The Professor Is In

[We continue to solicit #BLM guest posts. We pay $150 for accepted posts. 1000 words ballpark; profanity welcome. Please send a draft or query/pitch to Karen at gettenure@gmail.com]

M. Yvonne Taylor is a doctoral student in higher educational leadership at The University of Texas at Austin, where she is also assistant director of communication.

By Yvonne Taylor

As a black doctoral student and staff member at an institution of higher education, with responsibilities that include communication and social media, avoiding the many videos that show black people suffering and being murdered is often not an option. Today, raw and graphic footage of 15-year-old Dajerria Becton being dragged by police at a pool party or video of George Floyd’s airway being crushed under the knee of a nonchalant white officer pops up on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok repeatedly and unexpectedly. After going viral, it is then displayed across reputable news sites, like CNN and MSNBC, with a few words marking it as “disturbing” so as to continue the illusion of fairness. 

Though the collective outrage, sparked in large part by the video of Mr. Floyd’s murder, has brought many to their feet as they march together to fight this seemingly intractable societal ill, it is vital that we ask not only why video was needed (when Breonna Taylor’s, Ahmaud Arbery’s and Tony McDade’s murders did not spark civil unrest) but also how change can be created and sustained without the demand for what some refer to as “trauma porn.”This is especially important because as Educational Psychologist Dr. Kevin Cokley has shared, there is real psychological harm experienced by black people who view these violent images.

The reasoning for this visual display of murder is often that people have to see the truth to believe it. Americans whose practices and belief systems have been steeped in white supremacy insist on visual “evidence” to prove that racism and police brutality exist. This demand for evidence has its basis in false notions of objectivity, a concept also reified by higher education. Yet, as noted in several interviews, the police brutality within the Minneapolis neighborhood in which George Floyd was murdered had been well-known for decades. Black people did not need video evidence. In fact, for black people, these videos perpetuate trauma—and intimidation—so visceral that many of us must take complete and total social media breaks to care for our mental health.

Yet video evidence of police brutality also is not new. Rodney King’s beating was in 1992, for example. If video evidence of black suffering and death do not change hearts and minds of white Americans, what purpose do they serve? News outlets share in their distribution because these videos get clicks, and clicks create revenue. To abstain from showing these videos would be to decline money for their organizations. In short, black death and its symbolism are profitable.

As shocking as that may seem, it is important to remember that the profitability of black death and suffering has a long history in America. One can see it in the death and disease wrought by the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in order to build the economy of not just the South, but America. One can see it in the postcards of lynchings white families kept as souvenirs. One can see it in the carnage of the Tulsa, Oklahoma massacres 99 years ago that destroyed Black Wall Street, a threat to the white economy. And today, it can be seen in the fervent insistence on “freedom” to open up the economy, forcing black, brown, and indigenous bodies to work in meat processing while knowing we are dying at disproportionate rates due to the coronavirus.

That’s why it’s past time for people to understand that the voyeuristic experience of black pain and death is not justice. White people are already well aware of the reality of police brutality, extrajudicial murder, and racism. It’s why the Amy Coopers of the country choose to invoke the threat of police “intervention” on black people time and time again. Those moments of death and indignity do not need to be aired and shared ad nauseum in order to understand the inhumanity of police brutality and extrajudicial murder. It’s also past time that Americans recognize that Black people are psychologically harmed by the airing and consumption of black death and police brutality. 

Higher education has an important role to play in recognizing this harm and supporting black students, faculty, and staff. Many college campuses were justifiably quick to respond to student needs related to the collective trauma of COVID. Faculty offered students credit/no credit options for students and no-harm final exams, and universities mobilized supports for mental health and wellness, and created new, online forms for outreach. Administrators also considered how exacerbated inequities would impact student success. Yet the dual pandemics of COVID and racism disproportionately affect black people. In response, universities and college campuses have sent emails that, at times, call out racism and police brutality, but have done little to put into practice the types of immediate supports that attend to this moment’s psychological and emotional toll, as well as the cultural taxation and additional labor of black faculty, staff and students. Unfortunately, some faculty remain openly hostile to such supports.

Over 50 years ago, James Baldwin said, “I am terrified at the moral apathy–the death of the heart – which is happening in my country. These people have deluded themselves for so long that they really don’t think I’m human.”  Requiring and sharing videos of black suffering has roots in racial trauma voyeurism, consumerism and white supremacist notions of truth. Higher education can and must to do more to confront and eradicate its perpetuation of these practices. They must decide that black lives are human lives, and that black people are worth listening to, believing, and supporting.

[We continue to solicit #BLM guest posts. We pay $150 for accepted posts. 1000 words ballpark; profanity welcome. Poetry/Art/Video/Song welcome. Please send a draft or query/pitch to Karen at gettenure@gmail.com]

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Ms. Alexandra Hughes, M. Ed., is the current Assistant Director for Student
Rights and Responsibilities, at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. As a member of the university’s administration, in this role she works to manage student conduct and ensure the safety and security of all students, staff, and faculty at the institution. Ms. Hughes also serves UTRGV’s campus as a part time faculty adjunct for master’s students, teaching classes on cultural humility and competencies.

