk University Moves Forward With Data Center Proposal, Opposition Grows

When Naimah Muhammad heard that her alma mater, Fisk University, planned to build a data center on campus, she was annoyed and confused. 

The announcement came just days after the spring semester ended. There were no hearings, town halls, or meetings with students or residents of the majority-Black neighborhood in north Nashville, Tennessee, she said. 

“There’s a new science building being built, which is great,” said Muhammad, a 2025 graduate and liberal arts major who still lives nearby. “But it’s kind of like forgetting Fisk’s history and the fact that the university was founded by artists. Then, when you are throwing in an AI data center, it’s just like … whoa.” 

On May 14 at its historic Jubilee Hall, Fisk announced a $900 million plan to transform the institution. The 10-year project includes $400 million to build a 70,000-square-foot data and technology center. 

Some students and alumni say the timing — Fisk is celebrating its 160th anniversary this year — and where it was announced runs counter to the university’s long-standing liberal arts legacy. The hall was named after the Fisk Jubilee Singers, whose global tours in the late 1800s raised money to support the university. 

The university has been open about its funding challenges, but alumni like Muhammad question whether a 30-megawatt data center is the best solution. 

“There are other ways that we can try to bring money to the school, and a data center is going to do more long-term damage,” the 23-year-old said. 

By 2028, data centers are expected to use the same amount of water as 5.5 million people and are largely responsible for causing air pollution to spike in recent years. 

There are roughly 3,000 data centers operating nationwide, with an additional 1,000 estimated in the construction pipeline. The South is facing the largest impacts, according to residents and multiple analyses. Fisk has called the renovations “sustainable” and “innovative through education,” but critics question whether the environmental trade-offs are worth it.

Tennessee already has 60 data centers. In fact, the Fisk project is coming on the heels of another proposed data center near the Nashville Zoo, upsetting residents across the city. 

In the weeks since Fisk’s announcement, students and residents have come out in droves to several public hearings opposing the data center. 

On June 10, state Rep. Justin Jones stood with residents and fellow Fisk alumni to call out the potential harm the data center posed. He asked other Nashville residents to oppose the center with the same urgency they are using to oppose the one near the city’s zoo. 

“If AI data centers are not good for a zoo, then it’s not good for an HBCU,” Jones said. 

Capital B has reached out to Fisk University three times and has not received a response. Yet, in a statement to a local news outlet, the university questioned the notion that all data centers are harmful to the environment. Its president, Agenia Clark, said the university remains committed to “doing no harm.”

“We’ve got to really target educating our communities on the differences between these dirty data centers and this university’s desire to create an innovation center,” Clark told WPLN News, Nashville’s NPR affiliate.

Who benefits from the data center?

As a liberal arts major and former Fisk gymnast, Muhammad said her memories of continuously asking for more resources for the team and her major remain fresh: Her team asked to share the gym with the cheer team but were turned down, she said, and her friends majoring in English and film were stuffed into the basements of older buildings.

This year, she watched as her former gymnastics teammates took their final bow after the university discontinued the program, citing scheduling and recruiting challenges. Now, just three months later, Fisk announced renovations to the campus, including an arena owned by the university and new buildings for science, technology, engineering and math majors. Among other improvements in the plan are updated campus buildings and more student housing. 

The 30-magawatt data center would be built on 5 acres currently undeveloped on the university’s campus, and would use an existing underground power source. 

Alongside the university, a third party would use the university-owned center. The university is partnering with the Don Hardin Group, a local construction consulting and project management firm. Don Hardin, the founder and CEO, assured the community that his construction company has consulted the right people, including Nashville’s energy company. 

“We probably study the impacts of data centers across the country more than anybody because we want to make sure we do it right,” Hardin said, according to WPLN. “We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that the community feels really good about what we’re doing in terms of noise mitigation, water consumption and energy usage.”

But across the country, personal stories of those living by data centers say otherwise. Several data centers have popped up in majority Black and brown neighborhoods. Recently, two Tennessee counties unanimously voted to put a freeze on data centers in their communities”, according to the Tennessee Lookout.

Like many others, Muhmmad has kept up on the news about data centers changing water supply, including the color, smell and taste. As a Nashville resident and recent graduate with friends still enrolled at Fisk, she’s concerned about how the technology will impact the surrounding water supply.

“For people that live in the communities and go to the schools, they’ll be impacted the most, so if they’re saying ‘hey, this isn’t a good idea and we don’t want this,’ we should listen to them,” she said. 

A swift backlash

After Fisk made the announcement, the comments on its social media sites were turned off. But that didn’t stop alumni from organizing quickly and spreading the word.

Winston Wright, a 2017 Fisk alumnus and Nashville resident, has seen gentrification the neighborhood. He’s been active on social media, spreading the word about the few details available regarding the incoming data center, but the majority of those concerned have been white residents, a direct reflection of what he sees in the surrounding homes. 

“If you were on a block, one out of five households may be Black — everyone else is white,” he said.

Just a three-minute walk from the university is Andrew Jackson Courts, a public housing complex with more than 300 units. But the complex has managed to stay predominantly Black and brown, he said. 

With comments turned off and the academic semester over, alumni turned to each other for more information. During alumni calls with administration, Wright said it was shared that Fisk has had ongoing financial problems and that the data center could help with the piling to-do list for renovations. Wright began posting the information he’d learned on social media as reels and started an ongoing document of the project. He also started a petition that’s gathered more than 14,000 signatures opposing the plan. 

Wright had already been sharing information he’d found out about the data center from in-house calls with alumni and administration on social media, calling out partners such as Equinix, an existing partner of the university, to strengthen digital divides in the Black community. 

Wright said he’s looking forward to more Black-led grassroots organizations and Black churches in the area to speak out more about the issue. 

“[The zoo site] came out later than Fisk, but it gained a lot of attention,” he said. “I guess Nashvilians are concerned more about animals than Black neighborhoods.” 

Read More:

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