A tale of two complaints: a case study in double standards

"What might contests arise from trivial things"

If you like my work, please consider a paid subscription, or share it with a friend! If you hate my work, share it with your enemies!

Join me, if you will, on a journey to a place where judging people based on skin colour is considered “anti-racist”; where rich girls publicly humiliating janitors and lunch ladies is “equity”; and where a brief Facebook post making unsupported allegations of racial discrimination will trigger an exhaustive, three-month long investigation. But a carefully documented, lengthy official complaint of racial discrimination will garner the bureaucratic equivalent of a shrug. 

That place is Smith College, a storied liberal institution in the picturesque New England town of Northampton, where tuition is $75,000 a year. But like many, many other elite institutions, Smith is currently in the grip of a fervent witch-hunt that is chasing the ghosts of racism past.

One (now former) employee, Jodi Shaw, has brought all this to light with a series of Youtube videos that managed to get the attention of a variety of well-known conservative and anti-woke media figures. This despite the fact that Jodi herself is a life-long liberal, a graduate of Smith College (1993) and former member of the Socialist Workers Party. I interviewed her late last year (see here for full article), and she candidly told me “we have racism and sexism raging on the left.”

I agree with that blunt statement, the question is: why are so many on the liberal left so puzzlingly blind to it?

SHAW VS SMITH:

Last year, Jodi Shaw, a self-described desk jockey at Smith’s Department of Residential Life, filed a complaint against her employer for alleging that she was subjected to a racially hostile workplace and that the distress this caused was interfering with her ability to do her job. 

She wrote, in her complaint filed in May 2020:

During my employment at Smith College the administration and multiple departments have engaged in a pattern of conduct that fuels a workplace climate of fear, hostility, exclusion and intimidation. This climate not only allows individual acts of race-based discrimination and hostility to flourish, but also intensifies the impact of the individual acts of hostility and discrimination I have experienced.”

The complaint, which is 76 pages long and single spaced, goes on to carefully detail multiple instances of anti-white actions and a consistent drumbeat of anti-white messaging undertaken by Smith College administrators. It paints a picture of Stalinesque levels of recrimination and blame even in the most banal situations, for example: 

“Members of one of Smith’s academic departments, upon failing to hire a person of color for a tenure-track faculty position were mandated to attend an anti-racist training. In other words, the college assumed the hiring of a white person to be a racist act, and as such, the entire department needed to be “trained” to be “anti-racist.” This is in spite of the fact that the department’s first offer had been to a person of color.” 

When that person turned down the job, this resulted in further contortions in order to hire another person of colour, including the creation of an additional position. But in the end, the last candidate standing was a white male, and was offered the job.

POLICIES GROUNDED IN RACE-BASED ASSUMPTIONS

She also details how students are negatively impacted. 

“Since beginning my position in Residence Life, I have observed colleagues making unsubstantiated race-based assumptions about white students, specifically that white (presenting) students have an across-the-board advantage over students who are not white… One specific group of students (white, or, at least those who are assumed to be white) is imputed with a different set of motives and advantages and all others (non-white) are assumed to be at a disadvantage. I am expected to align my responses to and interactions with students according to this set of assumptions… I have observed multiple instances of disparate treatment of students based on these race-based assumptions.”

She described a situation in which, after Massachusetts legalised the use of marijuana, the college’s residences saw a large uptick in requests from students to be moved to different housing, because of the large increase in    students smoking in their dorms. This presented a quandary, because state law notwithstanding, Smith prohibits smoking marijuana anywhere on campus. So any student smoking in a residential area was breaking college rules. Instead of simply enforcing these existing rules to protect the students who did not want to live with marijuana smokers, Shaw was told that doing so would traumatise students of colour, because students of colour have been traumatised by police.

“When I asked how we could possibly know which students had experienced unfair treatment by police, [Shaw was told] it was well-known that people of color experience unfair treatment by police. While I already knew and understood this, I understood it as a statistical fact, and as such, could not assume it to be true (or not) for any individual in particular. We have no way of discerning what an individual student on our campus actually feels about police presence (including white students) unless we ask them. In short, I was being instructed to attribute thoughts and feelings to students based on their skin color when in reality, I cannot know what anyone feels, regardless of skin color, unless they actually tell me… In other words, she was asking me to adhere to a policy grounded in race-based assumptions about how students feel, and tailor my response according to those assumptions.”

