Anti-white bigotry on college campuses is now all the rage.
White professors — especially “senior white males” — are under fire at Virginia Commonwealth University as an impediment to diversity and inclusion.
An extensive campus climate survey of faculty and staff at the large, Richmond-based public institution has found that the majority of employees are upset that not enough white male professors attend campus diversity trainings, not enough professors infuse social justice into their curricula, and not enough professors of color, especially female ones, teach at the school.
Complaints culled from the survey include:
“Need to imbed social justice across academic departments.”
“Conversations about social justice are occurring, but they are just not happening in the classroom”
“There are not many minority women faculty”
“Some faculty and staff participate in the diversity and inclusion events; senior white males are not attending”
“In order to increase and improve perspectives, VCU needs to hire more faculty that aren’t white males.”Last month, campus leaders at Virginia Commonwealth University held a forum to unveil the results of the faculty campus climate survey, which generally found most professors at the school — which teaches some 31,000 students annually — perceive the university to be dedicated to social justice initiatives, but that dedication needs to play out more inside the classroom, and needs to be reflected better by hiring more faculty of color.
The information collected, along with feedback from several prior forums, has been used by VCU’s Council for Inclusive Excellence and Equity to develop a five-year diversity action plan that will pervade nearly every aspect of school policy.
In response to the survey, campus leaders say they must “align, improve and visibly demonstrate actions for diversity and inclusion,” “push continuously towards demographic equity in all programs and services” and “integrate social justice and experiential learning into curriculum or coursework.”