In my own journey as a higher education practitioner whose research and practice has always focused on remedying issues of inclusion and diversity, I have long been at odds with how the academy relinquishes its accountability for effecting and imparting social change. Ironically, it is deemed taboo to ask higher education institutions to do better at employing research, teaching, and service as values rather than mere words in an “About Us” section.
Dr. Branden D. Elmore
Having been a graduate student at the University of Cincinnati in the summer of 2015, when Samuel Dubose, a Black man and non-university-affiliated Cincinnati resident, was shot and killed by a white university police officer July 19, I have watched and documented an academic institution become the center of world news for starkly similar reasons. Dubose’s murder took place just six days after Sandra Bland was found dead in her jail cell while in police custody after being pulled over and arrested during a traffic stop. Bland was followed and pulled over on University Drive in Prairie View, Texas — a road that travels in and from Prairie View A&M University, where she graduated in 2009. For these occurrences to have so much connection to the academy, it baffles me that conveniently while everyone is off for break, higher education institutions appear not to have a statement or protocol for responding to summer incidents.
A crucial part of this problem is systemic antiblackness within higher education institutions. Anti-blackness manifests in various forms, from microaggressions and systemic bias to overt acts of exclusion and violence. For instance, during the recent pro-Palestine protests, Black professor Dr. Tiffany Willoughby-Herard was escorted off the campus of University of California, Irvine (UCI) for participating alongside her students. At the same time, at institutions across the nation, law enforcement officers were called to remove student protestors by use of excessive force, mass arrests, and tactics that mirrored Civil Rights protests of the 1960s. These specific examples highlight the ingrained antiblackness within our institutions. These actions are not isolated incidents but part of a broader pattern where Black voices and protests are often met with disproportionate responses, reflecting deep-seated racial biases that continue to reoccur at our higher education institutions.
My minoritized positioning as a Black and gay man in the academy has, in some ways, placed me at the center of the reckoning of these issues. I often think, just because I am Black and gay does not mean that I am the spokesperson for all things Black and gay — similarly, as a higher ed practitioner who focuses on diversity, I am not responsible for all things diversity. But the academy is Black and gay and diverse, and so much more. However, when identity-based discrimination takes place within the academy, a response is warranted. All too often in these situations, those directly impacted are the sole responders.
Relying on the moral credit of higher education does nothing to shift comfort. During the 2020 George Floyd protests, the number of institutional statements that later turned into listening sessions, and eventually hiring of diverse staff to “fix” the very issues related to their own identities, to more recently, many of those same individuals losing their jobs as outcomes of the racialized attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), only presents discomfort in knowing that the moral imperative that my colleagues and institutions I am in community with talk about is not a true imperative at all. In full transparency, being on the scholarly side of things, I have never given too much of my faith to an academic system that seems to only want to pretend to see things through, without ever desiring to critique the lens through which it sees them.
In hindsight, I revere those who, like me, lean into the painful and undervalued parts of themselves and find meaningful ways to enact change within a system that does not love us back. I have chosen to intentionally not share the details of Massey’s murder. Instead, I hope the names Sonya Massey, Samuel DuBose, and Sandra Bland remind my beloved higher education community that we have a responsibility to lead social change.
