 Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to LEAD, Leading Equity and Diversity. I'm Dr. Debbie Willis, and I lead the DEI certificate program here at the University of Michigan's Rackham Graduate School. We started this series because scholars wanted to hear from real people their experiences leading equity, diversity, and social justice efforts. Thank all of you for joining us today. Given that all of things that are going on all over the world, we greatly appreciate your presence and you spending this hour with us today. You received a prompt that the session is being recorded. And though your audio and video have been muted, we encourage you to engage with us in the question and answer portal. We would love to bring your voices into the conversation. If you see a question that you like, please upvote that question. We ask that the questions with the broadest interest first. Before submitting your question, however, we ask that you consider how it might impact others. We also ask that you remain patient with us, as hundreds of you have joined us today, and we've received many questions from registration. We will not get to them all in one hour. However, we're committed to continue this conversation and have dedicated this LEAD webinar series to address racial equity for an entire year, and we invite you to join us each month. Today's conversation will address how higher education administrators, faculty, and staff can work in collective action with student activists toward racial equity. In the midst of an unprecedented pandemic, highly publicized uprisings against racism, there has been an upsurge in student activism advocating for more inclusive and equitable environments. How can higher education professionals support this just cause and leverage the passion and experiences of our student actors? We have two phenomenal guests with us today, and I'm just gonna start by allowing them to introduce themselves and how they got started in the social justice life, everything that you do. And so we agree to start with Jitim. Jitim, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started leading diversity and inequity? Dr. Willis, thank you so much for this opportunity. I would say it just started by birth, being a black woman, experiencing racism very early. In first grade, I had a very racist teacher who made me feel as if I couldn't perform at the same level of my classmates. And so she pushed me to see her expectations and prove her wrong. I mean, just through life and having those different experiences where I was made to feel as I didn't belong in white spaces, knowing that I deserved to be there. So through our undergrad, I was very involved with leadership as president of the Black Student Alliance, president of my sorority, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated. And then I went on to become a teacher and that is really when my life changed and seeing the inequities happening to children who were harmless, who had done no wrong in the world. I worked at high poverty schools in New Orleans, Louisiana and back in North Carolina. And that kind of changed my lens. I learned more about trauma and the impact it had on a child's ability to thrive. Working on trauma-informed schools, it still wasn't enough because at a systematic level and through the policy initiatives taking place, those true root causes were not being addressed and the mandates were just being used. And so that has led me here to University of Michigan to get those skills. But while I'm here, I'm also going to do the same and make sure that the students here have an equitable and just experience as well. Thank you. How about you, Charles? Good morning, everyone, or afternoon, I guess for most of us now. Debbie, that's a great question. And I think there's a lot of overlap with what Jitem shared with regard to just being born black, right? And I think part of that makes you very immediately subjected to the issues that are very much central to equity, diversity, and inclusion. And so part of that for me is about a longer history, right? We think about our ancestors, both living and those who have passed on. And my daddy grew up in Tuskegee, Alabama at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, went to Tuskegee Institute. My grandmother's family is from King Street, South Carolina, went to South Carolina State. And so much of their experience and growing up and navigating the South, being able to talk with family members, being to that nature, you get a real sense of what it means to sort of take up the baton, if you will, right? And so coming from a family of educators, myself as a third generation educator, it's something we definitely saw in school. I can remember fairly vividly, my mother not being happy with my kindergarten teacher and treating me in a particular kind of way as the troublemaker, although I was typically just done with my work before some of my other colleagues and wasn't necessarily being pushed in a way that I should have been at an early age and seeing her take up space and advocate for her child as she did with all of her children and advocate for herself as a black teacher is something that I've thought about a lot now that I've come into this professionalization in terms of becoming a faculty member for me as someone who went to Florida State University, which is a predominantly white institution, literally five minutes across the tracks from Florida A&M University. I wanted to be able to be a resource that I often didn't have at a place like Florida State, which was becoming a faculty member, being able to teach folks who look like me, being able to see folks like themselves in front of classrooms and also to be able to provide some level of advocacy at high levels, working with provost and other senior colleagues to do the work that's really important to make these places more inclusive for not just us really, but for I think everyone who is dealing with racism in a variety of different ways. And so for me, I think being a leader in this space is relative, I would definitely say that I'm an advocate to some extent in this space, but thinking about racial justice is almost a mandate and even more importantly, that the extent to which we can think about how racial justice can be disrupted by other forms of systemic oppression within racially homogenous communities, I think also has been a critical point of me taking up space, not just in fighting against white supremacy, but also fighting against patriarchy, misogyny and homophobia and things that definitely affect, I think as Jitain mentioned, black women, black queer and black femme folks. Thank you, thank you both. So Jitain, we'll start a question with you. What advice do you have for students who want to actively be involved in anti-racist activism? Well, I would say start where you are and that's just from my lived experience. I have been a black woman in majority white spaces like the UM for most of my life in terms of the school aspect. And so there's always been this discomfort level I felt and a knack to honestly just do this work on behalf of my survival. So it's not anti-racist work to me is survival work, but I think if you're not coming from that lived experiences, you've come from where you are. And I think it starts with education, diversifying the books you read, even diversifying something and symbols your Twitter feed to make sure you're getting diverse perspectives and not in that same loop of information. I was in a session yesterday and I learned that most white Americans think enough has been done in terms of racial equity for black people and only about 34% of them do not. And I would say that that is not a fact that so much work still has to be done. So start where you are. Educate yourself, then start doing the action, calling out friends, family who are making anti-racist, anti-black statements, being a voice for your classmates when you see transgressions happen, simple microaggressions. One small thing that you may not even realize is classmates constantly saying things about your black classmates hair, like, oh, I love it when you wear your hair like that or you have braids today, even though small things are small acts of anti-racism that you may not even realize. Use your dollars as your activisms and don't support