Bob CollinsAnd now this update from post-racial America.
Katharine Gerbner, a professor of history at the university of Minnesota, was granted tenure the other day by the Board of Regents.
That’s when she took to Twitter to blow the whistle on racism and anti-Semitism at the university.
That she feared retaliation if she’d said something before getting tenure is a commentary on top of her commentary.
2/ Like many Universities, the U. of Minnesota is starting to reckon with its own discriminatory history. This history was displayed in a brilliant exhibit two years ago, called “A Campus Divided.”https://t.co/XDTZ23RBxS
— Katharine Gerbner (@ktgerbs) May 9, 2019
4/ The faculty on the Task Force are all tenured & have been recognized widely for their extraordinary scholarship. These women and men spent hundreds of (volunteer) hours digging in University archives and examining evidence. Full report here: https://t.co/4oc8FricqU
— Katharine Gerbner (@ktgerbs) May 9, 2019
6/ My colleagues recommended that the University re-name four buildings at the University, but also that they go further than naming by launching curricular, education, archival, student, and community initiatives.
— Katharine Gerbner (@ktgerbs) May 9, 2019
8/ The co-chairs of the Task Force presented their findings to Board of Regents at their March 8, 2019 meeting. The full meeting is online. Discussion of the Task Force begins around hour 2:20. https://t.co/j2ketTTAQ1
— Katharine Gerbner (@ktgerbs) May 9, 2019
10/ The President of the Board of Regents, claiming lack of time, did not allow my colleagues to respond to the attacks that were made about the Report or their scholarly integrity. Those same Regents then went to the press, and repeated their attacks.
— Katharine Gerbner (@ktgerbs) May 9, 2019
12/ After the disastrous March meeting, the Regents convened a last-minute meeting on April 28, 2019 to vote on the recommendation to rename buildings. They did NOT invite members of the Task Force to speak, or to respond to the accusations that had been levied against them.
— Katharine Gerbner (@ktgerbs) May 9, 2019
14/ What was so disturbing about the Board of Regents meeting was watching how voices were silenced. As a historian, I examine archives as sources of information and as sites of oppression. I try to read them against the grain, to understand the lives of people who were silenced.
— Katharine Gerbner (@ktgerbs) May 9, 2019
16/ I watched in both horror and fascination as the tyranny of “process” made me and my colleagues first into “hecklers,” who were accused of “disrespect” and then into a riotous crowd, who were threatened with arrest.
— Katharine Gerbner (@ktgerbs) May 9, 2019
18/ After an audience revolt, the Board allowed Prof. John Wright, a 37-year member of the faculty & founder of the African American Studies dept, to speak. Wright, a 4th-gen. black Minnesotan, described his family’s struggles under Coffman. https://t.co/nWGeyLc15i
— Katharine Gerbner (@ktgerbs) May 9, 2019
20/ This point is essential: we need to ask ourselves WHO WE ARE LISTENING TO and WHAT WE ARE READING in these debates about history & legacy. I believe we need to turn our attention to people like Dr Wright whose families were directly affected by the legacies of discrimination
— Katharine Gerbner (@ktgerbs) May 9, 2019
22/ A few other thoughts. First of all, this situation has highlighted the importance of tenure, particularly for those who are researching politically sensitive topics. It was the right move for President Kaler to ask only tenured Professors to be on the Task Force
— Katharine Gerbner (@ktgerbs) May 9, 2019
24/ 2nd: the discussion about discrimination at the University of Minnesota is a history that is close to us today. Unlike Universities that are uncovering complicity in slavery, the conversation at the U. of MN is about a more recent form of racism and discrimination
— Katharine Gerbner (@ktgerbs) May 9, 2019
26/ The closer we get to our present day, the harder it becomes for many people to name and recognize racism or anti-semitism. But these are the conversations that are the most crucial for changing present practice.
— Katharine Gerbner (@ktgerbs) May 9, 2019
27/ We shouldn’t see Coffman or the others as cartoon villains; it is only by seeing them as complex people who did great things while also perpetuating racism and anti-semitism that we can see how easy it is to be both a “good person” and a perpetuator of white supremacy.
— Katharine Gerbner (@ktgerbs) May 9, 2019
(h/t: Peter Cox)
