TC Discusses Handling of Race Issues

With last week’s news that a prominent black professor was found guilty of academic plagiarism, Teachers College’s handling of race issues was thrust into the spotlight—and under the microscope—for the second time this year. As the school launches a new round of soul-searching, both students and faculty have said they feel that the TC administration does not adequately address or facilitate discussions about race issues.

When a noose was found on the door of counseling and clinical psychology professor Madonna Constantine’s office door in October, and a spray-painted swastika on a Jewish professor’s office door weeks later, the TC community stood together to protest the act of racism at several public meetings. Administrators and faculty began work on a report composed of suggested changes such as increased recruiting of faculty and students of color, more community engagement, increased critical dialogue, and a core class on multiculturalism. TC administrators said they continued to develop initiatives targeting diversity that were already in place before the hate crimes threw them into the spotlight.

“We feel we’ve been targeted precisely because Teachers College is and historically has been a center for deep multi-cultural work,” the TC administration wrote in a press release following the swastika incident.

But while administrators said that the bias incidents last semester invigorated the discourse about diversity in academia, TC students reported in interviews last semester that they saw a lack of critical racial discourse inside and outside the classroom. They claimed that professors blanched when confronted with hard-lined questions about ethnic realities in educational settings.

“They talk about how social justice, educational equity and equality are the main tenets of the College,” Shawn Maxam, TC, said. He cited the school’s mission statement that “educational equity” is “a moral imperative for the 21st century,” but “a lot of the times when you’re studying in the classrooms, race in class doesn’t come up. If it comes up and it’s challenging, it’s pushed under the table.”

The issue of race at TC came to the surface once again last week when the administration announced that Constantine, the victim of the still-unsolved noose hate crime, had been found guilty of plagiarism after a year-and-a-half-long investigation. Reactions to the news were soon couched in racial terms, with Constantine alleging that TC had targeted her because she is African-American, an assertion backed up by the school’s one other African-American female tenured professor.

“The administration handled the noose incident very poorly each and every step along the way,” TC Professor Barbara Wallace wrote in a statement defending Constantine. “Now, the administration’s most recent actions leave them vulnerable to the appearance of racial bias.”

A TC spokeswoman said that Constantine and her defenders’ claims about racism are “absurd” because of TC’s “zero tolerance policy” for racism. Professor Suniya Luthar, the former chair of the counseling and clinical psychology department whose concerns kicked off the plagiarism investigation, said: “As far as race concerned, it is misguided and wrong headed to cast all these concerns in race. I am an ethnic minority.”

The veracity of Constantine’s claims aside, there is no doubt that the most recent episodes have reopened discussions of race issues.

Since before the hate crimes this fall, students, faculty, and administrators have been discussing solutions such as recruiting diverse students, recruiting and retaining tenure-track professors from a diverse pool, holding programs that foster community, consulting closely with students, and hiring more personnel to deal with diversity specifically. But after the publicized incidents, there has been widespread sentiment that TC must use the recent hate crimes to galvanize a deeper discussion.

“We need to be demonstrating to other institutions as Teachers College has done since its origins that we can work harder on problems of inequality,” TC Provost Thomas James said in an interview last semester.

Most parties agreed that changes at Teachers College have to be institutionalized and sustainable. While individual initiatives may be quick fixes to a larger problem, an ongoing struggle with issues that plague society outside of Columbia, they said, would serve as a lasting solution.

Jondou Chen, TC, called oppression a “system-wide disease” and said the onus falls on students and administrators to cure it. “Does the administration need to own up to its part? Yes. And there are things that all of us at all of our levels can do to be part of the solution.”

Janice Robinson worked as the head of the president’s office of community and diversity to address race issues on a day-to-day basis—before TC was thrust into the spotlight of the national media for the hate crimes. “I don’t want people to think we had the noose incident and we had the swastika incident, and now all of a sudden Teachers College is waking up and doing this work,” Robinson said last semester. “Those aren’t the facts.”

Robinson said that while TC currently offers 32 courses with multicultural material, the faculty is scrutinizing the curriculum and considering a core class on diversity.

While the plagiarism investigation and subsequent allegations turn attention to race issues, even those most critical of TC believe the institution can grow.

“I believe in the Teachers College that can heal and transform itself to be relevant to the times, having done so for over a century,” Wallace wrote. “The life of this institution is longer than any one administration, and I believe we can also heal from the unfortunate actions and lack of fair play on the part of the current administration.”

joy.resmovits@columbiaspectator.com