racist institutions. And just finally, as a public policy student, I would be remiss that in terms of lobbying, advocating, lobby your universities, lobby your departments, local state governments, there are people who we put in power who should be working on anti-racist efforts because it can't be done on ourself. And any anti-racist works revolves around action center on what's best for society and not what's best just for yourself. So a lot of times you have to vote against yourselves and do things against your best interests because they're better for everyone. Thank you, thank you so much for that. Charles, we will also love to hear if you had any advice for students, but we also wanna know how can administrators, faculty, and staff support students and create this and strengthen the conditions for anti-racist activism on campus? So I think there's a lot of overlap with what Jitem shared in terms of the extent to which faculty, staff, and administrators don't feel like separate from the exercise of anti-racism, right? And so I think if you're not undertaking many of the things that Jitem mentioned as part of your everyday practice, then supporting student activists who are engaged in this work is gonna be really, really difficult, right? Because there's an ideological difference or separation and an expectation of who is supposed to be doing this work, right? Like we all get paid really good money at this institution to do right by students. And many of us feel like this is not our work to do. So I wanna kind of like preface what I'm gonna say within that context. And so I think one for student affairs professionals and staff who are engaged with students, we have to think about this. One is our professional obligation to create the conditions that enhance student learning. And so when we think about this in the context of student activism, we have to support providing opportunities and constructing spaces that allow students to deepen their own knowledge about these critical issues, their skills and relationship to being able to organize and mobilize each other and their abilities as political agents and resisting educational violence. As faculty, especially the research institution, we have to consider how our own scholarship and rigorous approaches to inquiry could be useful to challenge these systems and structures of power around which student activists are organizing. It may not be in our particular area of specialization, but we do have skills that are useful even if it's just working with data that can help illuminate, for example, racial disparities in student success and things that maybe some students don't have access to or not have yet developed the skills. We also have to think about taking what Sam Husayas, my colleague, talks about as proactive philosophies where we take an active role in providing student activists with research and with information rather than waiting for them to seek it out on their own. And sometimes this comes in the form of teach-ins which we saw happen during the geo-strike and alternative spaces to engage in these conversations and also other co-curricular activities that are academically purposeful. And then the last thing I'll say for administrators, this is an interesting conversation with regard to the fact that administrators are typically the strategic targets for student activists. So like almost always already, there's this opposition or this space of defensiveness that many administrators take in engaging this work. But we have to remember that activism is a symptom of larger systemic inequities in our institutions. And so we have to reframe our thinking to not say, what do we need to do to stop students from being engaged and being active, right in sort of suppressing that set of political engagement, but how do we address the root causes of what it is that students are advocating for? And so I think having a re-orientation around the climate and conditions that made it necessary for activism to take place is gonna be a really important part to thinking about how do we support these students. And then also we have to get in closer proximity, right? I think often in administrators in largely bureaucratic institutions, unlike say most faculty and other staff, you lose the space in which you get to engage with the everydayness that students are experiencing. So it very well may seem that students are portraying something that isn't consistent in your own worldview of how you see the university. And so this to me is always about what we think in terms of relationships of power where those that are the most powerful seem to be the most separated and detached, right? And at least in proximity to pain and suffering of everyday people. And so in this college context, that means like senior level administrators who don't engage with students in a meaningful way, right? Not sort of these like haphazard collected of students that may or may not be politically engaged and say that we had student representation on this task force or in this policy discussion decision. So I think it's really important for folks to be in that close proximity to reduce the distance between themselves as student activists and to be more open to framing and not dismissing what it is that student activists are advocating for. Wow, great point. So, and it aligns a little bit with the next question that says, what do you see as the current challenges or barriers to anti-racism collective actions at U of M specifically? What opportunities do you see as well? And what can we do to leverage this moment that we're in? You wanna start to Tim? Yeah, I can dive into that. And I think, you know, just going off what Charles said, a lot of this work, one of the biggest issues is a lot of this work that's being done in departments and schools around anti-racism is being done by students. And there hasn't been an institutional investment of a paid professional to take on these challenges across all the departments. That's very unsustainable and almost unethical. Anti-racist work is very important and it's dangerous to rely on students to do this important institutional work because students are temporary. They're temporary change agents. They complete their education leave, which is the expectation. And so it leads to a lack of continuity. Almost all students in the students doing this work are a lot of times asked to do this work for free. So then it becomes a heavy unpaid emotional and mental labor while also simultaneously spending them to be successful academically. In some cases, it may become a black tax. So we can start by having staff, faculty, administration positions exclusively focused on interdisciplinary strategies of anti-racism works. And yes, students can join and be members of a team in a paid role, but it can't just be on their shoulders. And this collective action, as I mentioned, has to be interdisciplinary. What's working in one department, there needs to be cross-channel communication on making sure that these conversations and these solutions are being implemented elsewhere so they can take form at a faster pace, rather than being told there's gonna be a one to three year committee or task force working on something. That task force needs to be a little bit quicker with the action because anti-racism has been here and it's been here for a while. And I think last week, a lot of people were really shocked at last week's elections results that it wasn't a landslide, but I'm not. But I think it's important that we leverage and center the support of BIPOC people who are constantly sacrificing themselves for the betterment of institutions like UM in America. And so just make sure in whatever efforts you're making, what decisions you're making, make sure you have those people around the table, the students, the staff members, the administrative levels, faculty, there needs to be constant communication with decision makers who look like those most adversely affected. Wow, great, thank you. Charles, would you like to add to that? You're on mute. Yes, could you just restate the question for me? Oh, sure. What do you see as the current challenges or barriers to anti-racism collective action efforts at U of M? So I'll try to speak more broadly because I've only been here for, what are we, on week 10, week 11 now. So I haven't