黄色电影

One of the greatest features of Sarah Lawrence College is the number of creative students who join us from across the country.  Rather than being comprised exclusively of a group of urban and coastal students, the College enrolls many students from small towns in places like North Dakota, Tennessee, and Wyoming in recent years. I love working with them. Their upbringings have been markedly different from my coastal students and they regularly bring socio-economic, political, and viewpoint diversity into my classroom. These small-town students are often white but are nothing like the elite, secular students who regularly hail from private schools in large, politically blue cities.

Imagine the discomfort and absurdity rural students must deal with when they arrive on campus. For example, this year, they will be greeted by various deans for days of “orientation” programs and will be told that – in the words of the deans – “as an institution, Sarah Lawrence College is considered a PWI, a predominantly white institution.” This loaded, racist, and race-based statement sends a message to white rural students that there is a fixation on immutable characteristics routed in power dynamics on campus.

Deans at Sarah Lawrence are quick to note in their upcoming orientation materials that there are “many intersectional experiences of other identities in this room” and go to great lengths to explain that they “are aware that folks are coming to this realm of work with a multitude of experiences, backgrounds, and emotions.” While the Dean’s intentions may be to create an inclusive campus, the language from administrators is divisive and unsettling to students. This race-based approach runs against increasing that these racial fixations actually increase intolerance and have a “net-negative effect.” Moreover, despite administrative pushes to talk about race, focus groups regularly show that when people of color about their lives, attitudes, and desires, for instance, they do not want to talk about race and power.  

The Deans at Sarah Lawrence, in promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, are giving lip service to socioeconomic status, geographic diversity, and religion and use it as a cover while promoting traditional narratives about race and power. The fact of the matter is that upcoming orientation materials are fixated on privilege, power, and the work of Kimberlé Crenshaw – the professor and activist who laid the groundwork for much of the DEI movement that has poisoned so many educational institutions around the country.

A deeply disturbing example of the Dean’s true focus comes from the past spring when Jewish students were visibly harassed and discriminated against by those very Deans at the College; behavior which has prompted a . This harassment is not new and the complaint reveals a deep and pervasive culture of anti-Semitism on campus for the administrators knew about Jewish student concerns or even committed acts against students themselves.  

The Deans took almost no action to support Jewish students while preaching respect for religious diversity and a desire to welcome and support all. This toxic environment prompted Jewish students to leave the school and those who remained have had to a “hostile learning environment, the lack of support from the administration, and…recurring acts of brazen antisemitism [against] Jewish and pro-Israel students.” So much for respecting and embracing the diversity of “many intersectional experiences” at Sarah Lawrence; there is little room for tolerance or acceptance outside the racial and power lines the Deans promote.   

Going even further, at the fast-approaching orientation, the new students will be immediately introduced to racially segregated programming. They will be told that “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging, or DEIB, has many programs for students to get involved in. Through DEIB, we have the Thrive mentorship program for Students of Color. This is a great program that works as a cycle, mentees eventually become the mentors to new students.” While I suspect anyone can theoretically participate, inclusivity is not implied on Thrive’s . There appears to be only one form of diversity that matters to the Deans. What groups are there for those from other backgrounds? There is no group organized from the staff for rural students at Sarah Lawrence and it is that students from rural areas face when they arrive on campus; why not?

As is the case at Sarah Lawrence, the harmful principles of DEI are the antithesis of viewpoint diversity and genuine inclusiveness. Fortunately, many Americans agree. A of over 2,000 likely voters run by the Manhattan Institute in early July reveals that three-quarters of respondents (and 70 percent of independents) believe that children should be taught about America’s complicated racial history, as opposed to the idea that America is a racist nation. Moreover, the data shows that a majority of Democratic (63%), Black (55%), and Latino (60%) likely voters agree that the US is not a racist nation. Only 17 percent of likely voters state that children should be taught the U.S. is a fundamentally racist nation built on white supremacy.

The survey found that roughly half of likely voters (50 percent) support banning race-based admissions and employment decisions. About 44 percent support ending government funding for DEI programs at public universities as well as ending mandatory diversity training.

Slowly and surely, the nation is recognizing that the ideas that schools like Sarah Lawrence College are peddling are dangerous and hostile to American values: opportunity, merit, and equality. Sarah Lawrence may continue to dig in on DEI, but they are on the wrong side of history; the College should rethink its flawed views of DEI and instead support all of its students – from every demographic - without bias as fully as possible; everyone on campus should be treated equally and have the same opportunities to truly thrive.