National conservative group questions University of Kentucky anti-racism training
University of Kentucky President Eli Capilouto sent out a rather enigmatic email to campus on Thursday afternoon about the tensions between upholding the school’s commitment to diversity while following the law on open records.
Specifically, he mentioned some open records requests about some faculty members who work in the area of diversity, equity and inclusion.
Coincidentally, or not so coincidentally, a few weeks ago, I got a tip that the Young America Foundation — a conservative student organization (tagline: “The conservative movement starts here”) that has a UK chapter — had requested a lot of records regarding Dr. Candice Hargons. Hargons is a Ph.D. researcher in the College of Education who works on anti-racist training and racial trauma, among a number of other topics.
I did an open records request for the open records request, which, sure enough showed a request by the YAF for a whole lot of records about Hargons, including “flyers, PowerPoints, letters, instant messages, internal communications, training materials of all forms, curricula, and audio/video records — regarding the “anti-racism” trainings led by Candice Hargons.”
It’s not clear exactly what the group was looking for. Neither Hargons nor Elliott Ferrier, the president of the local YAF, would comment. Ferrier said only that the national YAF organization had made the request, not the local chapter. The national chapter did not respond to a request for comment either.
UK spokesman Jay Blanton confirmed the Capilouto email was about the Hargons request, along with others.
“It is certainly one precipitating event for it,” Blanton said. “President Capilouto thought there was an obligation and an opportunity to speak about our values, as diversity, equity and inclusivity are so important to us, but he also wanted to talk about what we’re required to do about transparency.”
Blanton confirmed that Hargons has done anti-racist training with the UK Board of Trustees and groups of upper administration.
It’s clear that the YAF request is akin to a series of conservative pushbacks against the Black Lives Matter movement on campuses across the country; conservatives do outrage fundraising based on whatever scandal they think they’ve found. In this case, Young America Foundation clearly heard that Hargons’ training was ongoing and that getting wealthy, mostly white people who serve on the Board of Trustees to understand the concerns of Black people somehow constitutes an outrage. Hargons, incidentally, is a national leader in helping people of color process racial trauma, as she did recently in a series of free workshops through the Bluegrass Community Foundation.
Adam Steinbaugh, a lawyer with FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, said President Biden rescinded former President Trump’s executive order that banned the federal government from using diversity training that looked at systemic racism. But state legislatures are continuing to look at the issue. Boise State recently canceled student classes on diversity after the legislature threatened to withhold funding. (Good thing the Kentucky General Assembly had a short session this year.)
“On something like critical race theory, whether you support it or oppose it, that’s something students and faculty should be able to discuss,” Steinbaugh said. “Attempts to impose restrictions on the faculty or students’ ability to discuss race is inappropriate — the Supreme Court has been very adamant that we want to avoid imposing the pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.”
But there’s a larger narrative about higher education, that students are “indoctrinated” into progressive causes, and conservatives are afraid to speak out. I’m skeptical after many years of covering UK, where I saw a campus with small pockets of progressives with loud voices, small pockets of conservatives with loud voices and a much larger mass of ordinary students going about their business. It’s hardly a hotbed of radicalism in either direction.
It’s true that the majority of faculty nationwide lean left. (Maybe we should ask ourselves why the best-educated people in the country tend to be more progressive. Do they understand the world in a more cogent way or are they out of touch eggheads?) But there are also conservative faculty; UK even has a Koch-funded think tank on the free market. And there are numerous people here, some of whom I correspond with regularly, who believe that academia bears a great deal of blame for a decline in morals, values and ethics in this country. That sounds like a time-honored philosophical argument of “ancients versus moderns,” not just limited to literature.
There is probably also some campus outrage that UK has to comply with the open records request. FIRE’s Steinbaugh said attempts to get hold of academic work product before it’s published is a burden and a flaw in open records laws. But over here at the local newspaper, we are always glad to see UK actually agreeing that it needs to release documents, rather than the opposite, even if and when it causes some discomfort. Capilouto’s email made a veiled reference to a recent Kentucky Supreme Court decision that said UK could not shield investigative documents in a sexual assault case behind federal student privacy laws.
“It’s an acknowledgment that the state Supreme Court has stated clearly they disagreed with the institution’s perspective on this issue,” Blanton said. “We are obligated to follow the law.”
It’s somewhat ironic that UK would be “investigated” or criticized by YAF as being too zealous or politically correct in matters of diversity given that it’s has been criticized so frequently for doing too little too late.
However, it should be of some comfort that Capilouto appeared to take a hard line against the political witch hunts that seem to roil campuses these days.
“We expect our faculty to work, teach, conduct research and render service around the topics of the day — regardless of where those issues take us, irrespective of issue or ideology, controversy or contentiousness,” he said in the email. “Our faculty know that asking questions and seeking answers — whether regarding climate change or religious liberty — is often uncomfortable and discomfiting. After all, the most worthwhile things — which for us involve the quest for knowledge and understanding — are so often the hardest things.”
This story was originally published April 2, 2021 at 10:14 AM.
