Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and Columbia University in New York City have each decided to comply with the anti-DEI demands of the Trump administration. This is a tragic development for both schools.
I am a 1998 PhD graduate of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. I also attended Columbia University in New York City in the 1970s. The number of non-white male students in all my classes at both schools was minuscule. Attempts to create diversity in ethnicity, gender, religion, and national origin are important, and were beginning to have a positive impact.
Now, because of the MAGA worldview that wants to obliterate diversity programs and return to a white privilege/white supremacy environment, bastions of academic freedom and freedom of speech have given in to government bullying. Trump does not care about the values that great universities have upheld for centuries. He wants to remake this country according to his whims and wishes.
I grieve over the present direction our country is presently taking. I fear what will happen if the institutions that have long created the thought, business, academic, professional, and cultural leaders of our society bow before Donald Trump and his desire to control faculty selection, course offerings, campus activities, and the research done in university labs that make our country great and make our world a better place for all people.
I call upon graduates of all our country's colleges and universities to raise their voices in protest over what is happening to our schools and to our country. Silence in this hour suggests consent. I do not consent, and I hope millions of others will do the same!
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The Rev. Dr. Marvin A. McMickle is pastor emeritus of Antioch Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio. He also served as president of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, Rochester, New York, from 2011 to 2019.