been here that long. Wow, that's so cool. But I have been working with institutions around these issues for a decent amount of time. I think one of the barriers I think is to Tim mentioned is the cultural taxation ascribed to racially minoritized people, faculty and staff and students to do this work, again, because our survival in many ways depends on it, but that often being uncompensated or unrecognized labor. And there's a deterrent there, right? Of one advocating for yourself and sort of these means of survival and the level of labor it takes in order to do that, that takes away from other things. So as a faculty member, right? Does it take away time for me to produce research, which is ultimately going to be the thing by which I measured for tenure because I'm spending so much time trying to do anti-racism work, right? That is like maybe appreciated rhetorically, but isn't going to show up when I'm evaluated for promotion and tenure criteria. And so that to me is about an unhealthy set of choices. And this is often where people who are doing advocacy work, anti-racism or racial justice work are put in positions to make unhealthy choices for themselves, for people in their proximity and for their families and even for their careers. And so I think we have to address the extent to which this work is culturally taxed, mostly on people of color who are under the pressure of white supremacy and racism. And very little is done by our white colleagues and counterparts to really address these things with themselves and with their colleagues and with the white power structure, right? So that to me becomes a fundamental way to disrupt our ability to make movement in part because are there enough white folks invested in this work? And part of that is thinking that you can't be necessarily engaged meaningfully if it doesn't affect you personally, although we know that it does in a variety of ways, both seen and unseen. I think in addition to that, that there's this sort of inclination, and we think about this in the context in Deborah, you definitely know this, right? It's like we're invested in the words of diversity, equity, inclusion less than we are invested in the work, right? And so we have to think about this as a way of, what does it mean to be engaged in everyday practice of undoing systemic inequality, systemic racism, rather than being able to like write it up in our papers, talk about it in our presentations, throw a couple of words around in class, right? Or like show up to the meeting, but what does it mean to do this work on an everyday basis, which is not glamorous, it's not going to be recognized, it often will be thankless, right? But it is, I think as just mentioned, to the benefit of the greater good. And so I think if we can move away from being invested just in the rhetoric and be more invested in the results, then I think we can have a lot more success at an institutional level on what we're able to achieve. Great, I like both of those phrases. We're invested less in the word than we are the work, and we should be invested less in the rhetoric and more in the what? Results. Results, thank you, that's great. So I'm going to bring in a question from the participants that kind of aligns with this a little bit. It says, how can we fight back against assumptions around student activism in the academy? It feels that students activists are discouraged from activism and it's held in opposition to academic quality. So can we embed strength-based practices that center activist skills? Charles, you want to start? Sure, so I think that's a really great question. I think part of it again is how we frame activism and most of the discourse around activists and activism is that it's something troublesome, right? There are a bunch of troublemakers who were just here to shake the table and rabble rouse opposed to listening to the very serious concerns, right? Again, as a symptom of larger systemic inequity. And I think if we can attach it to other discourses, some of which I've been able to try to do in my work, I'm thinking about this as really student political engagement, right? So much of the student political engagement conversation is centered around electoral politics, which is basically whether students are voting or they're working on like formalized campaign places. And we don't think of activism necessarily as the same thing when it actually is, right? Like student activists in many regards, right? Like this is a proving ground for them to be engaged in the political process in a way that makes them feel enfranchised to have a voice to be heard in a way that they're not being heard through traditional system. And so when we think about service learning programs, we think about residence halls that have a teaching or instructional component. We think about this idea of civic engagement not being about leaving the campus here and going to Detroit to provide some sort of like service to underserved communities or black people in particular. Then we can actually think about activism as a source for student learning that otherwise can't happen, right? Like these are real world applications of things that students are learning about in terms of navigating bureaucracy, being able to understand and critically analyze policy decisions to understand how structures of power work. And I think all of these are academically purposeful things. And so when we frame them that way, then I think we understand it as an academic exercise, a learning exercise that takes away some of those assumptions of people here just trying to make trouble when in fact the trouble that they're making as the late John Lewis would say is the good trouble that we need in order for us to move forward. And I think at this moment, it becomes really important to see that we can, as an institution, get where we say that we want to go in relation to our diversity, equity and inclusion goals if we're not listening to students, right? That's an impossibility. And when we try to do that, we see that it fails, right? We have initiatives that are developed and when they finally actually hit, they're not successful and they have as much of an impact because people aren't bought in because you've tried to sort of go around what it is students that we exactly want and provided another thing and called it by basically the same name and we're supposed to accept that as normal. And we see that at all level of politics and policy and power. And so if we can actually encourage and invite in through some of these perhaps paid opportunities through work study or assistantships, students to the policy making table, then we can actually have a greater sense of efficacy with the work that we're trying to do. And I think take away some of that stigma associated with student activists as those who are making trouble instead of those who are creating solutions. Yeah. So one of the follow-up questions or very much aligned in this is what are some of the policies do you recommend advocating for? Maybe some specific policies. DeTem, you wanna start? I know you're in the School of Public Policy. Yeah. I mean, you maybe can't see but my shirt says policy is my love language from my aunt and personally. And I think like that's the only way we're gonna get these changes. It needs to be black and white at an institutional level and not just interpersonal within department to department. But as Charles was saying, we have to rebrand and reframe the way we see activism. It's not activism. It's civic engagement. We're doing our civic duty as Americans as citizen students of the university. And so therefore it needs to be taken in as a positive way and encouraged. And so building in institutional structures and feedback structures for you to constantly get feedback from students and know what is happening versus them having to go to different methods such as public shaming to get you to listen. That should be the final result and not the continuous go-to. I have to go to Twitter to get my university to listen to me because they're more focused on their image. But other policies, I think it begins at the admissions process. How are we deciding what channels are we using to bring in students? Are we relying on old metrics of referrals and word of mouth or using certain pipeline programs that are go-tos