Ms. Hughes received her bachelor’s degree in Biology from Mercer
University in Macon, Georgia. Her master’s degree in Educational Leadership and Administration, at the University of South Alabama; and is currently working on her dissertation as a doctoral student at UTRGV. Lastly, she hosts the national podcast called ASCAViewpoints, a podcast for student conduct professionals in higher education.

Prior to working in student judicial affairs, Ms. Hughes has served campus communities in areas such as: Housing & Residence Life, Student Accessibility Services, and Diversity & Inclusion. In her own words: “I may not be able to change the world, but if I can positively impact and change one person’s world—then I have done enough”.

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Alexandra has contributed her podcast episode from the Viewpoints Podcast of the Association for Student Conduct Administration. (transcript below)

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Transcript of Podcast: Well, they say history repeats itself and it is, and this is history in the making. So, I think you’ll have to ask yourself in this very moment, “What side of history are you going to be on?”

I’m going to ask that you please listen. Even if it makes you uncomfortable, if you’ve never had the desire to listen to anything about race before, I’m begging you to just please listen now.

This is a soft trigger warning for my fellow black colleagues in the field. I also understand that the re-traumatization of hearing this is not always the most helpful, but I’m going to ask that for everyone out there, no matter your culture, race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexuality, to listen. I am a black woman, and I am tired. The deaths of: George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor just in this past short amount of time are only the most recent in a long, long history of tragic events that really recognize and hold light to the fact that very little progress has been made since the Civil Rights acts of 1964, which was 56 years ago. We have parents, my parents who are older than that and members in our organization that are older than that.

Last week on the same day that we watched a police officer pin his knee to a black man’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds, we watched a man on the ground who said he could not breathe, who called for his mother and who we watched die on camera. This was not a television show. This was not an episode of Law and Order. We watched him die. We saw a white woman that same day in Central Park weaponize the use of saying that she will call the police and threatened a black man by saying, “I’m going to tell them that there is an African American man threatening my life,” and she picked up the phone and the world watched in horror as her entire voice changed. She got on the phone and cried and said those words, “I am being threatened. Please send the police and the cops immediately. I am being threatened.” The thing is, her phone call is what we know too well in my community.

We fear that a phone call like that, a phone call by a woman that was not being threatened. A woman that was asked to put her dog on a leash by a man who was ivy league and an upstanding, which it should not matter, black man at that, but we fear that it will lead to a death like George Floyd’s. It’s funny because in Central Park before this is where this incident happened, there is a series on Netflix, for those of you who are finding the end of Netflix during this global pandemic, by Ava DuVernay called, “When They See Us,” and this series takes place and it talks about the same place, Central Park, the story of five boys Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise who are the ages of 14 to 16 that were sentenced to five to 16 years in prison for something called the, “central park jogger.” It was a case and a crime that they did not commit. There was overwhelming evidence that showed that these black and brown boys did not commit the crime, however, they were sentenced. I would encourage you to watch it.

I grew up with a father who taught me what to do when the police pulled me over, how to hold my hands out of the window, how to ask for permission with every single movement that I make. Just late, I watched a video of a black man who recorded himself outside, I guess his house, wherever he was, with his son on the ground with his knee to his son’s neck and he was teaching his son how to live through an officer putting they’re knee on his neck, how to breathe through it, what to say, what to do, but most importantly, how to survive eight minutes and 46 seconds being essentially strangled in that position. Privilege is a word that I know people don’t like to hear. However, it has come up so much over this past week and weekend, and people have been asking me to explain it in a different way. So, this is the way that I can explain it.

Have you ever thought about if you would be killed for any of the following reasons? Because I have. Let me give them to you. If you can go out jogging, Ahmaud Arbery; if you can relax in the comfort of your own home, Atiana Jefferson and Botham Sean; if you can ask for help after being in a car crash, Jonathan Ferrell and Renisha McBride; if you could have a cell phone in your hand, Steven Clark; if you can leave a party to get to safety, Jordan Edwards; if you can play loud music, Jordan Davis; if you can sell CDs; Alton Sterling; if you can sleep, Aiyana Jones and Breonna Taylor; if you could walk from the corner store, Mike Brown; if you can play cops and robbers as a child, Tamir Rice; if you can go to church, Charleston Nine; if you can walk home with Skittles in your hand and a hood on in the rain, Trayvon Martin; if you can hold a hairbrush while leaving my own bachelor party, Sean Bell; if you can party on new year’s, Oscar Grant; if you can die by getting a normal traffic ticket, Sandra Bland; if you can lawfully carry a weapon and let the officer know, Philando Castile; if you can break down on a public road with car problems, Corey Jones; if you can shop at Walmart, John Crawford; if you can have a disabled vehicle on the side of the road; Terence Crutcher; if you can read a book in your own car, Keith Scott; if you can be a 10 year old child walking with their grandfather, Clifford Glover; if you can decorate for a party, Claude Reese; if you could ask a cop of question, Randy Evans; if you can cash a check in peace, Yvonne Smallwood; if you can run, Walter Scott; if you can breathe, Eric Garner; if you can live, Freddie Gray, that’s privilege.