Shaw herself had multiple run-ins with supervisors in this overheated and highly pressurised environment, which she methodically laid out in her complaint. She also goes into detail about her experiences working at the Smith library (the job she was originally hired to do in 2017), before racial politics became a major focus of the college. In these passages she describes an engaged group of professionals working together to provide a high level of library services to students. 

 But that was before the race mania broke out. What really stands out in her complaint is just how single-mindedly the entire administration focused on a white-versus-black narrative that was simply not borne out by the actual conditions at Smith. The racism they were chasing was ephemeral, but their obsessive pursuit of it created another racist climate that was downright encouraged — even mandated.

“Smith College makes clear to the Smith community that there is a single, pre-defined manner in which a white person is expected to think about, “understand” and verbalize thoughts around their race/color. The college condones and colludes in perpetuating actions and statements that indicate white people should be treated differently from everyone else based simply upon their skin color. Smith accomplishes this through constant direct and indirect messaging ranging from lectures, workshops, posters, flyers, “affinity” luncheons to direct statements made by colleagues and supervisors. One example of such messaging was Josh Miller’s widely attended lecture (Otelia Cromwell Day, November 2018) where he told his audience “Racism is in our [white people’s] DNA.” and “If you are white and have ever accomplished anything in your life it is not because you worked hard, it is because of your skin color…

This pressure results in an atmosphere of intimidation and fear, in which white staff (and white students) are singled out and treated differently from everyone else.”

The response to Shaw’s explosive complaint? A three-page document that only gave the broad outlines of her complaint; and stated that the outside investigator they had hired found the Smith administrators’ actions were “legitimate.” The word “legitimate” is used 5 times in the three-page document. Shaw’s concerns about how these policies affect students are unmentioned.

Shaw’s attempts to make her case to the local student newspaper also fell on deaf ears, despite the fact that she says she has received many private messages and had many conversations with others offering her support. On November 2, the same day Amy Hunter, the college’s Director of Equal Opportunity and Compliance, dismissed Shaw’s official complaint, the Smith College student newspaper The Sophian posted a story about Shaw’s videos, the first of which she had posted only a few days earlier.   The Sophian story was all of 9 paragraphs, and it isn’t until the last one that they quote Shaw herself — even though the story is purportedly about her.

“The Sophian reached out to Shaw to ask about the claims she made in the first video. She alleged that on two separate occasions since July 31, 2018, she had been discriminated against for being white, claiming that she had been denied an important professional opportunity because she was white and that her race had been used as “justification for the behavior she was subjected to”. Although Shaw claimed she had email evidence of the first incident – which she seemed to later use in her latest video – she declined to forward this email to The Sophian and declined to explain what happened in this second incident. She also didn’t elaborate on how she felt Smith mishandled the July 31 incident and didn’t say how many staff members she had spoken to who had agreed with her – or if any of them were non-white.”

What this post did not address was the six-page Q & A Shaw had written and sent to The Sophian staff, full text of which can be found footnoted ¹at the bottom of this essay. In the wide-ranging interview, Shaw makes clear that she agrees with the stated aims of “equity and inclusion” and “racial justice,” just not the means the college was employing to achieve those aims. She considers at length how she would respond to students of colour “who may feel uncomfortable contacting you now,” writing “I honor and respect the thoughts, feelings and ideas of all students, even if they are different from mine.”

The student journalists saw fit to include none of this in their story, nor did they mention the fact that another Smith employee, Tracey Culver, had made claims very similar to Jodi’s in 2019 — claims that were hyperlinked in the text that Shaw sent them.  

That was last November. In February this year, Shaw resigned from her job and rejected a settlement offer from the college, citing her “need to tell the truth and be the kind of woman Smith taught [her] to be.”

KANOUTE VS SMITH

Now let’s contrast Shaw’s experience with that of a Smith student, a young black woman who before starting at Smith was a student at another exclusive, leafy New England educational institution, the Westminster School, where tuition for boarding students tops out at over $65,000 a year.

In July 2018 Kanoute posted on her Facebook page about an encounter with college staff and campus police that she characterised as racial profiling. The post — which it seems has only recently been taken down (I was able to access it as late as last year) — stated “I did nothing wrong. I wasn’t making any noise or bothering anyone. All I did was be black.”

She also posted a video of her conversation with the campus police officer, with a text overlay saying “now he is apologising on behalf of the racist punk who called police on me for absolutely nothing.”