or actually expanding our screening and sourcing? Are we still using racist metrics such as the SAT to see if people are worthy of being here? And how are we supporting students once we're here? I don't know if a lot of people are aware of this but student loan debt for black Americans has skyrocketed since 2008. And I mean, the black white wealth gap has not closed in over 50, 60 years. And the student loan crisis is the major group of that. Black women are the most educated group in America but we still have black women's equal payday in the middle of August. And so in terms of supporting us to be educated and to leave your institution and be a part of that great brand, you also have to provide supports for those students. There was a student loan crisis because of the rising costs of higher ed support students to make sure they're able to thrive while they're here and after they leave rather just putting them in a bigger whole. But as Charles was saying, the final thing I want to talk about is that eye. We talk about DEI but rarely do we actually talk about the eye the inclusivity of what's happening. I myself went to an institution where only 2% of the students at Wake Forest were black and that was a very hard experiment. I felt like I was a part of a affirmative action integration experiment. And this was in 2009. So I think it's very important that when you're focused on exclusivity while you're making decisions and doing what's best for students you need to make sure students write that table but you also need to make sure black and brown people are at that table to make sure that any policies in terms of the classroom outside of the classroom are providing an equitable experience for everyone rather than a tokenized experience for some. Wow, thank you. That was a phenomenal list. Charles, did you want to add any? Yeah, I mean, I think that hit on really the top sort of pressing issues in higher ed. I think something that's adjacent that's becoming more close to the center of discussion are issues and policies around what we conceive to be public safety and security and specifically around the use of law enforcement and police. I think that at this particular moment it is an impossibility for post-secondary institutions especially those that have a relatively high spin on police to not be addressing the concerns and issues of everyday black people generally within the community in which the university is situated but also black students who are constantly in a dubious position of having to prove their place at institutions like this even faculty, right? Constantly being forced to show our IDs when we're coming in and out of spaces or buildings. The presumption of not being belonging here. And so I think if institutions aren't addressing what has been historically in a longstanding threat to black people specifically and people of color more generally and how the institution itself engages in these various cultural systems of surveillance, detention and punishment then we're gonna have sort of inroads or an impasse if you will rather in which all the programming and bringing together in the world is not gonna change the fact that when we get together we seem to have to have police as a part of that process. We have to have security, right? Sort of overwatching us at every event flow. And so I think institutions have to deal with the problem of policing, right? There's plenty of data that suggests that policing in the post-secondary context is like it is in society not doing what it says it's supposed to do and it's having a disproportionate effect on black faculty, staff and students of color more broadly. And so I think that's gotta be a policy that if we're thinking about racial justice in a meaningful way, then we have to divest from the institutional policing and reinvest those things into humanizing resources, systems and structures that's sustaining what it means to be black and brown on this campus. Deborah, I think you're muted. Wow, thank you, I appreciate that. I'll bring in a question specifically around policing that's from the audience and it says I've been thrilled to see growing student activism around policing on college campuses. What actions should institutions and administrators take to most powerfully advance this work and not leave this issue on the sole shoulders of students like Jitem mentioned? Jitem, do you wanna jump in first or? You can start and I'll follow. Okay, so I think one thing that's really important and this is part of a larger set of abolitionist work that's happening literally right now is one thinking about the role of audit and assessment and evaluation. And so one, there are data readily available and data that we provide to the federal government as beneficiaries and a part of the clear react that tell us how much we spend on law enforcement here to the extent to which the law enforcement that are employed by the institution are armed. And mostly when we think of this at the national level it's around 90 or so percent. We also know that about 80% of police are able to patrol areas outside of campus which is really the localized community and we know who gets police and over police more. And so we need to take stock of what that looks like. We also need to take stock at things that are losing resources. Right in this particular COVID-19 moment we are seeing a number of things that, you know, students of color, faculty and staff rely on that are being further diminished if not dismissed completely from budgetary consideration. Meanwhile, we're still spending hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars on police and law enforcement. So we need to take stock of where the money's going and what it is that's actually happening. We also need to juxtapose that against the campus safety and security data. What we tend to see is that there's been a long-standing trend downward of violent crime on campus and even more so police are being overly relied upon on campus to respond to things for which being armed is not necessary, right? And so when we look at those data and we see that most of the crime, if you will, is that's happening. It's campus police handing out underage drinking citations, right? And so again, we have to beg the question of why we're spending so much money and why are they doing so with arms, right? Because when it's black and brown folks in the same exercise are already seen as violent net puts us and getting in a certain precarious position. So I think we have to assess and understand what the data are telling us, which will give us some inclination of what specifically needs to happen. And then we also have to, you know, per the movement for black lives, which a lot of this work is sort of terminating out of is find ways to invest after we've died best from the institution of policing into other things that actually create a level of community safety. And again, students are already telling us what those things are. We just seem to not be listening and almost ignoring what it is that they're saying that they want because it isn't police. And that's been consistent for decades. Yeah, and I would just say, Charles, you hit on so many things I was thinking about also just in terms of the way of who are making, these policies you're creating, who's at the table making these policies and what is the purpose? So with policing, why do you have police on campus? Is it intention to protect and serve? If that's the intention that you want to protect students, what students are you protecting? Because are you protecting all students? I think about what's currently happening right now in terms of COVID-19 and the police being used to crack down and provide boundaries on that. And that should not be the place. If we're protecting students from a public health crisis, a pandemic, police should serve no role in doing that. The institution itself should provide structures to do that. I mean, just one final point is the equity of those policies. As I stated, I'm a part of a historically black sorority and in undergrad and across this institution as well, there are a difference in policing and policies for institutions based off what is the majority makeup of that sorority or fraternity. So as Charles has mentioned, that means hyper-policing. So therefore, if you have an