How Should Universities Respond to Racism?

What is the role of colleges in fighting racial injustice? How can campus conversations about race become more productive? At a recent Chronicle event, two leading scholars — Harvard Law School’s Randall Kennedy and Georgetown University’s Marcia Chatelain — debated these crucial and unsettled questions. Kennedy is the author of Say it Loud! On Race, Law, History, and Culture, a book of essays exploring some of today’s key social-justice debates, including commentary on anti-racism and free speech in higher education. Chatelain is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, which explores how fast-food companies offered Black Americans a path to wealth, social mobility and a role in consumerism — but at a cost. Professors Kennedy and Chatelain spoke with the Chronicle‘s Sarah Brown. Watch a recording of the full interview here, or read highlights below. The dialogue has been edited for clarity.

Sarah Brown: What should we expect from our universities in terms of leadership on racial justice?

Randall Kennedy: The question is a bit ambiguous because “expect” can mean two different things. It can mean aspiration — what are your highest expectations? Or it can be descriptive — what do you think’s going to happen? I’ll take both.

What do I think will happen? I think that institutions are going to respond largely to those who shout the loudest and apply the most pressure. In the last few months, we’ve seen an extraordinary effort to muzzle and inhibit racial-justice talk. A number of states have passed laws attacking so-called critical race theory and other efforts to acquaint students with the racial realities of American society. I think that our institutions are probably going to knuckle under and not fight hard enough against this trend.

I would hope that universities and colleges would rally around the central purpose of higher education, which is to create and disseminate knowledge. I view that as a sacred mission.

Brown: Professor Chatelain, how should our universities reckon with their histories of racism?

Marcia Chatelain: The university can be two things at the same time. First, it is a place in which leaders have to be held accountable for their decisions by a larger public — not just students, parents, and donors, but the larger public that often subsidizes the university and feels the consequences of its choices. Second, universities are uniquely situated because of their pursuit of knowledge.

So what role do they play in terms of racial justice? They should be held accountable in the same ways that we hold government entities, banks, and private businesses accountable. Their responsibilities to repair are vast, because they’ve been able to exploit certain types of inequality in our society. We can’t just be observers, saying, “There are all these movements happening, that’s interesting or novel.” We are always indicted in these cycles of history.

Sometimes these conversations get muddled by the idea that universities have to be a space in which every idea is brought to the fore and equally valued. But universities don’t actually operate in that way. We have a level of vetting and a commitment to fact. There are conventions around what makes a person an established authority, or not.

Brown: The concept of anti-racism appears frequently on college campuses today. Professor Kennedy, I wonder what you think about anti-racism as a framework for change in higher education.

Kennedy: Sensible anti-racism — great! That’s wonderful. I think everyone should be engaged in trying to make our society better, and that would entail actively confronting racist policies, actions, and decisions. I’m all for that.

Now, I said “sensible.” I’m not for everything that calls itself anti-racism. People need to be critical and attentive, because even well-intentioned people — even people who are aiming to confront evils — can do things that are counterproductive and stupid. The label isn’t enough.

And if we’re talking about higher education, let’s remember first principles. Leaders in higher education should always be attentive to the question, “Does this advance the mission of creating, protecting, and disseminating knowledge?” Everything else should be subordinate to that.

Chatelain: I am not necessarily uncomfortable with the toughest language around these issues. I think that there is a place for saying, “This is enough, and this is where we draw the line.” We want to create an environment in which the pursuit of knowledge is possible, but institutional and interpersonal issues obstruct that all the time — whether we have a culture that is rife with harassment or abuse, or an environment in which there is no mobility for people who are at the margins.

Brown: I want to explore what happens when students call for hateful speech to be punished or silenced, because they believe it’s harmful to them and to the campus climate. Professor Kennedy, you have been a strong advocate of free speech throughout your career. Do you think there’s room in this debate to consider how hateful language makes students feel? Are there any situations in which colleges could restrict speech in the name of promoting inclusion?