The video, which is no longer available but which I watched from her Facebook page last year, shows a conversation between Kanoute and the security officer in which the officer is downright friendly. Kanoute herself seems largely unbothered, responding to his apology by matter-of-factly saying “it’s OK, it’s just like, the kind of stuff that happens way too often, that people feel threatened.”

Her post went viral. Smith College immediately sprung into action, and mass media attention swiftly followed. In one interview, a few days after the incident, Kanoute said despite her calm and polite interaction with the campus officer, she “had a complete meltdown” afterwards, thinking about her three younger sisters and how they might have handled it. “It’s just not ok,” she says to the television reporter, her face crumpled, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Hopefully you don’t have to go through that, but if you do, just be strong and be smart and use your phone in case anything happens to you.”

What was being lost in all the furore was that, contrary to her claim that she did “nothing wrong”, Kanoute was in fact in a room that was off-limits for the summer, and therefore was literally out of place, not metaphorically or racially out of place. What wasn’t mentioned in the midst of Kanoute’s media moment was the campus regulations that require staff to report to campus police anytime someone is where they are not supposed to be.

As far as I can tell from the coverage I’ve seen, no one pressed her on exactly why this very brief and polite conversation with a campus officer — who actually recognised her as a student and went so far as to apologise — was so terribly traumatising to her. Why would this be something that, days after the fact, was so upsetting it would cause her to cry on camera? 

That question was never asked. Kanoute’s reliability or motive was accepted entirely at face value, with the highest ranking college officials tripping over themselves to issue grovelling apologies. An investigation was ordered. Training for staff was rolled out, before the investigation even began, with the college president announcing: 

"Beginning this fall, every Smith staff member will be required to participate in mandatory anti-bias training. In addition, the Office of Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (OIDE), in partnership with Human Resources and the School for Social Work, will hold a series of workshops for faculty and staff focused specifically on topics of identity, inclusion, bias-response and bias-prevention.”   

A few weeks later, president Kathleen McCartney released yet another soul-searching statement about Kanoute’s claims, saying “let us ask ourselves how we move from different perspectives… to a deeper understanding and needed structural changes.” 

Three months after Kanoute’s post, the attorneys who were brought in to investigate the incident released a report that went into forensic detail, down to the floor plans of the building where it took place. With exhibits the report was nearly two hundred pages long. 

Its conclusion? The staff were simply acting in accordance with the rules of the college and the investigators,  lawyers specialising in civil rights and education law, could not support Kanoute’s claim of racist motivations. Nor could Kanoute herself “point to anything that supported the claim she made on Facebook of a yearlong “pattern of discrimination.”

But the harm had already been done: in August, Kanoute had publicly named staff members she mistakenly thought were responsible for calling the campus police, in a Facebook post in which she called them racists. One of the employees wasn’t even working at the time of the incident; the college publicly confirmed that the other employee had not been the person to call the police. Yet Kanoute published their photos, names and emails. One of them found hateful notes on her car and in her mailbox, received threatening phone calls at home, and she ended up in hospital. The other, a man who had worked as a janitor at the college for 21 years, quit. 

As Alexander Pope wrote in his mock heroic epic poem Rape of the Lock:

“What mighty contests arise from trivial things.”

A TALE OF TWO TREATMENTS:

In January, Shaw posted a video comparing and contrasting the differences in how Smith College treated the two cases -- the Facebook post making unfounded accusations by the student (who also subsequently doxed low-paid Smith workers); and Shaw’s formal and wide-ranging complaint alleging a hostile work environment based on race.

In the video, Shaw holds up the thick stack of papers that constitute the investigation into, as Shaw says, “one Facebook post, for one allegation.”  

“They found no evidence of racial bias, and yet the college continued in its quest to end the systemic racism on campus.”

She holds up the sliver of a response her complaint received, alongside but in sharp contrast to, the hefty report into the admitted non-incident involving Kanoute.

She then asks a devastatingly simple question: “Does it seem like we are treated differently based on skin colour?”

LIBERALS, IT’S PAST TIME TO CONFRONT THE CRISIS IN YOUR MIDST

The Smith College story gets to the heart of everything that is wrong with what passes for liberalism in the English-speaking world right now. Which is perhaps why Shaw’s crusade against the college has garnered so much attention.

The bottom line is this: not enough well-meaning liberals/lefties are speaking out against the in-your-face hypocrites, racists and misogynists who are hiding among them. And when I say hiding, I’m being kind. They are not hiding anymore. They have seized control of the liberals, their narrative, their institutions, and their companies. The liberals — who, I stress, genuinely believe they are acting in the best interests of humanity as a whole — are being used to provide moral cover for an ideology reminiscent of Stalinism, bent on dividing us by race, sex, and belief.