event, security has to be here. Whereas an event that is going to have, that is known to have a large amounts of alcohol and possible violence will not have the same requirements. So just make sure whenever policies you have, whatever you enforce in one area, be consistent and enforce it in the other. If not, you're not serving all students and so that policy is invalid. And I would just add to that. So just to thank you for that point, I'm a member of KAPOP aside. So I very much resonate with this sort of approach. And I would just say the cautionary note, the answer isn't more policing for everybody. Like that's not what we're asking for. And we're seeing this with some administrative approaches now where people are wanting to actually invest more money in policing. And so I don't think the advocacy is like, whatever you're doing to us over at Schroder is the same thing you need to do on fraternity and sorority row. We're actually saying we need to alter the relationship of power here that puts police as the sort of arbiter of what is constituting safety and security. Cause I know release for me and for many of the folks that I've talked to, like I don't feel safe when police are present. I am concerned. Especially if I'm in a space that's mostly of white folks and we're an institution that is mostly white, right? So I'm already seeing as the problem and when we're seeing in a collective group or in mass, right? There's always a question of like what's going on here and what do we need to break up, right? As if it's already just sort of a threat to public safety and itself. So again, we're not being protected in that situation. Thank you. I do wanna point out that in the chat, Ryan put a teach out on police brutality. It's an online course. They don't include much learning about police on campus yet. So that's one resource if you wanna look to that. We did get a question at registration about policing and anxiety. So I'll just ask that one now since we're on this topic. How do you recommend we use students anti-racist activism to change the institution's policing policies? Students are particularly feeling personal anxiety over issues of police brutality. So where do we begin? Tim, you wanna start there? I would say, you know, as we're saying that defund the police movement isn't saying make this institution broke and give us money. It's saying the intentions of what you're putting that money in, those investments could go elsewhere and be more beneficial. So I think about caps. There are wait lists for caps. Not only are there wait lists for caps, but I'm currently, because we have this hybrid virtual remote model, whatever we're doing, there are multiple students who are not even in Michigan, therefore they can't use cap services. And so students who are members of the University of Michigan's community, paying tuition don't have equitable access to resources because a pandemic is currently happening. And so in supporting students who are going through a pandemic, who are going through two pandemics, COVID-19 and racism, it's very important you're providing the supports and services consistently and equitably. And so I believe the one thing the University of Michigan can immediately do now is find a way to provide mental health supports for students who are not here and subsidize it the same way you subsidize caps. Students are have so many things going on and so that's just nonsensical to me that that is a barrier. So I think providing those supports, but also as an administrator, as a faculty, as a leader in the space, whatever you hear students saying, bring that information back and make sure within your locals of control as a faculty member, you're not constantly testing them and adding them on work. You're actually providing the experience that matches the moment as a staff member or administration person. Make sure that in your policies, in your locusts of control, policing is reduced. You may not be able to change UN policies right now, but within your locusts of control, you can reduce policing and you can reduce this hierarchy of who is supposed to be protected and served. So I think that's an excellent point. I think there's also in addition to that for faculty in particular, right? What are ways that we can make our classrooms affirming spaces and actually put aside perhaps a lesson plan for a course period to actually address the overall collective sense of anxiety that's happening at this moment that definitely is related deeply to police brutality and police violence, but also the sort of violence of this pandemic in and of itself, which also has a disproportionate effect on black people, right? So we're being compounded at this juncture of fighting for our lives against COVID-19, also fighting for our lives against 12, right? 12 is for police, for those that aren't familiar with that particular term. And so for me, it's thinking about the classroom space and what is my obligation as a faculty member, right? To enrich the lives of students and give them permission, right? And provide space to be full human beings. So often we're like locked in, like what the curricular plan is for that week and what the unit and lessons are and not really taking stock of the room in a particular way, which is interesting now in Zoom because you can literally see pretty much everyone's face all at the same time. And you can see that there's like a palpable sense of anxiety and tension that needs to be addressed. And so what does that mean for either one, being able to facilitate a space that folks can actually process and talk about their feelings, talk about the things that are weighing on them as they're coming into a classroom space, or if that's not your skill set, to enlist practitioners who are very well trained and very well versed in their abilities to do that and bring them into your classroom space to say at least for maybe 30, 45 minutes, right? We're gonna do some breath work with someone who's engaged in this particular type of healing practice. So we can just kind of deal with some of the anxiety that even faculty, again, that we're feeling as well. And sort of again, close that divide. So often this faculty, we don't portray ourselves in the fullness of our humanity and that makes it really hard to recognize that in other people. But when we're able to do that, right? Our pedagogy can be much more successful and we can actually get to the things we wanted to get to in the class by at least addressing, you know, there's various sort of elephants that are in the room associated with some of these issues. And the other thing I want to mention too in regards to police brutality in particular, at minimum, we have to acknowledge and recognize when something happens, right? Not just at the national level, as in the case of George Floyd or Amad Abri or Breonna Taylor, but something that might happen even more locally, right? Or things that may have happened that don't make the news because for every George Floyd, right? There's somebody else that we're not even thinking about. There's Ayanna Stanley Jones that happened several years ago right here in Detroit. So to what extent can we at least acknowledge that? And I think we're hearing from a lot of students, you know, when we're assessing campus climate that, you know, my faculty or my department doesn't even acknowledge when black people are killed or how that's having an effect on me as I come into this space or I'm not giving grace and a passion when I meet in this class or like calling them black for the day, right? And so I think that can go a really long way on the micro level really about how we can carry out policies or practices that don't have to be set by the institution but we can create those for our own selves and our own spaces in these classrooms. Thank you, thanks. I'm gonna bring in another question from the participants. It says, many times when I engage faculty there is medicines to engage on anti-racism because they are not experts on the anti-racism and they don't like to stray away from their intellectual comfort zones. So what would you say to faculty about the harm of exercising their power, staying in their intellectual comfort zone which is often white-centered? Furthermore, how should the protection of tenure be commandeered for anti-racism? Charles, you