Colleges Can Recover From Racial Crisis by Taking a Lesson From Mizzou

What does it really take for a college to recover from a racial crisis? That’s the question a team of researchers explores in a new American Council on Education report, which spotlights the University of Missouri at Columbia and the 2015 protests that have become a lesson in leadership turmoil across higher education.

The report documents what researchers call the “first phase of healing,” covering the 18 months after student activism against racism and leaders’ inaction forced the Missouri system’s president to resign. Researchers compiled information from extensive interviews with dozens of people at Missouri, with the cooperation of the system and the campus, and from news articles and other early research about the fallout from the protests.

Many campus leaders will simply create a task force and put together a report after a racial crisis because that’s what they believe will resolve the issues at hand, said Adrianna Kezar, a professor and co-director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern California, who helped lead the research team.

Instead, Kezar said, college officials should reflect on what it means to have the “capacity” to respond effectively when a racist incident occurs — and adjust their approach accordingly.

Turmoil at Mizzou

In 2015, student protests over race relations rocked the University of Missouri’s flagship campus, in Columbia, and spawned a wave of similar unrest at colleges across the country. Read more Chronicle coverage of the turmoil in Missouri and its aftermath.

• Students Should Feel Like ‘Equal Partners,’ Says New Diversity Officer
• Melissa Click, Professor Who Riled Free-Speech Advocates, Is Fired
• What It’s Like to Be Black at the U. of Missouri
• Thrust Into a National Debate on Race, 2 Missouri Chiefs Resign

“High capacity,” the researchers wrote, means that college leaders have moved beyond rhetorical commitments to diversity, spent ample time listening to the experiences of students and employees, made inequity a problem for everyone to solve, not just the chief diversity officer, and created a culture of openness and trust.

In contrast, institutions with a handful of campus programs devoted to diversity but no overarching framework or plan, the researchers said, have a “low capacity” for dealing with racial tensions. Many administrators at such colleges may find diversity work to be an obligation, not a fundamental part of the institutional mission.

At the height of the 2015 protests, the report says, Mizzou was in the “low capacity” category. But that’s started to change. The researchers crafted two frameworks for campus officials to think through, and outlined how Mizzou, as well as a few other institutions, had worked within them.

One visualizes what it’s like for a campus to process trauma, in a cycle with four elements: anger, distrust, fear, and fatigue. The other highlights the three steps of recovery: active listening, speaking from the heart, and “acting with,” which means including students, faculty, staff, and community members in any decisions about where to go next.

Here are three of the questions the report examined.

What does it mean to speak from the heart?

It can feel uncomfortable to talk candidly about racism and injustice, the researchers wrote. College leaders often worry about making a mistake, being videotaped, and becoming the target of public shame, said Sharon L. Fries-Britt, a professor of higher education at the University of Maryland at College Park who also helped lead the research team. So administrators rely on formulaic, prepared statements.

“All of this fear in some ways paralyzes leaders in their ability to find the places where they can talk out loud and think out loud,” she said. Instead, the report says, officials should embrace vulnerability and emotion.

Right after Michael A. Middleton was named interim president of the University of Missouri system, in 2015, he spoke at length about Mizzou’s history of racism. It helped that he could draw on his personal experience as a black Mizzou undergraduate in the 1960s, the report says, but any campus leader can recognize the past and take responsibility for it.

Two graduate students at Mizzou also organized “racial healing circles” in hopes of creating a space for people to work through their anger out loud and defusing tensions. All campus leaders can support those kinds of venues for open conversation about the impact of racism, the report says.

College leaders should also acknowledge the people who pushed them to take racism more seriously. In Mizzou’s case, the report says, “students made enormous sacrifices — they fasted, led marches, camped out during exams, reached out to external groups for advice and support, and strategized with community leaders.” The university’s diversity office later documented their demands and efforts.

How do you make amends with angry people who felt they weren’t being listened to?

After a racist incident occurs, administrators often act defensively and make excuses, the researchers wrote. That can compound a problem created when campus leaders already aren’t listening to students and others who’ve sounded the alarm about racism, the report says.

Community forums in the immediate aftermath of a crisis, in which people are encouraged to air criticisms of how a college handled the events in question, are one basic step.

But it’s easy for such people to become cynical, Fries-Britt said, because they’re tired of seeing a lack of institutional commitment to improving racial equity. They don’t want to attend yet another dialogue session or serve on yet another task force, because they don’t see how it’ll matter.

So college leaders should ensure that there are multiple two-way channels of communication for feedback from the campus community to reach them — and they should regularly check and make sure those channels are working. In other words, Kezar said, are there places where people can make it known — and feel heard — that they’ve experienced prejudice?

It might be through formal groups like staff assemblies, or informal outreach to students on social media. The University of Missouri system’s board now hosts a luncheon at each of its meetings at which students and faculty members are invited to tell board members what’s on their minds.

Making time to interact with students in ways that aren’t formulaic is key, no matter the size of the campus, said Lorelle Espinosa, vice president for research at the American Council on Education. “The time that leaders spend on the ground with students,” she said, “will serve them in the long run in ways they won’t anticipate now.”

Once the initial crisis cools, then what?

A few months after a crisis, campuses can feel quiet, as though things are going back to normal, the report says. College leaders might think they’re “done,” Kezar said. That’s a problem. “In fact,” the report says, “quiet most often means that problems are simmering just below surface, which only invites setbacks.”

Many administrators don’t have a deep understanding of how much a racial crisis can emotionally devastate their campus, Kezar said. For many of the people at Mizzou who researchers interviewed about the 2015 protests, she said, “it feels like it just happened yesterday.”

One way for administrators to show that they’re in it for the long haul is for them to focus on their own professional development. They might work with an expert on how to speak openly about racial injustice, power, and privilege, the report says.

It’ll take time for college leaders to demonstrate that what they’re doing isn’t a one-off commitment. Over the ensuing months, they must ensure that the language they use to talk about race and racism is consistent. And their actions, too. For instance, administrators can’t say they’re going to do a climate survey and then not share the results with the campus, Fries-Britt said.

At Mizzou, people expressed confidence in the leadership team that took over from the administrators who were ousted in 2015. They felt that people like Mun Y. Choi, the Missouri system’s president, and Alexander N. Cartwright, the Mizzou chancellor, would be able to handle racial tensions long before they escalated.

One person who was interviewed put it this way: “I think there are some key people in place now who do the collective groundwork to avoid a long-term crisis. I think there’s a lot more listening by a few key individuals, a lot of awareness.”

Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.