The most frustrating thing out of many frustrating things in this awful situation is the fact that when you head on over to the liberal side of things, you find presented an argument eerily similar to the one I’m making. It’s like being stuck in a perpetual game of “I know you are but what am I” — except the grown-up version makes you question your sanity, your values, your intellect, and is not just a playground taunt. 

A friend recently sent me an episode of the NPR show “On the Media,” in which Brooke Gladstone interviews a former “conservative”. As a former “liberal", I felt like I stepped through the looking glass.

In a serious tone reminiscent of an old explorer puzzling over the obscure ways of a long-forgotten tribe, Gladstone asks:

“What do those [on the right]… actually want?” 

One of the examples her guest gave was longer paid maternity leave. 

Her response? A scornful snort and “He wants more women to stay home having babies!”

Here again is the double standard. A policy that is a core tenet of liberal feminism and the social democratic countries they often praise, is shared by a conservative who is “broadly” (whatever that means) aligned with Trump. Therefore the host, who is supposed to be an objective party in this discussion, doesn’t just dismiss it out of hand, she makes it into evidence of some kind of dystopian Hand Maid’s Tale nightmare, evidence of the worst possible character and intent. A chance for a rare policy consensus is lost.

Liberals: remove the log from your eyes before you try to fix your brother’s vision. Before it is too late. 

1. Jodi Shaw Interview Smith College Sophian; Sent to The Sophian on Saturday, October 31, 2021

Thanks for taking the time to respond. A written interview would be great. I have a few questions, but they basically boil down to the question of what exactly led you to this point. Doing the video was obviously a drastic measure, and you make a lot of serious claims about the college--that it promoted a culture that emboldened students to abuse staff, that you feared for the physical safety of yourself and your family. But here are the questions in bullet points:

To clarify, the statement I made about fearing for physical safety was in reference to the fear of what can and does happen if/when staff are accused (by students in particular) of racism. This is a legitimate fear, as staff we have all seen what happens to staff who are publicly accused of racially motivated behavior; they have endured verbal and written messages threatening their safety (even death threats) that were directed to them in their private homes. This is true even though the allegations of racism were in one case completely false and in and in the other, later discovered to be unfounded. One individual in particular still receives threatening phone calls and letters more than two years after the fact, in spite of not even being involved in any way with the originating incident.

I also want to say many other journalists have requested interviews. I am purposefully giving The Sophian the first interview as I believe this is a community matter, and my aim above all is to improve our own community (specifically working conditions) here at Smith. In this way I am trusting you to be as accurate and objective as possible. If so, then we can continue to have a relationship and conversation and I move through this new method of very public communication with the college!

What specifically compelled you to make the video? You wrote in a Facebook post you wanted the college to talk about the July 31 incident, but it doesn't seem like that's the only thing on your mind, as you say that Smith has engaged in behavior towards you that has pushed you over the line. 

You are correct --July 31, 2018 is not the only thing on my mind but it is an extremely important contextual factor. The college’s method of handling this event is seminal; I attribute much of the current hostile work environment to the college’s behavior in response to that incident. How the college responded to the original allegation and to other allegations following it easily constitute (collectively), one of the biggest moral failings I have ever personally witnessed in my lifetime. 

Smith staff member and alum Tracey Culver described well the effect the college’s behavior in response to this incident on staff in an open letter. This letter was originally published in The Republican (the Hampshire Gazette refused to publish the letter, maybe you can ask them why). You can find the text of the letter on Mass Live, but will have to scroll down through to the bottom of the article to see the actual letter. In her letter, Tracey describes how Smith’s handling of this incident contributed to the current environment of “fear, hostility and exclusion.” This kind of environment is the exact opposite of what the college is purportedly committed to achieving. As far as I know the college did not take any steps to remedy the issues Culver pointed out in her letter. 