wanna start with there that first question I think how do we push faculty that wanna stay in a comfort zone or for people that just say, hey, this is not my expertise. We hear that a lot, right? So we don't wanna speak outside of our expertise. I mean, I'll return to the point that Jitain made earlier that again applies to faculty. We have to be committed to remediating our racial illiteracy, right? And improving our competency because like anything else that we become experts in or become professionals in it's a deliberate choice in field of study. And so when a new paper comes out in your particular interest area you read that paper, right? You find out what's going on what's happening in your field. You create perhaps even a syllabi for yourself of things you need to read to improve your own research program. And so what would it need to take that same intellectual approach, right? To understanding these issues as an intellectual exercise, right? You have colleagues at this institution who do this work on a day-to-day that could recommend or even just provide you a syllabi from their class of readings that would help you address some of these things. And so one, I don't think it's excusable that, oh, this just isn't my area, right? Because it's like, well, it's all of our areas because we are in the people producing business, right? And so we gotta be able to understand folks in order to love them and produce them in the way of care that we should as faculty members. And I think in addition to that, be open to being able to say this isn't my area but then find the resources available to us, right? We have so many resources at this institution that can fill in that gap, right? You have colleagues from this is their area of expertise. How do you bring them in, especially in this virtual moment, have them Skype into your classroom to talk about these particular issues, right? And I think that that's the thing we often do, again, within our subfields, right? Like I don't know everything there is to know or even much of what there is to know about higher education finance. But I know a good number of people who know higher education finance really well. And if there's a gap in my curriculum where that's the thing we need to talk about but I don't understand it in particular, I just call that person say, hey, would you my guest lecturing in my class? There is no difference being able to do that for folks who have deep expertise in this area. And I think, in addition to that, the last thing I'll say is, we need to stop being like, we need to perform a sense of expertise that we don't actually have, right? And just get out the way. Because it's like we often engage in more harm doing than harm reduction by trying to perform and just like I'm down, I know what the lingo is. Like I know how to navigate these spaces when you ain't done the reading, right? And this is the thing that we get faculty and get on students about all the time, like not doing the reading but want to engage in the discussion. Yeah, we do this with DEI work all the time, right? So hashtag do the reading. If you're not going to do the reading, find somebody who's done the reading who can engage in this conversation meeting. To Tim? Yeah, and I would just follow up and say, saying I'm not an expert and just leaving it there. It's just you saying I'm not willing to exert effort to make sure that my classroom is not white centered. That I am, this classroom is not centered around me. Where the world, the global majority of the world is non-white. And so therefore when in our curriculum, everything needs to be infused with culturally competent areas of concern. As a kindergarten teacher, I hadn't broken down letter sounds and long vowels since I was five years old. But I took the time to learn how to break those things down. I took the time to learn these new common core metrics because it was dependent upon my students' ability to thrive. And so faculty members should see the same way. As Charles said, we are in the people-centered business. Clint Smith just recently published something in the Atlantic called, I'm teaching should be political. And I think if you feel as if making sure that your students aren't going in the world without that anti-racist lens, you're not doing the work. And as Charles said, we're in this virtual world. So there's no way you can't make way. We're in the age of allyship. And allyship is more than just ordering your Amazon wish list. Allyship is showing up in the way and providing space, making space for someone who may be an expert. So if there's someone an expert in your domain who you may not know, but through networks, you may know, bring them into that conversation, uplift that work, because we're not asking you to be the end all be all. We're asking you just to provide a resource and provide a way for students to get this critical information. Thank you. Now I'm gonna bring in a voice that a question that is a voice that we hear often. And it kind of relates to what you have just been talking about. It says, in regard to who leads or works in anti-racism events messaging, we run into the issue of who's allowed to do the work. Many of my fellow staff who are specialists in communication events, et cetera, are white or non-black PLC who feel like they're not allowed to step into that becomes non-black people centered, centering themselves, taking over, right? So they're asking what pushes the burden on to the black members of our community that them saying that will push it on to the black people. But how do they address the issue and make a more equitable distribution of work? So this is the, okay, you tell us to help. And then when we help, you say we're taking over question. I will start with you, Charles, you're smiling. Girl. Right, like period, like that's the whole sentence. Yeah, like this is the part of the problem with whiteness as a racial project, right? Is that you can't necessarily feel yourself to be involved if you're not at the center and so much of that is embedded in the everydayness of how you exist in the world, right? And I think the notion of being, you know, deferential or what we consider as like deferential allyship, right? A way that you can provide support by listening to and taking the leadership of, right? In many cases, black women, right? Who are not allowed to be in formalized leadership positions but are expected to lead in these moments of crisis. And so I think what really should be thought about is that if you are a white person trying to engage in this work, one, know that the work primarily for you is not with people of color, right? That's the number one. The work for you is with other white people, right? So you can take up this work and be in other spaces where you can very much be at the center and leading this work in insular white communities who aren't necessarily on the same page or have the same language, right or ways of thinking about the world that maybe you do that has, you know, pushed you to engage in this work. But you also have to be willing to do so without necessarily the types of recognition you may be accustomed to or in ways that are again deferential to the direction and leadership of people of color, right? There's a very different, and we know this in like the hierarchy of bureaucracy of working in a place like this and other research institutions. There's a very big difference between like managing, directing and sort of like coordinating, right? And so when we think about those hierarchies of how things work, it's not any different in sort of less formal organized structure saying your contribution is to do communications, but you should do them in a way that's consistent and aligned with the political vision and ideological construct of the people who need to mostly benefit from this type of intervention. And I think that's often the challenge of like wanting to be at the center or be recognized and the extent to which a professional ego requires of us to have that recognition in order for this work to be considered valuable. And actually again, this is like thankless work that often happens in places that people can't see. But if you're going to be engaged in this work as a white person, then yes, it's understanding that you will be not at the center, you will be in the margin