Kennedy: I think we need a discussion about what “hateful” means. Critical race theory is under attack and has been essentially prohibited by law in some institutions of learning. Why? Because it is deemed to be hateful. Donald Trump called critical race theory racist. So we need to be very vigilant: What do we mean by hateful? What do we mean by racist? These are terms that can be thrown around willy-nilly.

It seems to me that institutions of higher education ought to be open to a full discussion of all ideas. That’s why I am so appalled by the attack on what people refer to as critical race theory. It’s under attack by people who have at their control the levers of state power. It seems to me that anyone interested in higher education needs to be attentive to that.

Brown: Professor Chatelain, you don’t necessarily feel that colleges should be open spaces for all ideas.

Chatelain: In higher education, we’re trying to create a context in which inquiry and discussion and engagement are in service of elevating the very best of our society. I actually really believe that, as cynical as I like to be! Certain ideas do not do that and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying so. There are ideas that are nefarious and undermine the ability to learn.

The conversation around freedom of speech and freedom of expression can very quickly go to this place in which we say, “We have to protect free speech at all costs.” Well, we don’t have to do anything. We don’t have to have standards for tenure and promotion, but we do. We have these standards because we believe we are doing something that is profoundly important.

When universities get into the weeds about who is invited to campus — well, we’re not banquet halls! People put a deposit on a banquet hall, and they have a wedding. That’s not what we do. We have standards for the pursuit of knowledge and standards for engagement, and we can use those standards so that we don’t undermine our own mission.

All of these professional trolls out there — everyone knows they’re not serious. Can we just cut the crap? Do we believe that these people are so committed to the ideas of white nationalism that they have to come on our campuses to talk about it? This is not a real thing. We know this. I’m so irritated by this back and forth, because it gets in the way of doing the purest and most sacred work that we can do.

Kennedy: I would completely agree that we have standards. After all, we grade papers. We say that this person has better ideas than that person. Of course we shouldn’t think that all ideas are equal.

The thing that concerns me is that more and more places seem to have situations in which a student will say, “There are certain words that cannot be said.” I wrote a book, and if a teacher were to name that book, that teacher would be disciplined in some universities. That, it seems to me, is a bad thing.

Chatelain: I think the point isn’t a culture run amok around policing, but the failure of pedagogy. The book’s title is the racial slur that starts with the letter “N,” in case anyone doesn’t know. There are many faculty members who do not have the talent, the gravitas, the sensitivity, and the thoughtfulness to teach your book. I have seen people who are out of their depth when trying to sensitively and thoughtfully engage the difficult history of that word.

But I also know lots of colleagues who are teaching your work — I teach some of your essays in my class — and we don’t run into these problems. We don’t recklessly introduce material without serious thought and conversation with our students. We create a pedagogical model in which we can do the tough work.

Kennedy: Some teachers may do a very bad job — let’s assume that. Many teachers at some point do a bad job —

Chatelain: Absolutely.

Kennedy: — but that’s not why they are being disciplined. They are being disciplined because university leaders are buckling in response to those who make the most noise. Sometimes it’s people on the left, more often it’s people on the right. Our institutional life is going to suffer when we don’t stand up for certain core principles. And one core principle ought to be that ideas — all ideas, even the most reprehensible — ought to be subject to discussion. There should not be a word or an idea that is untouchable.

Chatelain: And I think that our students are learning and growing and that we have to incrementally and thoughtfully guide them through that process. This is why good teachers, in my experience, do not have these moments in the classroom — because they’ve thought about what they’re doing. To openly use racial slurs in a moment in which the majority of my students have watched someone die on their smartphone? These students saw the election of, essentially, a white nationalist. Maybe it’s time to take the temperature of the room before we introduce certain ideas — not because it’s not important to teach those ideas, but because we’re always teaching in a context. The way we taught the day after September 11 is not the way that we taught the day after holiday break. There’s a real human element that needs to be part of the conversation as well.