Thread by @DavidDecosimo

Since 2015, the year they hired me, Boston University School of Theology has made sixteen tenure track faculty hires.
In over a decade, I am the only white American male they have hired.
compactmag.com/article/the-lo…

My hiring was itself regarded as wholly aberrant - and eventually a system error. In the years that followed powerful colleagues would explicitly & repeatedly attack me for my identity - especially for inhabiting it in a non-servile, non-self-abasing way.

While far from the most serious incident, once on the T, in front of my 8 yr old son, a student saw me & began talking. She'd been admitted elsewhere for a PhD & started ranting on & on about how 'utterly disgusting' white men were & how she hated that they were on their faculty.

Of course, my son was regularly hearing the same noxious stuff in Brookline schools, so it was all familiar to him - but, still, seeing it in such a personal & direct way and implicating me was even more upsetting & left him imagining a future of being hated for his identity.

What was most striking was how incredibly unself-conscious & casual she was in speaking with such deep-seated contempt & hatred - all right in front of my son.
But that was BU School of Theology. And that view was held & enforced by faculty who wielded real power in the school.