So this is the racially-charged, mis-managed backdrop against which my own experiences of racial hostility at Smith occurred. On two occasions since July 31, 2018, I was singled out solely based upon my observable skin color and subjected to discimrinatory and hostile behavior. In the first instance I was denied an important professional opportunity “because you are white.” This statement was memorialized in an email. The allegations of July 31, 2018 (which were as of that time still unverified) were cited as justification for denying me this opportunity based solely upon my skin color. The fact that my supervisor could so explicitly engage in workplace discrimination against me based upon my skin color, with the full faith and backing of the college, without any hesitation whatsoever, says a lot about how far we have strayed from the actual principles of racial justice. My supervisor was clearly basing his actions on the “script,” the one that tells us that because white people have privilege and power simply by virtue of their skin color, it is perfectly acceptable (and even desirable, in some cases, for purposes of proving how morally enlightened one is) to engage in blatant discmrination against them.

The second incident occurred more recently in the department of Residence Life. In this instance my race was also singled out as the justification for the behavior I was subjected to.

I will be discussing both of these incidents in much more detail in future videos. I will also of course be discussing the events and aftermath of July 31, 2018 in great detail, including the behind-the-scenes decision-making, the reprehensible treatment of staff and the damages to individuals and to the community that have resulted. There is a lot to this story and I encourage any investigative journalist (maybe even you?) to take on the task of unearthing the facts surrounding this situation, that are as of now completely excluded from the public narrative.

Is there a particular incident you're talking about when you say that the college is emboldening students to abuse staff? 

Yes, I can think of multiple incidents, which for many reasons I will not disclose specifically in this medium at this time. I will say however that the Smith administration had the power and the opportunity (and in my mind, a moral imperative), to correct a dishonest public narrative about the incidents of July 31, 2018 and part of this failure included refusing to hold the student involved accountable for what I believe was injurious behavior directed toward individual staff members immediately following this event. In this way, the student (in my opinion) was then emboldened to continue to engage in what (again, in my opinion) constitutes abusive behavior toward this individual staff member and other individuals at the college. 

Within this context, the fact that the college continues to create initiatives and mandates intended to compel allegiance to what is clearly a disingenuous devotion to so-called principles of “equity and inclusion” is mind blowing. To call Smith’s current commitment to “equity and inclusion” hypocritical would be a kind assessment.

A particular incident or student allegation that made you fear for the physical safety of yourself and your family? 

I have not been the target of any allegations nor have I received any specific threats to myself or my family. But as stated in my video, the potential exists for any staff member who is the target of a student allegation -even if unfounded- to result in an outcome that is disastrous for the staff member. Simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time can result in serious damage. And now we are well aware that the college will not take steps to rectify these serious misunderstandings. 

About how many staff members have you spoken to who have agreed with you?

I will only say that I have spoken in private to many, many staff members, before the video and after who agree that the current climate at Smith is hostile, and that the administration's efforts in the area of “equity and inclusion” and “racial justice” are divisive and destructive. And I want to be clear here: most of us, including me, do not disagree with the end goal. Inclusion, equity and racial justice are laudable outcomes. I can’t think of a single person who would disagree with that end. The disagreement is with the means; they are not only ineffective, they appear (to many of us) to be achieving the exact opposite of the hoped for outcome.

And--I know this goes against what you were saying in the video--how many were people of color?

Yes, this does go “against” what I am saying in the video. I am not going to respond to this.  Sorry!

How do you think Smith should go forward about discussing race, if at all?Since Smith has made clear it feels it is important for all of us (staff included) to be involved in these discussions, as a staff member who is seeking to improve working conditions at Smith, this question is relevant, so I will answer it. 

I think if we are to talk about things at all, then there are many, many things Smith could be talking about. Race is only one of them, and I am not convinced it is the most important one. We could be talking about how to empower students (as opposed to inadvertently disempowering them, which is what I believe we are currently doing). We could talk more about how to teach and encourage students to advocate for themselves in a world that can be vicious and brutal, with a lot of people in power abusing that power, with much unbridled greed, corruption, and a disturbing (observable) lack of empathy for others. I don’t think disenfranchising students from developing their own individual voices is the way to go in this regard. I know Smith believes it is empowering students with all of these initiatives, but when you look more closely at the end (albeit anecdotal), not to mention the rigid belief system that results, “empowerment” is not the first word that comes to mind.

Class is a big issue, maybe even the biggest one, at least to me, when I think about inequity in the world. We are united in that we all live in a world in which greed flourishes and is characterized by extremely concentrated centers of power and wealth. In many parts of the world people do not even have running water. Smith College is located in a country in which it is becoming increasingly impossible to make any kind of living, where there is very little if no economic security, where many families live one paycheck away from total disaster (many of whom are currently employed by Smith College, and are currently on furlough), and where people live in doorways and streets. Drug addiction is a raging problem that has very real material consequences for individuals, families and communities (including I imagine, people in the Smith Community) and yet I hear very little about these issues. There are many adults and children in the world who live in situations of constant, extreme physical and psychological abuse. Slavery still exists, and is in fact rampant and widespread throughout the entire world. We could be identifying and addressing the roots of the causes of poverty, including in black communities. The list goes on and on.

