University of Washington: The Educational Apparatus Furthering White Privilege
The University of Washington fosters and facilitates an environment that privileges a white educational experience. As an institution that capitalizes on its purported dedication to social justice, it’s inadvertent acceptance of white supremacist rhetoric, its commitment to disproportionately white representation, the formalistic and necessarily exclusionary nature of the law school curriculum and the facilitation of inadequate diversity admissions, all converge to create a discounted and ultimately harmful minority student experience.
This critique will focus on the University of Washington’s response to the previously stated critiques brought forth by many students. In defending itself, the University attempts to absolve its responsibility by predicating its argument on reasoning that fails to perform the necessary and nuanced analysis of its own racist policies. The University needs to fundamentally re-evaluate its current, formalistic and assumptive approach to racism which currently grants blind deference to largescale principles. Here, the University’s argument ultimately flat-lines, thereby reduces condemning gradations (e.g. the distinction between racial animus and systemic racism/inherently racist structures).
In order to absolve itself of responsibility, the University of Washington (UW or the “University”) ostensibly and inappropriately takes on a rigid, formalistic approach when interpreting its own policies. Steadfast and misguided in its allegiance to large-scale principles, it fails to perform the nuanced analysis systemic racism requires. To use a specific example, earlier this year, the University allowed a student organization to invite and subsequently host Milo Yiannopoulos, an outspoken racist, sexist, and homophobic speaker onto campus — in spite of avid protests from a multitude of students. By allowing this event to take place, the University implicitly deemed his harmful speech as acceptable on-campus rhetoric under the guise of free speech principles. Instead of pushing back against free speech at large, as an outdated, improperly functioning, formalistic doctrine (because in practice it allows for this sort of toxic, morally depraved speech), the University meekly shied away from the larger issue and hid behind its broad ill-framed, blanket of legal definition.
Now, although UW President Ana Mari Cauce and Law School Dean Kellye Testy expressed personal disdain by recent campus events that have incited violence and hate, both chose to walk a political line, more concerned with the perceived destruction of effectuating the demands of the many protesting students here and around the country. As stated, both Cauce and Testy leaned on an overarching, unclear, and ill-defined free speech framework. Students recognized and perceived the hate, racism and violence, the event would foster. Many of these students also expressed the fear and discomfort they personally felt would come from allowing Yiannopoulos into the very space these individuals look to for safety, inclusion and support, i.e. campus. The University is literally home for many minority and underprivileged students — the very individuals Yiannopoulos mocks and vilifies. However, the administration did not listen nor lend credence to these professed concerns. Because by the University’s understanding of free speech includes and allows for such unjust rhetoric to prevail, the University could have questioned free speech at base level as a problematic and ill-defined doctrine. Alternatively, the University could have critically examined its own policies on whether restricting this hateful rhetoric was just thing to do in spite of rigidly defined legal parameters of free-speech. As a leading educational institution, it could have recognized and harnessed its agency, and opted into a policy that, despite large scale, formal definitions, would protect it’s at risk, disenfranchised students. However, it did neither. It allowed the event to continue, and undeniably eviscerated any meaningful perception of “home” the University purported to offer minority, underprivileged students.
By attempting to preserve free speech as a theoretical principle, which did not readily translate to the instance at hand, the school casted concerns and safety of minority — specifically immigrant communities — groups aside. Yiannopoulos’ white supremacist rhetoric previously and did in-fact incite violence on the University of Washington campus, resulting in an on-campus shooting. Because the speech encouraged and incited such violence, it thereby disqualifies from remained in the protected free-speech bubble. Yiannopoulos’ rhetoric is hate speech, plain and simple. By taking on a stance that granted such heavy deferential adherence to broad free speech principles even when faced directly with the concern/safety of underprivileged students, the University failed and facilitated a white supremacist environment. It blatantly disregarded the racist implication the visit created, only further highlighting University’s analytical shortfalls.
On the topic of racism specifically, the University of Washington’s culture, curriculum, and faculty illustrates ill-framed and ultimately white-privileged policies. In attempting to absolve itself from the obligation to restructure its policies, the administration conceptually bifurcates the definition of “racism.” The University may be able to recognize racial animus (theoretically it could in some circumstance, however given the complacency in the face of the Yiannopoulos visit, even egregious examples of racial animus do not even appear to garner the proper administrative intervention). But, on the other hand, the University fails to recognize its racist systems. The first kind of racism is obvious and appears at the forefront; the second appears more subtly and exists in the background. Racial animus identifies a clear opponent. It allows those in power to blame racism or racial acts on an individual and tie such racism to malice. The mitigation process is easy and swift and (conceivably) undeniable. The second, however, places responsibility on everyone as a whole, as a collective. It requires individuals in positions of power and privilege, i.e. those who stand to benefit from the systems, institutions etc. that facilitate racism, to take ownership and absolve their own privilege. UW and UW Law specifically has developed responses to racial animus (the first kind) but disregards and pays no mind to racial systems (the more nuanced second strand).
