Message from Provost Liesl Folks June 16, 2020
Dear campus community members and friends of the University of Arizona,
Many of you have taken time to write to share your concerns and questions over a number of alarmingly racist social media posts which appear to have originated with current or incoming University of Arizona students, in response to the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent nationwide protests against systemic and institutional violence against and marginalization of the Black community. Other recent posts have documented anti-Black racism by recent graduates of UArizona. I very much understand your concerns, and your suggestions that the University act in response.
We are taking all actions that are available to us to respond swiftly with the students implicated in these cases of anti-Black racism coming up in social media, while adhering to the federal and state laws (including free speech laws) that we must comply with, especially as a state institution.
But the harder question we all face is how to change the hearts and minds of people who have been conditioned into anti-Black racism and anti-Black violence? If they don’t go to college, and are not exposed to views from outside their family and insular communities, there is a much lowered chance that these damaging and dangerous views can be changed. In particular, it is unlikely that an understanding of the systemic and institutional supports of racism will be developed. Unchanged, racism will continue to be communicated from generation to generation, perpetuating the harm. The very experience of shared learning within our nation’s universities is a powerful way to dismantle ignorance, increase compassion, and reduce cruelty towards others who are different from us. For this reason, I believe we must continue to operate a “big-tent” institution, allowing all students a chance to learn and mature, to grow their intellectual abilities, to develop a working knowledge of history, of cultures and of the workings of democracy, with the words from the preamble to the Constitution as a lodestar, to “form a more perfect Union … insure domestic Tranquility … (and) promote the general Welfare.”
That said, I very much understand the point that many have made very eloquently that it seems very unfair that those whom anti-Black racists would choose to oppress, or do active harm to need to, should be involved in this process, and potentially be made to feel anxious or afraid while they seek their own education. Painfully, as a society we don’t have a solution to that inequity, any more than we do for other known oppressive groups that exist in our communities, including on our campuses.
Our challenge, then, is to build real strength into the educational process, into our student support structures, into our reporting processes, and into our disciplinary processes, to provide real protections for our BIPOC students, to bolster the strength that comes when we witness that our community will not tolerate anti-Black racism. On this front, we have much work still to do, and I look to our students, staff and faculty to actively inform that process and to guide our path forward. We have to work together to find ways to channel our anger into building better systems that serve to reduce racism at UA and across US society.
I believe it remains an imperative to educate the individuals who will build the systems and institutions that uphold society and the Constitution, with the express aspiration that they will find the wisdom to become part of the solution to institutional and systemic impediments facing our Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities. Integrity. Compassion. Exploration. Adaptation. Inclusivity. Determination. We live these values every day and we continue to work with the students who want to participate in our educational community to help them to learn and grow responsibly in our special Wildcat way.
I do not agree. I do not excuse. I do not condone. But I do defend the right for all students to seek an education that might help them become better humans and to fulfill their human capacity for doing good in the world.
Regards,
Liesl