Lone Whistleblower Takes On the Woke Racists at Smith College

By Frederick M. Hess

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

 

The forces of repression and racial animus are running roughshod over America’s colleges and universities. Students and campus bureaucrats silence those who’d dare question academia’s embrace of the doctrine of “systemic racism,” or those who remain skeptical of the racist strategies supposedly required to combat it. For every incident that sees the light of day, there are hundreds of acts of quiet intimidation and self-censorship. Yet much of this phenomenon is not driven by the modest — albeit vocal — number of menacing true believers. Instead, the prevailing forces of campus repression derive from the weak spines of campus leaders, charlatans who see an opportunity to exploit, and the widespread fear among faculty and students of being fed into the maw of the campus thought police.

 

The price of standing up can be steep: Faculty don’t want to be in the crosshairs, students don’t want to be expelled, and staff need their paychecks. That’s why many concerned faculty will share quiet missives among themselves, even as they remain publicly silent. And that’s what makes Jodi Shaw such an inspiring, important figure. The soft-spoken mother of two burst into the public consciousness last week when the invaluable columnist Bari Weiss shared Shaw’s letter of resignation from her position as a student-support coordinator at tony Smith College in Northampton, Mass. Weiss, herself a refugee from the New York Times, wrote at Substack:

 

We all know that something morally grotesque is swallowing liberal America. Almost no one wants to risk talking about it out loud. Every day I get phone calls from anxious Americans complaining about an ideology that wants to pull all of us into the past. I get calls from parents telling me about the damaging things being taught in schools: so-called antiracist programs that urge children to obsess on the color of their skin. . . . Almost no one who calls me is willing to go public. And I understand why. To go public with what’s happening is to risk their jobs and their reputations. But the hour is very late. It calls for courage. And courage has come in the form of a woman named Jodi Shaw.

 

For those who think that Weiss overstates either the challenge or Shaw’s courage, it’s worth reading Shaw’s letter in its entirety. Shaw, a lifelong liberal, Smith alum, and divorced mom, was earning $45,000 a year at Smith, or less than one year’s tuition at the school. Yet she rejected the school’s settlement offer — a move doubtless intended to buy her silence — so that she could speak out.

 

Shaw wrote to Smith president Kathy McCartney and allowed Weiss to republish the letter in full. Here’s how the text begins:

 

I am writing to notify you that effective today, I am resigning from my position as Student Support Coordinator in the Department of Residence Life at Smith College. This has not been an easy decision, as I now face a deeply uncertain future. As a divorced mother of two, the economic uncertainty brought about by this resignation will impact my children as well. But I have no choice. The racially hostile environment that the college has subjected me to for the past two and a half years has left me physically and mentally debilitated. I can no longer work in this environment, nor can I remain silent about a matter so central to basic human dignity and freedom.

 

I graduated from Smith College in 1993. Those four years were among the best in my life. Naturally, I was over the moon when, years later, I had the opportunity to join Smith as a staff member. I loved my job and I loved being back at Smith.

 

But the climate — and my place at the college — changed dramatically when, in July 2018, the culture war arrived at our campus when a student accused a white staff member of calling campus security on her because of racial bias. The student, who is black, shared her account of this incident widely on social media, drawing a lot of attention to the college.

 

Before even investigating the facts of the incident, the college immediately issued a public apology to the student, placed the employee on leave, and announced its intention to create new initiatives, committees, workshops, trainings, and policies aimed at combating “systemic racism” on campus.

 

In spite of an independent investigation into the incident that found no evidence of racial bias, the college ramped up its initiatives aimed at dismantling the supposed racism that pervades the campus. This only served to support the now prevailing narrative that the incident had been racially motivated and that Smith staff are racist.

 

If you think this sounds troubling, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Shaw was just getting warmed up. She later relates that, in order to work as a student-support coordinator,

 

I was told on multiple occasions that discussing my personal thoughts and feelings about my skin color is a requirement of my job. I endured racially hostile comments, and was expected to participate in racially prejudicial behavior as a continued condition of my employment. I endured meetings in which another staff member violently banged his fist on the table, chanting “Rich, white women! Rich, white women!” in reference to Smith alumnae. I listened to my supervisor openly name preferred racial quotas for job openings in our department. I was given supplemental literature in which the world’s population was reduced to two categories — “dominant group members” and “subordinated group members” — based solely on characteristics like race.

 

Every day, I watch my colleagues manage student conflict through the lens of race, projecting rigid assumptions and stereotypes on students, thereby reducing them to the color of their skin. I am asked to do the same, as well as to support a curriculum for students that teaches them to project those same stereotypes and assumptions onto themselves and others. I believe such a curriculum is dehumanizing, prevents authentic connection, and undermines the moral agency of young people who are just beginning to find their way in the world.

 

Although I have spoken to many staff and faculty at the college who are deeply troubled by all of this, they are too terrified to speak out about it. This illustrates the deeply hostile and fearful culture that pervades Smith College.

 

There’s much more. Again, I’d encourage you to read the whole letter. If you like it, you’ll want to check out Shaw’s compelling video as well (both are included in Weiss’s Substack post).

 

I know President McCartney. She recruited me to do some teaching at Harvard back when she was dean of the Graduate School of Education. We were friendly for many years, and while I haven’t seen her in a long time, I remember her as being smart, sensible, good-hearted, with no interest in the struggle sessions and racist reeducation now unleashed at Smith on her watch. Perhaps she has been sold on the marvels of intellectual repression. But my hunch is that she has been stampeded and intimidated into acquiescence.

 

That’s where the courage of the Jodi Shaws of the world can make such a difference. The willingness of even a few sensible souls can pop a fever dream. Indeed, even in San Francisco, it has just been reported that the blowback has forced the school board to retreat (at least for now) from its plan to strip 44 schools of undesirable namesakes such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln.

 

This is a fight that we can win. But it requires courage, and it requires common sense. It also demands that each of us on the sidelines be there for those who dare to stand up and be counted.