Privilege is when you have never had to think about if you would die for many of the things that I mentioned above because trust me, I have, and people that look like me in my community, we have. Privilege is when you think something is not a problem because to you personally, because it does not exist and that’s the narrative we need to change. I’ve had some colleagues of mine reach out to me about what they’re planning to do, and I commend them on that. I do not have all of the answers, the best answers and please keep in mind, I do not speak for every black person as I record this episode. But what I can say is this. I think if you all are planning on your campuses to do something, there’s a couple things that I would keep in mind.

This is an issue, but we need someone to say that this is a black issue and it is critical that black students need to be addressed and to be supported. More often than not, we are grouped into people of color. However, that term can sometimes do more harm than good. I would encourage you all to reach out to your black student leaders or organize an event that is tailored to support them or even just better, ask them what it is that they need. But also, be prepared for the fact that they may not know and may not be able to tell you what it is that they need because you see, as black people, this is trauma that we are constantly living in. This is not new to us, but it is a reminder every day that it is a crime to simply live. It is extremely hard to be productive academically in a place if you’re existing that may not acknowledge or have any idea what’s going on.

I remember in 2016 when Philando Castile was killed. I remember crying as I was getting ready for work. I remember crying as I pulled into work. I remember the fact that not one person knew what was going on where I worked, and I remember feeling so isolated from my friends and family outside of where I lived. I remember crying in my office all day. I remember crying all night. And I’m sharing this personally, because a lot of people don’t have it in them to share their personal experiences right now. What I will say is this, if you do have events, I would encourage you to be very intentional with what you’re doing. If you are having them, I would encourage you to reach out to black leadership community members and others because black students may not necessarily want to hear from people that do not understand their struggles and that is okay if you don’t, but keep that in mind. Also, keep in mind that it is possible that some people may decline. Quite simply put, it can be too emotionally draining to have these conversations.

Also, not everyone understands how or wants to have these conversations in an academic way when it is your lived experience. This applies also to your fellow black colleagues as well, who are having to navigate a global pandemic while realizing that black people are dying at disproportionately higher rates of this virus because of systematic structures and the trauma of watching someone that looks like them, their child, their brother, their father, their sister, their mother being murdered and there’s nothing that they can do. It is recognizing that there are some areas and institutions that may have majority students that are not black and that is okay, such as predominantly white schools, predominantly Hispanic schools, predominantly whatever that may be and these students who may be of color, who may be white, who want to come out.

Allyship is so important and I think there’s weight in teaching others about why this is a thing, why people are upset, why people are doing what they’re doing. The real history in this country of institutional racism, the real history behind movements that are here like black lives matter and why, and what it actually is supposed to be and even educating them about other movements in this country, things that may be related to their history like the Chicano movement with Latinos and its role in maybe the civil rights. There are a plethora of virtual resources for them. It may give them a sense, if you have students that are coming in saying, “We want to do something,” that they are contributing to something and helping, whether that’s a podcast like this, YouTube videos, lectures, Ted talks, handouts, books, places they can raise money. There’s a lot of different places.

I currently am a professor whom teaches race and culture. And it’s important for me to make this clear. When I talk about the class that I teach on race, it’s not about overt things. To be honest, I skip over this slavery thing, lynching, hate crimes, all of that. But what I talk about are things like: silence, mass incarceration, English only initiatives, hiring discrimination, not challenging the racist jokes that you hear, denial of privilege that’s hurting people, red lining, property taxes, and things such as microaggressions. The reason why we are in education is to make a better future for tomorrow and to create a better society. If, as educators, we’re not advocating for social justice, then why are we really here? There was someone on the internet, on the interwebs name Scott Woods and you can find him on twitter: @Scottwoodssays.

He said, “The problem is that white people see racism as conscious hate when racism is bigger than that. Racism is a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of whites at other people’s expense, whether whites like it or not. Racism is an insidious cultural disease and is so insidious that it doesn’t care if you are a white person who likes black people. It is still going to find a way to affect how you deal with people who don’t look like you. Yes, racism looks like hate, but hate is just one manifestation. Privilege is another. Access is another. Ignorance is another. Apathy is another and so on. So, while I agree with people who say, ‘No one is born racist,’ it remains a powerful system that we’re immediately born into. It’s like being born into air. You take it in as soon as you breathe. It’s not a cold that you can get over. There’s no anti-racist certification class. It is a set of socioeconomic traps and cultural values that are fired up every time we interact with the world, is a thing you have to keep scooping out of the boat of your life to keep from drowning in it. I know it’s hard work, but it’s the price pay for owning everything.”

