Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2001/02/12/spinning_their_wheels.php
Monday, February 12, 2001
A potpourri of miscreants, seated irregularly, filled Filene Auditorium in the newish Moore Hall on Friday night: an assortment of piercings, hooded sweatshirts, and uneven topologies of facial hair. I took a seat towards the rear of the room, in case an inconspicuous exit became necessary. The gentleman seated to my left—from Wesleyan, I later learned—sported fire-print orange and black stretch pants, horn-rims, shoulder-length bleached-blonde locks, and a blue plaid woolen scarf—Nordstrom's. Flirting with the young lady to his side, he pulled out his wallet and, where you or I might keep our identification, showed her his 'UFO Driver's License.' Stranger still, the young lady appeared impressed. The gentleman to my right, in his mid-twenties, occupied himself with my note-taking, which I attempted, without success, to keep private.
The occasion for the congregation of the visually motley if otherwise subdued crowd: Dr. Francis E. Kendall's keynote address to the Beyond the Box 4 Conference, hosted at Dartmouth College from February 23 to 25.
This year's conference was subtitled 'CommUnity Partnerships: Changing Apathy to Activism,' and the attendees certainly seemed ready to move beyond rhetoric to action. In fact, Kendall's speech was given the unwieldy title 'How Do We Create Meaningful Institutional Change Rather than Just Spinning Our Wheels?'
So we're beyond just talking, we're ready for action, and we're going to do whatever it takes—but there's an antecedent missing: what exactly are we fighting for?
It would be unfair to say that this question was left unanswered all weekend. Actually, the answer's right in front of me, slathered across every piece of conference material: diversity and multiculturalism.
Now, if you know precisely what these overused and oft-defined terms mean in the context of a college and how they would be fought for and might be implemented, then bravo for you—you obviously deserve a junior administrative position at, say, Swarthmore. For the rest of us, though, the situation's a bit murkier.
Still, action was the word of the weekend. Kendall, 'a consultant and facilitator who has worked in the area of diversity for over twenty years,' offered eager attendees 'some clues that wheel-spinning is going on' at their colleges and universities.
Start with the assumption of rampant racism. 'Why wouldn't [racism] be true?,' Kendall, a self-described 'conspiracy theorist,' asks rhetorically. Still, dimwitted colleges demand, 'Let's test it again and again,' as a means of avoiding actual change.
Instead, she says college administrators must accept the '5 Givens.' First, 'Only by changing systems can we bring about institutional change.' Kendall posits that, were the entirety of the student body, faculty, and administration of Dartmouth replaced at once, the College would persist in its present state: 'religious discrimination...sexual discrimination...race discrimination...[and] able-bodied discrimination.'
Second, 'No school is where it should be... White men, heterosexuals, the able-bodied, and the wealthy are rewarded by our systems' every day.
Third, borrowed from Patrick Williams, 'spiritual murder occurs many times daily on every campus.' Spiritual murder is anytime a person is 'demeaned, made to feel inferior,' even—especially—if the perpetrators 'don't have a clue about what they've done.' For example, one 'might talk about somebody as a Jew'—that's spiritual murder. Or it could be more extreme: a Catholic in Boston might murder a black person who's wandered into his neighborhood—again, spiritual, and literal, murder. 'That's true in 2001,' according to Kendall.
Fourth, 'If we are smart about systems, we can make these changes.'
Which changes?
'These' changes!
There was no fifth 'given' given.
So, now that it's a 'given' that changes (?) must be made, how can you tell if your institution is just 'spinning its wheels'?
Among the signs are lapses in practice: 'looking at what other institutions are doing' instead of implementing home-grown programs. Scheduling 'program after program' when 'the people who were supposed to be there,' the less-enlightened, 'weren't there.'
Institutional shortcomings may also be to blame: there must be assessments of where the institution is now—numerically and ideologically (polls of what students think are essential)—as well as a 'picture of where you'd like the institution to go...[an] institutional plan for diversity.' Diversity goals must be tied to the institution's business and fundraising plan.
For example, regarding recent the recent incident for which the Psi Upsilon fraternity is now under fire (see page 3), Kendall urges the audience to envision a Dartmouth in three years at which 'if that happens, the people who do that would be out of here,' the College having decided that 'this is not behavior we tolerate.'
Finally, change-agents may be acting inefficiently. She recommends minority student collectivization—'a student of color group'—to subsume more narrowly defined organizations. Worse, 'Black, brown, [and] yellow groups are straight,' shutting out an important disaffected minority: the GLBTQA crowd (that's gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, questioning, and allies).
And who benefits when a campus's minority population is so Balkanized? 'White men benefit... White people...and particularly white men,' says Kendall. The same white men for whom colleges such as Dartmouth were built: 'We know what we want,' Kendall quipped with a deep, knowing intonation, imitating a white man.
Don't accuse white women of complicity, though: 'White women have a different
role,' says Kendall. 'We don't have a concept of ourselves being white.'
Action must be undertaken in a 'shared-vision stage,' and allied organizations must share equitably all information. After all, 'who benefits when the power structure is mystified?'
Audience members stiffened in their seats: 'White men,' they chant.
And 'Who is best served when things are in chaos?'
The students beside me, from Wesleyan, giggle and punch forward a hearty 'White men.' Unfortunately, they spoke to soon; Kendall instead fingers 'the people in charge.'
And who are the people in charge?
You guessed it.
Kendall took questions, including one I posed: I asked her to expand on the issue of free speech, its value particularly divisive within the multicultural crowd. She vociferously agreed with Dartmouth Professor William Cook's 1998 admonition that 'Free speech is the last refuge of scoundrels,' adding that free speech only became a cause célÀbre when 'white people were told they couldn't say anything they wanted to'—forgetting, say, the Berkeley Free Speech Movement of the Civil Rights era.
She goes further, into the realm of thoughts, denouncing those who feel entitled to 'hold any prejudice [they] want.' Instead, all should be 'made to abide by community rules' over thought and speech.
Finally, Kendall dismissed academic defenses of free speech as coming from 'white scholars.' Among these, she named Dinesh D'Souza '83, author of 1991's Illiberal Education, and a native of India.
In response to concerns from others in the audience, though, Kendall backed away from her initial harsh pronouncements on speech, agreeing that 'civility codes,' which limit discussion to set standards, can be abused by 'those who have power.'
A gentleman from the audience with blue hair questioned Kendall on 'word reclamation' and 'postmodern narratives.' Visibly, audibly confused, she relents, agreeing with the questioner before hastily changing the subject to one less divisive:
'We'd be better off with all men who look like Ashcroft' on the Cabinet, she noted.
Maybe poisonous cynicism was the mysterious, missing fifth 'given.'