The embattled dean of Seattle University has retired after student protestors raged against her for recommending the book Nigger, written by a prominent civil-rights activist, and for presiding over a curriculum they deemed too white.
But the student protestors aren’t satisfied. Now, they’re upset that Seattle University’s president commended Dean Jodi Kelly’s “distinguished service” in his announcement about her retirement.
That “ignor[es] the harm and trauma students, alumni, faculty and staff have experienced,” the students wrote. “This is not justice. As a community, we all deserve better.”
The so-called MRC Coalition’s response is, unfortunately, all too predictable at a university that has repeatedly capitulated to students’ demands, however over-the-top.
When students staged a three-week sit-in outside of Dean Kelly’s office, she agreed to bring in an outside consultant to assess the “campus climate” on race. Seattle University also vowed to review its curriculum after protestors demanded one that “decentralizes whiteness” and focuses on “the evolution of systems of oppression such as racism, capitalism, colonialism, etc.”
But the students wanted Kelly to resign—so in June, administrators put her on administrative leave. Nevermind that Dick Gregory, the author of the book she recommended, wrote an essay in defense of her; the book, an autobiography, has sold more than a million copies since its initial publication in 1964.
Now that Dean Kelly has departed Seattle University for good, that’s still not enough for its spoiled students. They apparently want nothing short of a full-throated denunciation, Cultural Revolution-style.
— Jillian Kay Melchior writes for Heat Street and is a fellow for the Independent Women’s Forum and the Steamboat Institute.