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I sense that WSU, like many other universities, is steadily retreating from diversity. I also sense that this retreat is only partly, not entirely, driven by “anti-woke” politics in DC. Changing demographics dictate that, in the future, schools will increasingly depend on more and more students of color, and these students, regardless of their majors, will perform better in their coursework and be likelier to remain enrolled if they see faculty from their home racial communities. So any retreat from diversity, for whatever reason, is extremely ill advised. When President Schulz noted that fewer than 10 percent of tenure-track faculty are people of color, he implied that some remedy was needed. Where is that remedy today? Any retreat from diversity is a slap in the face to those future students of color on whom universities will depend. We need both short-term and longer-term policies for faculty diversity, and yet we’re seeing either the opposite or else indifference. We cannot go back to the look and feel of the 1950s university.
John Streamas, Comparative Ethnic Studies
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