I understand that this has been hard and probably hard to listen to. And I appreciate you so much if you have listened to me up to this point, and I thank you. I ask wherever you are listening, if you are in your car, in your home, in your quarantine closet, whatever that looks like, if you don’t believe me, and if you don’t believe what I’m saying is true or any of the stuff that’s going around, there was a white woman by the name of Jane Elliott who’s known for her work. She gave a speech some time ago through her work on anti-racism and I want to propose the same question to you as she proposed to her audience.

She said, “I want every white person in this room who would be happy to be treated as the society in general treats our citizens, our black citizens, if you, as a white person would be happy to receive the same treatment that our black citizens do in this society, please stand.” Then she pauses because no one in the room stands. She says, “You didn’t understand the directions. If you white folks want to be treated the way blacks are in this society, stand.” Nobody’s standing here. That says very plainly that you know what is happening. You know you don’t want it for you. I want to know why you are so willing to accept it or to allow it to happen for others.

I know this is a lot, but I’m going to ask and I’m going to give you some tips. Don’t say, “I’m not responsible for what my ancestors did.” We know that, but instead say, “I don’t support what my ancestors did, but I acknowledge that I live under their legacy.” Please don’t say, “It was so long ago. Get over it.” Instead, you can say, “Historical events have modern day legacies and the present is shaped by the past.” Don’t say that, “That was the norm back then,” and we don’t need, “That was just the norm back then, but we’re not judging someone by today’s standards.” Hey, look. Even back then, there were people who were not okay with this person’s actions. Recognize that if someone says, “We can’t change the past,” don’t say that. Say, “We can end the oppressive legacies of the past and we can change the future.” And by the way, these were by @TheDailyPolitic. We can change the future because we need you more than ever, more than ever. So, I ask that you please help to change this narrative because we cannot do it alone.

I need you to know that you were valued and your existence matters. This is not just only for our black colleagues, but for all of us. If you are an ally, please, please, please step up in this time as well because this is when we need you most, all of us, all races, ethnicities, cultures, countries, people. Let’s come together.

Please stay safe. Please stay strong. We are still in the middle of a pandemic, so please, please, please stay healthy. But most importantly, just remember that you matter.

[We continue to solicit #BLM guest posts. We pay $150 for accepted posts. 1000 words ballpark; profanity welcome. Art also welcome. Due to overwhelming response, new submissions will not go up until August/Sept. Please send a draft or query/pitch to Karen at gettenure@gmail.com]

Dr. Johnathan Flowers is Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Worcester State University. His current research focuses on developing an affective theory of experience, identity, and personhood through bridging American Pragmatism, Japanese Aesthetics, and Phenomenology. Flowers’ work also explores how identities are lived affectively through technology and society, with a specific emphasis on race, gender, and disability. 

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By Dr. Johnathan Flowers

This fall, everything that is happening in our streets, from the calls to defund the police, to demands for institutional reform that decenters white supremacy, to demands for equitable treatment backed by direct action, is going to be into our classrooms, in our committee meetings, and our departments. 

Because institutions of higher education continue to assume that the demands for structural change do not include academia, because they largely do not see themselves as the subject of the calls for reform that emerge from the ongoing demonstrations, because they do not believe white supremacy to be a structural problem that affects all aspects of the organization of their institution, our institutions are unprepared to respond for when these demonstrations come home. 

We can see this lack of preparedness through the ways that institutions have responded by focusing on white supremacist violence as solely a problem of policing, which some institutions have taken to include campus policing, and not a broad social problem affecting all parts of the institution. To be clear, I’m not saying that campus police reform isn’t a necessary response: I am saying that it should not be the only response to police violence by higher education. If institutions were serious about their opposition to police brutality, they would investigate the ways that the curricula taught in Criminal Justice programs across the country maintain and reinforce white supremacist assumptions about Black criminality. 

More seriously, if institutions were serious about their commitment to diversity and equity, they would reconsider their practice of “ghettoizing” the intellectual traditions and experiences of the Black community into token diversity requirements, often taught by Black faculty and staff, and often treated by departmental advisors as “optional, “elective” or irrelevant to a student’s program of study. 

But broad structural reform might be too much to ask, so let’s move on. Institutions of higher education are unprepared for what will come with the fall because they have failed to address the rampant institutionalization of whiteness across their campuses. What do I mean by this? I mean the organization of all aspects of the institution around a “default” white experience. 

We can see this in how departments determine if a new faculty member is the right “fit” in line with white standards of professionalism, which ultimately determines who is and is not admitted into the academy. We can see this in the ways that white faculty are ill-equipped to mentor their Black students and junior colleagues through the perception that the default “student,” which the institution claims to serve, is assumed to be a white student. After all, academia has not earned the name “Ivory Tower” for nothing. 

