Last week, a friend, colleague, and co‐Founder of Free Black Thought was ousted from her position at Foothills‐De Anza Community College in California. Dr. Tabia Lee’s transgression: asking questions about DEI initiatives, fighting for viewpoint diversity, and upholding classical liberal values. (Lee explains herself in a video put out by the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism.)
According to an Inside Higher Ed article, her alleged insubordination included the following acts:
“She questioned antiracist ‘orthodoxy,’ objected to the college’s land acknowledgments for an Indigenous tribe [because she wanted to include information recommended by the tribe, itself], tried to bring a ‘Jewish inclusion’ event to campus, declined to join a ‘socialist network,’ refused to use the gender‐neutral terms ‘Latinx’ and ‘Filipinx,’ [which are not accepted by many in the Latino and Filipino community] inquired why the word ‘Black’ was capitalized but not ‘white,’ and allegedly disrespected a founder of the Black Lives Matter movement.”
She was even accused of white supremacy for suggesting an agenda for a meeting on diversity. Why? Because agenda‐setting is an aspect of whiteness and, therefore, racist to expect from people of color.
For these actions, Lee was accused, in official documents, of a “Persistent inability to demonstrate cooperation in working with colleagues and staff,” and an “Unwillingness to accept constructive criticism.” De Anza seems to promote a single ideology, often called “woke,” that abides by critical theories that reject “the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.” It is no exaggeration to say that Lee was fired for actually doing her job!
For these alleged transgressions, Dr. Lee, a black female academic serving as the faculty director for the college’s Office of Equity, Social Justice and Multicultural Education, was denied tenure and relieved of her duties.
As I’ve similarly experienced, Dr. Lee is being punished for being “the wrong kind of black person:” one dedicated to classical liberal understandings of equality, individualism, reason, and free speech. The fact that a black person can be accused of perpetuating white supremacy for upholding these tenets and basically abiding by the same understanding of diversity indicative of the Civil Rights Movement should be the last straw for those discouraged and disquieted by contemporary diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, and a wake up call for those encouraged to implement such initiatives. The University of North Carolina and several universities in Texas either have taken or are taking steps to take mandatory diversity statements out of the job application and tenure process. Hopefully Dr. Lee’s experience will motivate other institutions to follow suit.
Several outlets have picked up Dr. Lee’s story, including The New York Post and Great Britain’s Daily Mail, but Lee also provides her own take on “Racial equity in American Learning Environments” in The Journal of Free Black Thought.