because you almost always are at the center. And if so, you need to listen to who's now at the center of these conversations. Thank you. Did you want to add to Tim? I just think it's very similar to the previous point in terms of what you do in the classroom. It's said that you're not an expert, but be willing to invest some time in learning how to craft this messaging. But also again, the messaging really isn't crafted towards black people. The message is crafting towards non-black people on what this new world is. And it's not even a new world, it's just what the world should be, what an equitable society should be. And so we see different techniques being used where people are like, oh, we don't want to say people of color. We don't want to say black people in Detroit did this. So we're just going to say thank you, Michigan. And I think that you are taking away certain power. You're diluting certain stories by doing that. So you have to find a way to communicate to people whose language you may speak, who may be in the things you may understand and learn how to provide a craft of message, a brand to them that makes them understand the end goal. But again, we're not saying you have to be an expert, but you do have to be willing to give some of that power and move to the margins, as Charles said. You can't be centered in everything because again, the world is now a global minority of non-white people. So now it's the only time for us to finally catch up and do this work. Yeah. And what I hear you saying, basically, you can stand next to, you can stand behind, you can help the other people that are out in the front. What can you do in the background? And that's so helpful, right? So we have lots of people like, I am so grateful to have people that are like, well, what can we help you do, right? So we have our people in the background like managing the chat, et cetera, et cetera. What can you do when you're not necessarily at the center, but you're helping to elevate and empower marginalized voices? So here's a- Can I make one more point? Yes, please. So I was gonna say that there is a time to be centered and in the forefront of this work, and that is when we are under the threat of violence. Although that is typically the time that nobody wants to be front and center, right? And so if there is a moment, right, to be able to put either literally your body, right, or your positionality, or your particular role of power in between harm and black and brown people, then it is expected that you do that. And that's one of the things I appreciate about white differential allies and sort of the on-the-ground movement work, and we're seeing this for organizations like White People for Black Lives. Like when we go out and we are taken to the streets in protesting and police show up, they know that they need to be in the front of that, right, to create separation between the police and us more than likely that police are not gonna engage in the same types of violence that they incur on our bodies on an every single day basis. So in institutional context, what does that mean? What does it mean to take up space in a way that creates that buffer for folks so that we can have some level of insulation to protection because white folks are not gonna experience racial violence the way that we do? Yes, I love that. Thank you for adding that. I think the main thing is that there's space for everybody in this work. This is, you know, we all have a place in it and it's so much work that needs to be done. I do have a question about activism and anxiety. How do we balance activism with anxiety? We are concerned with students' health and well-being. How can we reconcile outward advocacy and inner anxiety? Is it Tim? Yeah, this is something definitely we see pervasive with all the things happening currently. And I think first it starts with boundaries. It's unsafe to go outside. And so yes, we are all in homes. We are all mostly probably in the same place, but that does not mean that we are always readily available. So as a faculty member, as an administrative member, make sure that you're supporting personal and work boundaries in your teaching, in your programming, and providing student space and the resources so they can figure out what their own boundaries are. It's very important that they have time for their own self-care and development so they're not burning the candle out at both ends. And I think about this quote, I think about a picture. You can't pour for an empty picture. So it's very important while you're doing this work you're refilling that picture frequently and constantly because you're constantly exerting effort. I think that black joy is a form of taking care of yourself and the laughter. For me, I love watching a good comedy show. I love the inappropriate comedy of Dave Chappelle. Some people thought his SNL monologue was highly problematic. And I guess as a black woman it resonated to me. And so I think that is how we as black people find joy. So you have to figure out what is your lane for joy and constantly, constantly find your joy because joy is a form of activism. And I think finally, therapy is very important. Therapy should not be something that's shamed. And so as I mentioned earlier as a university make sure students who are not in Michigan have access to services such as CAPS since they currently do not have support for CAPS and providing supports through maybe subscriptions to apps such as COM to make sure that through baby steps different things are being institutionally provided for mental well-being. Josh, you wanna add on anxiety or no? No, I think just knocked it out the park. I don't have anything to add. Okay, great. So the next question is similar. It's about burnout. What can we do to build community among everyone at the university to engage together in activism? How can we support each other to prevent burnout? Yeah, building capacity is really important. And I think the point that just mentioned about one the sort of expectation and perhaps, you know obligation that's placed upon students to do this work in part because they're transient, right? And a lot of administrators will wait out before years of the two years or whatever it is depending on the program for students to move on. And often the challenge right is that you have a particular contingent of folks who are doing that work and there's often no backfill for that, right? And so you end up aging out to some extent where it's like, okay, I gotta focus on graduating at this point and we haven't backfilled in. So what are the mechanisms by which we can ensure that underclassmen are being ushered into the same political tradition as are the upperclassmen who took it over to ensure that we have those capacities, right? For folks to expand and to grow and to fill in. And I think the same thing happens when we think about the labor incurred by staff administrators and faculty, right? When there's so few that, you know these burdens are held for very, very long times and we have to question the extent to which our inability to invest in compositional diversity, right? Or like a more representative group of folks doing the work generally at a university, then it's inevitable that these burnouts are going to happen, right? I think if you're one of two, you know faculty of color in your department and the other faculty member has been here for 30 years, we'll say, right? Like that faculty member has been passed burnout and it took 30 years maybe for someone else to come in and part because of the institutional structures that did not provide pathways for more racially diverse sets of faculty. And so there are these policies that are in place informal and formal that disenfranchise a broader group of folks who are naturally perhaps inclined to do this work, right? And then there's again, a lack of incentive or recognition to do it in the first place which in mostly, you know these hierarchical concepts most people are not going to do. So if we haven't integrated, you know these things into things like promotion and tenure review or just promotion in general around the university, right? And beyond sort of the perfunctory like write a paragraph about what you did for diversity this year. Then I think you're disincentivizing other people to get involved which means it will