The result of this is that every response to racism, to systemic injustice, to white supremacy, must be centered around preserving the comfort of whiteness. So, when Black faculty, staff, and students pose a challenge to the comfort of whiteness by posing serious concerns about racial injustice and racial violence on our campus, they become a problem to be solved by the institution. 

Sara Ahmed’s “Against Students” is excellent here: because the equitable treatment that Black faculty, staff, and students demand is not in line with the treatment institutions think they deserve, the demands of Black, faculty, and students are dismissed as “asking too much,” of an overtaxed institution. Black faculty, staff, and students are framed as not being satisfied with the meager scraps offered, and thus not having a “genuine” complaint.

Rather than focus on the racism that has motivated their complaint, institutions focus on the Black faculty, staff, and students that made the complaint, as the problem to be solved. As Black faculty, staff, and students become problems to be solved,  the institution seeks to pacify them. We’re all aware of these pacification techniques: forming a committee or taskforce to investigate campus climate, or through hosting a listening session on racial injustice so administration can “hear” the concerns of the Black community; or, as we have seen from institutions across the nation, issuing statements reaffirming a commitment to diversity and equity. What is common to all these pacification techniques is the absence of concrete reforms. 

But we will not accept listening sessions or open forums because we recognize them for what they are: incremental change that presents the illusion of a response while allowing the institution to keep whiteness in place. More seriously, we are  returning to our campuses with a newly heightened sense that direct action, protests, and demonstrations work: if they work on police, they can most definitely work on a college campus.

And when we come, who will be there to help save higher-ed institutions?

Not the Black faculty, staff, and students who have endured countless varieties of white supremacist violence by merely existing on campus. And why would we? Even when we attempt to make change, we must repeatedly expose ourselves to white supremacist violence through being forced to explain again, and again, the impact of white supremacy on our academic lives, only to see that change rendered impotent by the demands for white comfort.

Not the departments of Ethnic Studies, African American Studies, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, many of which were established as a result of direct action taken by faculty, staff, and students, direct action that mirrors much of what we are seeing in our streets. And why should they? Despite using them to demonstrate their diversity credential, these departments have been resented and resisted by their home institutions for decades. They’ve undermined through resource deprivation, ghettoization, and have been among the first to be targeted in this time of COVID related austerity. 

Not the multi-cultural resource centers, which have been relegated to diversity month programming, rather than comprehensive support for the students they are intended to serve. While the individuals running these resource centers often go to heroic lengths to fill in where their home institutions have failed their students, the institutions fail to act.

None of these resources will be available because they will all be deployed in service of our faculty, staff and students who are demanding change. These resources will be on our campus quads protesting, holding teach-ins, fighting tooth and nail in our committee meetings, or finding some other way of disrupting the ongoing “business as usual” of institutional racism and oppression within our institutions. 

And they will do so because they recognize that the conditions that allow white supremacy to claim that Black lives don’t matter in the society beyond the ivory tower are the same conditions that allow white supremacy claim that Black intellectual lives don’t matter within the ivory tower.

Dr. Debra Thompson is an Associate Professor of Political Science at McGill University. A leading scholar of the comparative politics of race, Thompson’s teaching and research interests focus on the relationships among race, the state, and inequality in democratic societies. Dr. Thompson previously taught at the University of Oregon and Northwestern University.

This is a letter that Dr. Thompson sent to the University of Oregon.

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Subtitle: The Story of an Eight-Month Struggle to Call Out Institutional Racism in Student Conduct Processes

24 June 2020

To Whom it May Concern: 

The Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards recently sent out an email, in which the authors confess that self-reflection was catalyzed by a colleague in an online community, who asked, “what are you doing within your locus of control on campus?” The email goes on to state, “In the past, we have asked students to trust us and relied upon words to ‘prove’ our commitment. We recognize that if we want our students to trust us, we need to show them we can be trusted. We must show our students that we stand against anti-blackness and other forms of bias. The core of our mission is to protect the rights, safety, dignity, and worth of every individual. It is not enough to be non-racist; we must be actively anti-racist.” 

The idea that the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards was, is currently, or has any plans to be “non-racist” is ludicrous. I have spent the last eight months of my time and energy here at the University of Oregon helping a first-generation student of color navigate the student conduct process. Not only has this experience been a time-consuming, soul-destroying bureaucratic nightmare, but, more importantly, it is literally the epitome of the pervasive, surreptitious, and procedurally protected institutional racism at the University of Oregon. The status quo – which, make no mistake, ensnares Black students, students of color, and first-generation students not because of some unfortunate misalignment in its machinery, but rather as a result of its design to work in exactly this way – is heavily guarded by individuals who have a stake in maintaining this system. These false overtures of “self-reflection” under the guise of becoming “actively anti-racist” are made in toxically bad faith and it is morally repugnant. 