Our administration failed to adequately stop the hate speech event or the subsequent shooting it incited. It has failed to mitigate against white-dominated admission standards, white-dominated faculty and a western-dominated curriculum. Why? Because the motives and/or intent behind each issue are purportedly unclear at the outset. Because it is too difficult to conduct the robust analysis necessary for the second kind of racism apparent to many of the students here who actively and vehemently opposed (and will continue to oppose) the events and occurrences at every step of the way. Trapped in this formalistic, rigid logic, the school reasons there is no racism to alleviate, remedy or respond to absent clear evidence of racial animus. This base-level fallacy has been debunked by thousands of scholars; yet this is the exact approach our administration appears to base its approach on. Yes, animus-based racism should absolutely create a stronghold of opposition — which the University of Washington even failed to do when confronted with this circumstance. But systemic racism, the perpetuation of racial systems, remains formidable precisely because it is interwoven in who we are — into our societal fabric. It is strikingly abhorrent because it is defended by even those individuals it oppresses.
President Curie felt that a deeply thought-out email response was sufficient to remedy the hurt, fear and physical violence occurred at and by the event. While the email was a thoughtful sentiment and represented a moment of solidarity in an otherwise ugly occurrence, that response did not, however, suggest an effort or absence of systemic racism. It certainly did not constitute a systemic response. This was a political and fleeting effort to respond to an issue of racism in our institution that has been acquiescent in the face of racial inequalities for (likely) its entire history.
Instead of offering advice, instruction or guidance to concerned students on how to challenge hate and systemic racism, acknowledge social responsibility and communicated University efforts to combat racism, our administration sent a message that trivialized the experience and courage of the students who acknowledge, challenge and stand up against very real struggles. We, as students struggle to teach their teachers and their classmates, who require more proof but are not moved to search for it themselves. Why is it the student’s task? Why are not the profound and obvious racial disparities, connected to systemically racist policies and linked to historical oppression and cultural stereotypes, not enough to shift the burden to our institution, endowed with millions and situationally equipped to attack the problem head on?
As a law student, I find it important to highlight the Law School’s particular shortfalls as well. First, a critical examination (or even an examination at all) of racism is omitted from the school’s required curriculum. Students may take critical race theory as an optional elective course but, of course, that practice is problematic as it lends itself to the self-selection fallacy. However, the University maintains this structure because it is the easier approach. The Law School may think that race could potentially reflect a justifiable pedagogical strategy, so long as individuals are willingly opting into, but is not important enough to the administration to include such training into the required curriculum — despite consistent and vehement demands from the student body. To a social institution that espouses to train the nation’s next legal thinkers and leaders of justice, I ask: do we have a responsibility, as the next generation of lawyers, to accept and shape the consequences of our legal system? Do we have an obligation to alleviate mass incarceration which is fueled and funneled by legal actors (e.g. judges, prosecutors, defenders, etc.)? If the premise of our legal training is to “learn to think like a lawyer,” how can any law school adequately train their students without these considerations embedded into its formal education? In the absence of explicit animus student’s demand for critical race theory classes and overarching claims about racism are silenced and overlooked. Why? Because systemic racism is unrecognized by those currently power. However, even when students can point to examples of explicit racism (revisiting Yiannopoulos) hoping to use them as an anchor to potentially engage in the broader problem of racism, even then the administration remains unmoved, unsurprisingly stagnant.
When the administration responds passively (if at all), it merely reflects broader systemic forms of racism. If student’s natural, foreseeable exhaustion evolves into anger, the administration discredits their voices. It is absurd to require, or assume that whole swaths of student body will stand behind a school that doesn’t account for its own purported values. To be clear, students protesting at the University do not and have not asked for any kind of sympathy. Instead, they are responding, inciting, and insisting concerns and voices are heard. They are coming together and forcing the administration to recognize both overt and subtle forms of racism, violence, abuse of power and to identity those who are harmed by their pacification.
In effect, this cautious and cowardly approach disrupts the Seattle narrative as a whole, changing the nature of the political climate by blowing open (or exposing) the pacification or passivity of the largest higher education institution in the northwest. The University of Washington presents itself as a progressive, innovative think-tank and training grounds for the best, brightest, socially-conscious minds. The Law School’s purported impact is just as strong though particularized. By playing such a passive role in the on-campus injustice, our administration imbues and illustrates a tolerance of hate, and racism, thereby shifting a threshold level of passivity of the entire region. As a nationally recognized socially progressive thought apparatus, the onus remains on the University to rise to that standard and move away from the racism it fosters.
Ultimately, the University must answer the question: can minority students ever feel comfortable in a university that tolerates and supports movements that overtly espouse racist rhetoric and structures that facilitate racist outcomes? This educational apparatus must change its approach and analysis of racist policies and restructure accordingly.
