When Administrators Make Mistakes

Hurricanes are blowing over American universities — blustery winds of ideological disagreement, political distrust, and lots of anger over racial injustice and the marginalization of subordinated groups, all fueled and fed by social media. Under such intense pressure, senior administrators are making mistakes.

One such storm touched down recently at Yale Law School. Trent Colbert, a second-year law student, sent an invitation to classmates announcing a “trap house” party cosponsored by the Native American Law Students Association and the Federalist Society to celebrate Constitution Day. Some found the email — with its use of the phrase “trap house,” its mention that Popeyes’ chicken would be served, and its reference to the conservative Federalist Society — racist and offensive. Students complained, and administrators responded by privately pressuring Colbert to apologize and publicly condemning his email as racist. The administrators were in turn condemned for their response — their conduct labeled cowardly, incompetent, deplorable.

Yale is not unique. Storms have touched down in recent years at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, Georgetown Law, University of Illinois at Chicago School of Law, and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, to name just a few. The fact patterns are similar. Something happens — in class, on a final exam, or outside of class — that students find racist or otherwise offensive. Students protest — they demand statements of condemnation, swift action and public accountability. Administrators respond — they condemn, they punish, they disavow — and they do so quickly. Administrators are then pilloried — for overreach, for trampling academic freedom, for moving too quickly, for getting the facts wrong.

As the former dean of Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, I understand well the pressure that deans and other senior administrators are under. They are neither incompetent nor dumb. They are instead caught in powerful crosswinds that make it likely that even the best administrators — perhaps especially the best administrators — will make bad decisions. Here is why.

First, most administrators care deeply about their students. All the administrators I have known over the years have taken on their roles because they care deeply about students and student success.

This means that when students experience pain in the classroom, or in their school more generally, administrators care and want to help. So when students say they are hurt — perhaps by the use of a redacted but identifiable racial epithet in a fact pattern about race discrimination in a law-school exam — administrators may feel pulled to try to mitigate their discomfort. This at times risks not only academic freedom for colleagues but important learning for students.

Second, many administrators believe they have much to learn from students. Particularly over the last two years, administrators of my demographic — white and middle-aged and representing a large percentage of administrators — worry a lot about what they are missing when it comes to race.

Many believe in unconscious bias. Many believe in — and in my case research — systemic discrimination. Many know that students of color experience the world in a way that is different from how they do.

So when students express that classrooms are racist, administrators may respond by requiring trainings — trainings that often tell faculty members how to think, not just how to act, and trainings that often increase rather than decrease unconscious bias.

Most administrators like to bring people together and build community. The administrators I know are not faculty extremists, they are coalition builders. They believe in sharing ideas and finding common ground. So when students report they have been insulted by faculty members or other students, many administrators apologize and ask others to apologize in order to rebuild community. This is regardless of whether the “offenders” have transgressed any actual policy or rule.

Lastly, many administrators — and hopefully all of them — are proud of their institutions. They are cheerleaders for their campus’s accomplishments and guardians of its reputation. So when students threaten to “go to the press” if their demands are not met, administrators may give in, and give in quickly — even if they believe the best response is slower and more deliberative action.

Professors teach students to embrace complexity, to “lean in” to ambiguity, to frame opposing viewpoints in the strongest possible terms. No issues are more complex and nuanced than those related to race, gender, equity, and social justice. Reasonable people can and will disagree about what is discriminatory, racist, misogynistic, or transphobic. Yet, particularly on these issues, administrators are being pushed to deny complexity, to ignore ambiguity and to denigrate opposing viewpoints. They must resist. Not only are individual reputations at stake, so is the education of our students.