Racism is not simply individual acts or behaviors. It is also “structures that determine and cyclically remanufacture racial inequity and institutional norms that sustain White privilege and permit the ongoing subordination of minoritized persons.” My experience this past year has demonstrated that the policies and procedures that govern student conduct are susceptible to being employed as an instrument of individuals’ racist beliefs and biases. Further, some of these policies, even when they are followed, simply magnify the existing racial bias within the system. This is literally the definition of institutional racism and it is unacceptable.  

I want to tell you some anonymized information about this student’s situation – I will call him student A. I want to be clear that I am relaying this information with his express permission. What follows is a story of how the full weight of the university’s disciplinary processes, including an encounter with the police, a drawn-out student conduct process, and an ongoing Title IX complaint, has been brought upon this student, though he has done absolutely nothing wrong.   

I also want to be clear about why you should read this letter, in its entirety. I am literally one of the country’s leading experts on the politics of race. I was recruited here from one of the best universities in the country to help shape the Black Studies program. I am leaving UO to take up a position at one of the top ranked institutions in the world. This is my life’s work. I know what I am talking about. I wish that I could have convinced you to listen to me sooner, one of the many times I reached out to try to stop this absurdity. 

A University of Oregon police officer came to student A’s residence hall room in late September 2019 to issue a “warning.” There were two students (X and Y), with whom he had gone to high school, now living on the same floor of the residence hall. The officer came into his room and told him he was not to have any contact with these other students. This date was very soon after move-in, and the student had not had any contact in any form with these students at all. If the police can be sent to issue a warning without any precipitating factors, how can the university guarantee that its policies are being fairly applied? Why were the police involved when there was no violation of the Student Code of Conduct? What policies does the university have in place to ensure that the police are not being used, as they so often are, to confirm and absolve white peoples’ discomfort at sharing public and private spaces with people of color? 

Let me make this first point perfectly clear. White people routinely use the police to in order to maintain control over white spaces, to keep people of color in check, and to keep the racial order intact. They do this knowing that the police can threaten and kill people of color with impunity. In a viral twitter video, Amy Cooper retaliated against Christian Cooper’s (no relation) polite request that she restrain her dog. “I’m going to tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life,” she said, before whining hysterically to the 911 operator, emphasizing that her so-called attacker was African American. Amy Cooper wasn’t threatened. She was annoyed that she was being told to obey the rules, that she was being called out by a Black person, and she was caught on video doing what white women have done for centuries: wield the accusation of violence against an innocent Black man as a weapon. In the case of student A, an armed police officer was used to intimidate him, when he had done absolutely nothing. It is a gross violation of the university’s stated values of community, diversity, and inclusion, and it should never have been allowed to happen. 

A formal no contact directive was issued a few weeks later. But between move-in day and the date of the directive, student A did not have contact – in person, verbally, or online – with students X and Y. The directive contained no rationale for its issuance, provided no evidence regarding why it was put in place, and provided no opportunity to speak with an administrator. Again, the question must be asked: if a no contact directive can be issued without any precipitating factors, how can the university guarantee that this issuance is not being used to discriminate against racial minorities? Why did the Office of Student Conduct allow its policies to be used as a weapon of whiteness? 

These actions led to student A’s removal from his residence hall after he broke the no contact order while trying to defend another student from an assault. I am not going to go into the precise details of the situation here; I have student A’s permission to tell the world what happened to him, and if you are interested in our appeal of the Office of Student Conduct’s decision regarding this matter, I am sure you will be able to access a copy upon request. 

What I would like to point out is that the description of the alleged interactions between the students, reified in a letter that Katy Larkin, Director of Student Conduct and Community Standards, sent to student A, relies on degrading racial stereotypes about the inherently threatening nature of non-white men. Students X and Y noted at various points that student A made them “uncomfortable,” though they could not pinpoint any actual behaviors that made them feel this way. The presence of non-white people in predominately white spaces, and the subsequent labeling of these non-white people as threatening, has an excessively long history in this country. These circumstances are not some artifact of history. In recent months dozens of videos have shown white women calling the police on people of color – for doing absolutely nothing. Whether it is walking down the street, playing in a public park, being non-white on a university campus, knocking on a door to ask for help, or just existing, white people use the police to threaten and intimidate non-white people. That the university allowed this to happen to a first-generation minority student, the day after move-in, is shameful. That the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards continued to allow these students to use the unequal application of its own policies to bully and harass a student of color, ultimately forcing him from his community in order to preserve hegemonic white comfort, is the very definition of institutional racism. 

