Thread by @JewhadiTM

A Professor Pushed Back Against 'White Fragility' Training. The College Investigated Her for 9 Months. reason.com/2021/04/05/a-p… via @reason

Elisa Parrett, whose heterodox politics led her to vote for Green Party nominee Jill Stein in 2016 and for Donald Trump last year. "I simply avoided bringing politics up and avoided mentioning my views unless they seemed relevant to things other people had already said."

She didn't like the rise of the concept of "safe spaces," or certain aspects of what she calls "capital-A anti-racist pedagogy," which she views as being distinct from mere opposition to racism.

But what most concerned her was an upcoming diversity training in which faculty and staff would be divided into white and nonwhite "caucuses."

In the wake of George Floyd's death and the protests that then erupted all over the country, LWTech had, like so many other educational institutions, embarked on a large, highly visible attempt to make itself a more inclusive, less racist place. The session was a part of that.

It was called Courageous Conversations, and it was scheduled for June 19.

The stated goal of such events is to allow people to talk about race and racism more openly, but the decision to have the races meet separately made Parrett uncomfortable.

"Racial segregation of that kind seems like a throwback to the pre-1960s and not a good way to create any kind of cooperation or collaboration," she says. She wasn't the only one disturbed by the idea of a racially segregated anti-racism training.

Her friend Phil Snider, another English professor at LWTech, said in an email to senior administrators that a "conference based on segregation by skin color does nothing to build a community of belonging."

Nonetheless, a June 18 all-college email noted that the school's president, Amy Morrison, had "made clear the expectation that all full-time employees attend Friday's Courageous Conversations" unless they had conflicting teaching responsibilities.

Parrett decided to express her qualms about the training during the training itself.

What happened over the next nine months was both bizarre and oppressive.

Because of a brief disruption that easily could have been brushed aside, LWTech went to war against a tenured faculty member, launching an over-the-top disciplinary process that included the hiring of a private investigator, dozens of interviews, and claims of widespread trauma.