Advocates are asking the University of New Hampshire to take “experience in fostering diversity and equity on campus” into consideration as the school looks for its next president.
The school was roiled by several high-profile incidents of racism last year that led to a well-publicized town hall between administrators and students and the creation of a task force to address issues of diversity and racism. Now, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire and the Seacoast NAACP are urging the university to replace outgoing UNH President Mark Huddleston with someone who will make inclusion a higher priority.
“When incidents of racial bias and intolerance are met with statements and meetings, but little concrete action, a university administration sends a clear message that diversity and equity are not true priorities,” the two organizations wrote Wednesday in a joint letter to the school’s search committee. “A concerted effort is needed to change course.”
John Small, chairman of the school’s presidential search committee, called the letter “constructive” and said that “having experience around these issues will be very important.”
The committee has gone on a listening tour to get input from the community on what to look for in a candidate to replace Huddleston, who will step down at the end of the academic year. Over the course of 29 sessions, racial equity and inclusion came up repeatedly, he said.
“Certainly whatever candidates we look at very closely will have to be people with experience dealing with these issues – and the balance between these issues and free speech,” Small said.
Devon Chaffee, the executive director of ACLU-NH, said the organization was compelled to write the letter in “solidarity” with students frustrated by the pace of change.
“I think that there is quite a bit of frustration about the lack of action by the university,” she said. “And that’s part of why we wrote this letter. We felt the need to show solidarity with the students and the faculty and the alums that have been raising these concerns – both in recent months, but also, quite frankly, for years, if not decades.”
The ACLU would like to see more aggressive recruitment of faculty of color, more diversity training, and a permanent advisory panel to keep tabs on how the university is serving its minority students, Chaffee said.
Rogers Johnson, president of the Seacoast NAACP, sits on the presidential task force appointed last year after racial slurs were drawn on walls and a student of color was spit on.
But the Presidential Task Force on Campus Climate, which was told to recommend a plan of action for better inclusion, has mostly concerned itself with tweaking the school’s social media policy – an exercise in futility.
“We’re just clarifying a document that nobody reads,” he said.
The task force was supposed to make a final list of recommendations in January, but that’s been extended to March.
Johnson said he wants the school to discipline students who say hateful things – and even pursue criminal prosecution when those statements cross the line into threats.
“You need to make a declarative statement that ‘this stuff will stop,’ ” he said.
He pointed to Wheaton College in Massachusetts, which recently suspended a soccer team when one of its players wore blackface to a party.
But the university, he said, is nervous about taking the kind of action he’d like to see because they’re worried they’ll infringe on free speech protections in the First Amendment. What that policy overlooks, Johnson argued, is the equal protection clause in the 14th Amendment.
“I want the university to acknowledge that students have a right to say whatever they like – but that they should be accountable for what they say,” Johnson said.
(Lola Duffort can be reached at 369-3321 or lduffort@cmonitor.com.)