The claim that students X and Y “felt scared,” is similarly coded. Research on racial bias, for example, has used controlled experiments (e.g. a staged interaction between two people turns heated, leading one to shove the other; the experiment involved versions in which the race of the instigator and target of the violence varied) to demonstrate that non-white men are labelled as “violent” and “threatening” far more often than their white counterparts. In effect, white people have warped perceptions of what may constitute a “threat” when non-white people are involved. As defined in the literature in psychology, racial bias is unintended and unconscious. But what these students have attempted to do, and what the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards has legitimated, is neither unintended nor unconscious. There was no indication that Ms. Larkin evaluated these claims for evidence of racial bias. The entire conduct process in this case has been one in which white students have successfully mobilized and weaponized university policies and procedures, including the police, in order to punish a student of color for inhabiting the same space. Their actions were discriminatory and the university has been complicit in enabling them. 

I could go on for days, because helping this student has required months of exactly the kind of unpaid, unacknowledged, invisible labor that disproportionately falls on Black faculty. The email from the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards states that, “while it is our responsibility and honor to uphold [students’] due process rights, the student conduct profession continues to work within a larger system of laws, regulations, and practices which disproportionately impact students of color.” What an incredible deflection. The larger system of laws, regulations and practices is not to blame here; UO procedures and the ways they are upheld by its administrators are. Here are just a few examples of the impenetrably circular logic of the conduct process: 

• Ms. Larkin decided this case and assigned the sanction (including student A’s removal from his residence hall). When he appealed the decision and requested a stay of the sanction pending the appeal, Ms. Larkin was the person who decided whether or not the sanction, which she had initially assigned, should stay in place. In effect, Ms. Larkin is the person who is tasked with determining the appropriateness of her own judgement, in spite of her clear, established interest in not contravening her initial ruling. 
• Ms. Larkin is responsible for convening the Appeals Board, which was not active until late in the academic year and did not hear student A’s appeal until approximately four months after it was submitted. Student A, however, had only 14 days to submit his appeal after he received Ms. Larkin’s decision letter. 
• Because the Appeals Board was not active, Ms. Larkin offered student A the opportunity to have his case heard by an appeals officer. This policy is not in the student code of conduct, nor can any details about the appeals officers be found on the Dean of Students website. Ms. Larkin is responsible for appointing the appeals officers and assigning them to cases. 
• The Appeals Board is convened by Ms. Larkin. There is no information on the membership of the Appeals Board from year to year. Is this a committee of white people making decisions about what counts as racism? There is also no information on the training that the Appeals Board may or may not receive. It is unclear whether the Appeals Board, or Ms. Larkin, or anyone in the Office of the Dean of Students for that matter, have any knowledge whatsoever of implicit bias, critical race theory, or anti-racism. 

Over the past eight months I have used every piece of institutional knowledge at my disposal to try to tell those with power and authority about what was happening. Student A tried to access help from the Office of Student Advocacy and the lawyer he was assigned was dismissive, rude, and totally incompetent. I wrote a 9-page appeal for this student, submitted to and rejected by the University Appeals Board. I met with the Office of Diversity and Inclusion. I met with people in the Office of the Dean of Students. I exchanged emails with Katy Larkin and Kris Winter. I met with the Title IX Office. I met with university lawyers. The fact that I have been unable to stop this institutionally racist train wreck, which has now taken the form of a completely unfounded, still ongoing Title IX complaint, is not for a lack of awareness within the University of Oregon about what has happened to this student. Administrators have done nothing to intervene and the entrenched racism of this university will continue to self-perpetuate until something is done. 

The most frustrating part of trying to help this student has been the shame of secrecy that these processes demand. Privacy is an important concern, indeed, but it is not the only thing at stake. Functionally, these processes are secretive because institutional racism is most easily upheld behind closed doors. We cannot speak to anyone about it. We cannot share information. We cannot seek support. We cannot tell what we know of this institution’s incredible betrayal of this student, and probably hundreds more like him that didn’t have me in their corner. To the white people reading this, if you’re even still reading this, let me tell you a truth about being a person of color in America: racism is isolating. It is meant to strip us of our supports, our communities, our collective hope, our ability to see ourselves as part of something. George Floyd was surrounded by the police, but died alone. Even writing this letter could have professional repercussions for me – and I’m sure that the very first impulse of some who read this will be defensiveness and, eventually, retaliation. Whiteness is most dangerous when it’s been accused of wrongdoing. But this isn’t my first rodeo; every single Black academic I know has been routinely and regularly sabotaged by white colleagues and administrators, including me. There was a recent twitter trend on this very topic – #BlackintheIvory. More often than not, the worst offenders are those who claim to be progressive.

The final point I want to make is this: administrators in the Office of the Dean of Students should have recognized the racially coded nature of these claims and acted in a way that supports the basic principles of egalitarianism, inclusion, and social justice, upon which the very mission of the University of Oregon is founded. I am deeply disappointed and, frankly, enraged, by my experiences in trying to help this student navigate the opaque and treacherous administrative quagmires of the student conduct process. If this office is unable to protect our Black students and students of color from the structural racism that proliferates in a racially stratified society, or is unable to meet the criticisms embedded herein with self-reflection and meaningful action rather than defensiveness and dismissal, it should be dismantled. 

