Terror on Campus—It’s Everywhere

The writers are current presidents.

While I now serve in a blue state, I was previously a public university president in a red state. As a strong advocate for DEI, I faced plenty of challenges even before things went nutso nationally. Conflicts with the board wore me down; when I was forced to leave, it was a relief.

I stayed as long as I did partly because my wife and young kids didn't want to leave, and because I knew if I quit, I’d be replaced by someone with different values, and that could have a catastrophic effect on those on the campus, people I truly I cared about.

While there, I managed to do things I believed in but worked to keep them quiet. This strategic approach allowed me to provide important things to students, faculty, and staff. I didn’t make big announcements or write op-eds; I just did the freaking work. When I left, I believed I had surrounded myself with great people with similar values who could continue my stealth activities. As I watched them follow me out the door, I was devastated for the community. 

When other presidents opt to remain silent in the face of calls for “moral courage” or make changes I don’t agree with, I know I can’t know the context for their specific decisions and whether things would be better (or, more likely, worse) if they were bolder, louder, or “braver.” Sometimes moral courage looks like deciding to keep your big fat mouth shut. 

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One of the most annoying and least helpful things a former athlete who is a parent can do on the sidelines of their child’s game is to yell, “Run faster!” Former college presidents, journalists, and others chirping from the sidelines of our national disaster right now are not helping, either. Their piling on is making things worse. While genuine encouragement and solidarity are always welcome, the critiques of a spectator are not.

Nobody who isn’t in the job right now can fully appreciate the pressures U.S. college and university presidents are under. I’m not afraid of getting fired; I’m afraid one of our students will be shot to death in broad daylight by an employee of our federal government.

Until someone has known that fear, they can keep their opinions to themselves. Those of us doing the work are managing the impossible. Our immigrant students and students of color ask us to keep a low profile to avoid making them targets. Alumni want us to set ourselves on fire. Parents want us to close our campuses. Our actions are constrained by trustees who are charged with protecting institutional sustainability. All this as we prepare to put our bodies between students and armed thugs.

Please, no more bullying by people comfortably ensconced in armchairs. Those with the privilege to not be terrified for a campus community right now can be effective advocates in dozens of ways that don’t involve yelling “go faster” from the sidelines. We need support, not shame. 

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In mature relationships, moving forward calls for a reckoning—an acknowledgment when harm has been suffered. Hispanic-serving institutions, minority-serving institutions, and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander–serving institutions face a hurtful denial of both identity and resources. They are told their stories are no longer relevant, their pains no longer real. The hard-won resources that have served vulnerable BIPOC students are being stripped, along with carefully curated programs that nurtured them. 

I have personally witnessed how these programs also nurtured the faculty and staff who constructed them. Their own experiences of exclusion were seen and their disadvantages were acknowledged as real. Programs in tutoring, cultural identity, and food insecurity, among others, have given many the chance to right the injustices they experienced, a powerful process of agency and revitalization. Shuttering such programs creates a personal loss that can’t be entirely repaired even if new funding were to meet the most urgent needs. There remains a profound loss of self and story.

This may be a moment in which a new beginning is our only hope. If our commitment is to our students’ lives, adaptation may serve their futures. We may not believe it serves them best—students may lose many facets of history and dignity that institutions with these programs embodied—but they may also have the resources to stay enrolled or the tutoring or food security to support their learning goals. 

It is an imperfect solution that, to many of us, feels like surrender. Lived experiences have been integral to the design of services our institutions once provided under that powerful, proud moniker of “HSI/MSI/AANAPISI.” 

The task now is to imagine another way to serve these same students. Can we narrate it differently? As Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor writes in My Beloved World, “Quiet pragmatism, of course, lacks the romance of vocal militancy.” I think her observation is relevant here. Could the story of cultural identity be adapted or reframed to produce the resources upon which our students depend? Could this serve as a powerful lesson in adaptation, or even in resilience?