These are serious and seemingly intractable issues. But as I see it, if Smith is going to engage in such discussions, then it needs to do so in a manner that is not only authentic, but that empowers students to go into the world armed with the tools to address these realities in an effective manner. 

But (and this is a BIG “but”) authentic conversations (that is, the kind that stimulate growth and progress toward a common goal) absolutely require some amount of trust. Otherwise, we are just reciting a script. If Smith wants staff to be involved in these conversations, (and if it wants to do the right thing at all), then it has a lot of work to do toward regaining the trust of staff. Our very first order of business in this regard (as I see it) is an honest reconciliation of the injustice that occurred on our watch, in our midst, in Smith’s recent history. This is an event that resulted in a cascade of countless other injustices and harm to multiple individuals on this campus, and has contributed significantly to the hostile work environment in general.

I have privately and now very publicly, brought this matter to Smith’s attention. Tracey Culver very publicly brought this matter to Smith’s attention. Others have brought it to Smith’s attention. Smith continues to ignore this very real problem in favor of vague, ill defined initiatives that seek to achieve an end the college has -by its own behavior- made impossible to achieve. 

I can’t say for sure we as a community can ever reach a place where authentic conversations about anything real or serious can actually happen, but I do know that the conditions required for such conversations are not currently present. And that’s what we should be working toward.

What do you have to say to people who are criticizing your video? 

I appreciate all comments and critiques. While the support I have received goes a long way toward keeping my courage up, viewpoints that diverge from my own are critical to authentic conversation. Otherwise, I am just listening to myself talk in an echo chamber. I enjoy subtlety and complexity. And novelty. And difference. I wish we could create conditions at Smith in which nuance and complexity can thrive. The incredibly rigid and scripted nature of our current “discussion” implies that we have a long way to go toward creating a truly inclusive environment, one in which people who have thoughts and feelings that do not adhere to the “script” can feel confident that their ideas are a welcome and a valued part of the conversation. I also wish for an environment in which thoughts and ideas are evaluated on their merit, as opposed to resorting to a troubling default mode of personal attacks. To me “inclusivity” is an additive process, whereas Smith’s definition seems to be a subtractive one. 

What do you have to say to non-white students who may feel uncomfortable contacting you now?

1. As a professional working in higher education, I honor and respect the thoughts, feelings and ideas of all students, even if they are different from mine. 

2. I think most people feel some amount of discomfort when confronted with thoughts, ideas or speech that is different from their own, or that differ from what they assume to be the only acceptable or “default” narrative. The assumption that discomfort automatically equates to a lack of safety is not a narrative I support, and promoting such a narrative does not do students any favors. I believe reinforcing adherence to a “default script” is harmful to the personal development and growth of humans who are in a period of life where they should be expanding their conceptual horizons, not shrinking them. 

3. You are the captain of your life. You are a unique being and you have power and you have individual worth and an “identity” that goes far beyond your immutable characteristics. 

4. If you tell me your skin color has informed your thinking and/or has had an impact on your life, I believe you, and I want to know more (if you care to share). But I am not going to make that assumption for you. In fact, I will not make any assumptions about you based on your skin tone. To do so is an act of prejudice, and as a rule I try very hard not to engage in prejudice of any kind. I believe each person should have the ability to articulate their own truth. I try very hard to allow space for truth to thrive, whether in my office or my personal life. I am not here to interpret your reality for you. I am here to listen to and support and honor you on whatever path you are on. 

If I happen to have asked questions that don't cover something you want to say, please feel free to send me a statement or any additional information. Again, I appreciate that this is an extremely sensitive topic, but I would appreciate an answer before Saturday.

I agree that this is “an extremely sensitive” topic, the question is: why? If we truly want to be doing the work, of “racial justice” or “equity and inclusion” or even merely just being decent human beings by allowing each other space to be our best selves, then how is is that we have somehow arrived at a place where talking about these things is so extremely sensitive? How did this come to be? And what role does Smith currently play in perpetuating this “sensitivity”? 

Come on, now, Smith! WE CAN DO BETTER.