I’m sure many will applaud the Statement of Commitment that made its way to my inbox. I am furious. It has been eight months of unrelenting institutional racism, the consequences of which I am still dealing with in an endless stream of meetings and administrative conferences and white women’s fake tears. The sheer nerve of this false overture made in the toxically bad faith of fragile white people who are nevertheless steeped in unsalvageable racism, is suffocating. I can’t breathe.

I will be publishing this letter, in its entirety, in a public online forum on racism in higher education. I suggest you use your “locus of control” to do something. At a minimum, all proceedings should be discontinued against this student and he should be issued an apology. There should also be a full and independent investigation, carried out by someone external to the university, into what happened to this student and the other students of color like him who have been harmed by these processes. 

If this university is actually committed to anti-racism, start with that. And do it now. 

Yours truly,

Debra Thompson, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Political Science 

University of Oregon

Chase Moore is a former college football player at The University of Texas and current Master’s Student in Educational Policy at the University of Texas Austin.

My identity has been forced to be negotiated in a multitude of ways throughout life, and especially thus far in my Graduate School experience. First and foremost, if one were to even slightly examine the classmates that make up my cohort, they would notice that it reeks of homogeneity. The majority of my cohort is made up of women, and the racial makeup lacks diversity too since the majority are white females, with only two Latinas, one black woman, and me being the only black male.

The conversations that are persistent throughout my graduate school experience are led mostly by white female faculty, staff, and graduate students who fail to recognize various identities. Topics that deserve greater importance lack depth, which makes my cohort’s integrity to maintain the tenants of critical policy analysis and critical race theory impossible.

An example of how there was a complete lack of cultural consciousness occurred last semester in one of my white female professors’ classes. My professor began class with an anecdote of the “Funny Names” of some of her previous students when she was a K-12 teacher in an inner-city area. My classmates found this as an opportunity to express other “Funny Names” that they’ve heard over the years of also teaching inner-city black students. Everyone but me and the other black woman was amused. I wrestled hard with the duality of knowing that as the only black male in the class that I needed to speak up and utilize this as a teaching moment to my white peers, while also refusing to speak up in fear of receiving a bad grade in the course.

Aside from my white dominated graduate class and cohort experience, I do not struggle in speaking up in opportunities when I am called to speak. I understand that many who come from humble beginnings like myself do not have access to the number of resources and education that I do have, so I use every opportunity available to speak truth to power. For example, I testified in front of the Texas State Board of Education in November, where I advocated on behalf of adding comprehensive African American studies to the K-12 curriculum in the entire state of Texas, which has since been approved. After posting the experience online, the Public Testimony Video went viral. I believe it speaks towards my efficacy in speaking truth to power.

The most profound aspect that I believe helped the video gain so much traction was the mere factor that my passion did not match my appearance. I am a black male with dreadlocks who grew up around Compton critically speaking about dismantling systems and circumventing the matrices of power. What made the experience even more dynamic was that I mentioned that I played college football for the Texas Longhorns and how I realized very early on in my career that there was no utility in basking in my own success on the football field if I cannot inspire the people that need me the most: inner-city youth. After that exchange, I believe that I sucked the air out of the room.

I now am completely convinced that my positionality is empowering since I had the opportunity to touch millions of people. I was extremely surprised because I didn’t intend to post the video in the first place. I was debating whether or not people would perceive me advocating for African American studies as important, but everyone’s response indicates that these issues are very important, so since the very first week of January, I will be posting a video about Educational Policy on all major Social Media platforms every single week for the next year to see what happens.

I have an unrelenting conviction to see change, so I now fully use my platform to discuss pertinent educational and Black issues. I want to see if my videos can help legislation like the African American studies curriculum can pass in other states, who it inspires, who can learn from what I’m learning, and any other positive externalities. My videos will highlight Personal Stories, Interview Educational Policy Experts, Educational Policy issues, Current Educational Policy Wins and losses, and also pertinent events that speak of the Black experience. 

Working to manifest my convictions and commitments to see educational policy change with my connections makes for a very bright future. I am currently a Graduate Assistant with the Longhorn Center for Academic Excellence under the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement. I work directly with Dr. Ryan Sutton in the Heman Sweatt Center for Black Males and am a Teacher’s Assistant for the Race in the Age of Trump class with Dr. Leonard Moore. With this leadership position, I am responsible for assisting in meaningful initiatives that enhance the educational experiences of the Black males of UT, who make up less than 2 percent of UT Austin’s 51,832 students, and teach first-generation and minority students.

I am fully convinced that my desire to ameliorate educational inequities for inner-city youth does not have to begin 10 years from now, it begins now. We always hear the phrase: be the change youwant to see. Well, I take heed of these words and refuse to ever hold back from speaking up again.