continue to fall to the few folks who have no choice but to fight for their own survival. Thank you. So I'll bring in a question from the audience. How do policies and laws like free speech privilege some voices over others in terms of student voice and agency and how can we challenge those at the institutional level? You wanna start, Charles? Yeah, I have so much I can say there could be a whole nother lead discussion, right? So I think one thing and I imagine that some will bring a more thoughtful analysis to this, right? Because many of those policies are perceived as race neutral, right? When in fact that they aren't. And part of the problem is that when we have policies like this they never account properly for the relationship of power and how free speech tends to only apply to people who wanna be super offensive, right? Or do harm and then does not adequately apply or provide a set of adequate protections for folks who are speaking against power. And so I always sort of raised this question in my work of when we talk about free speech well who is free, who has the right to speak and then who is protected? And historically that's not us, right? If you're ever speaking back against the systems of power then the power will do its best to suppress you, right? The sort of act of political suppression. And so if we're gonna have policies then they have to be race conscious policies, right? Which actually acknowledges the relationship of power and doesn't say that if you are young Americans for freedom group and you're spewing all of these sort of hateful things on campus whether it is your right that does not mean that you're absolved from consequences of those actions, right? It also shouldn't mean that we can't speak our truth to power when we're the ones who are being marginalized by an ideology of discourse and an opinion that ultimately gets translated into policy which is the real thing, right? All speech is not created equal, right? We know that certain forms of speech end up into policies that are codified in ways for our further subjugation suppression and oppression as a collective group of people. And so if we can't acknowledge that then these policies basically are empty as the rhetoric that put them together in the first place because they're not focused on the results. And even more so we're seeing policies with intention at the system level and at the individual institution level that are geared towards protestors and organizers for enacting the very same rights that these other students do also lead to be subjugated to possible suspension if not expulsion from the university. So we have to take stock of our powers functioning in these places. Yeah, and just to add to that and simply synthesize it when we're talking about free speech free speech shouldn't be seen as harmful speech hurtful speech. And so I think you cannot say these two things are the same someone saying black lives matter is meaning that these people deserve to exist these people deserve equal rights. We're not saying these people are on a hierarchy but when you think about some of the rhetoric coming from different sides that we've seen run through social media that we may have even experienced in our own lives essentially dehumanizing people. I think that is when you kind of put boundaries on what free speech is and free speech should never be focused around hurting another. You can agree to disagree. I think we had as a society we have to shift from debates to dialogues and actually understanding the other side actually knowing our facts and providing evidence-based conversations rather than just running off what he said she said. And so that's just one huge push that we just have to make as a whole that we're actually debating not debating anymore but engaging in dialogues to make sure we understand all the facts because misinformation is just spreading at exponential rates right now. Wow, once again, our has gone so quickly. I can't believe it but I do have a final question and that is how there's like this progression from awareness to action to accountability. How do we get to accountability and holding our administrators and faculty staff, everyone accountable to really make this happen? Because like you said at the beginning Jitim we're already seeing fewer and fewer people feeling that it's important from July or June, right? So what do we do to get to accountability? Any last thoughts, last words? I would just say that, yes, UM is a nonprofit but it's also a business. They brought in approximately $9 billion of revenue last year. And so I think you have to hold them accountable with things that they hold value to. Money is something that they hold value to. And so let's put your money where your mouth is and making sure that this experience that students are experiencing is equitable and anti-racist. We're looking at, tenure was brought up earlier, tenure focused so much on research but are you making sure in that research people are focusing on not centering whiteness but centering on all people? Is your institution publishing large amounts of information that is for a specific group and not relevant to all groups of people? I've seen at the Ford School, fortunately there's been a rise in research around race coming through poverty solutions and that's great, but it can't just be siloed in one department. And so I think we have to have metrics and milestones to hold people accountable but we also have to make sure that's also heavily invested in with the funds the university is bringing in. Thank you. Charles, last words on that comment accountability. Yeah, I mean, I think accountability is a funny thing, right? I think it's always subjective and selectively applied in ways that are to the benefit of structures and systems of power. So I think to Tim's point, right? We have to reevaluate these notions of merit and the extent to which this has not been a thing that's been meaningfully integrated into those processes, right? Because there are things that we can do that would perhaps incentivize or at least disincentivize not being engaged in these in meaningful ways. But I think accountability for me really raises questions of whether we conflate the notion of accountability as punishment. And I think that those are very different things, right? Accountability for me is when we think about a collective being able to apply pressure and not take that pressure off until those demands can be met is one way of like forcing power, the right power can seize nothing without demand to remain accountable. But the other part of this is like, you just have to do what we say we do. And I think that's the discontinuity we see of value and congruence, right? It's spousing one thing and saying that these things do matter here, right? Or that these people do matter here. And we're not showing that in the way that we enact our policies and practices. And so accountability, if it is anything is being able to think about to whom we're answerable. And too often that is to profit, right? In capitalism, it is to productivity, it is to prestige and it's not to people. And until we invert that relationship, we are actually accountable to people rather than productivity, prestige and profit. Then we're not really gonna be able to get anywhere because those types of measures of accountability ultimately don't improve the conditions of people. Great, thank you so much. Wonderful last words. I just wanna say it's so obvious that you all have expertise, that you're active activists and advocates in this work. And we appreciate what you've done. We've heard so many messages, seen so many messages in the chat, finger snaps and thank yous and saying this has been very helpful. So we appreciate you both being here today. I appreciate everyone who has joined us and spent this hour with us today. We greatly appreciate you taking the time with us. I thank our leadership and all of my support in Rackham including the Dean, Mike Solomon who make space for this type of discussion. And so I ask that you all join us next month. We'll be meeting on December 4th, Decentering Whiteness in the Academy. And that will be Drs. Stephanie Rowley and Elizabeth Cole. So we hope that you can join us then. Thank you everyone for joining me today. And I wish you a phenomenal weekend. Bye everyone.