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(upbeat string music) - Hi, I'm Rhea Jha.

The killing of George Floyd while he was in police custody in May sparked nationwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism.

Since then, the Black Lives Matter movement has been embraced by sports leagues, award shows, major brands, and companies.

But how is this movement manifesting in college campuses?

And what work needs to be done in higher education to address systemic racism?

On this episode of Digging Deeper, Penn State President Eric Barron talks to Nyla Holland, president of the Penn State Black Caucus, and Kevin Winstead, CLIR postdoctoral fellow with the Center for Black Digital Research at Penn State.

- So, first of all, thank you so much for joining me.

What a profoundly important topic for this nation and for the world.

And that's one of the things that I'm sort of struck by, is that Black Lives Matter has been around for a considerable period of time.

But with George Floyd and all of the discussion about systemic racism and issues of bias and policing in communities of color, this seems very different just by the breadth of Americans that have decided to participate in protests.

Do you have a sense of why it is that this moment might be different than other moments which might be equally concerning?

- One, I think for black Americans, this wouldn't have been something surprising or new.

I think it's important to know who this awakening has happened for.

And I think that in a society that doesn't value black life in the way that it should, it has seemed to take such an indisputable tragedy to happen on camera and to have so much evidence behind it, that that was the catalyst for this huge outbreak.

Yeah, so I think that the, I'm sorry, I think that the tragedy is it had to be so explicit and so indisputable that it got so many people to have to move on it and see why they can't wait any longer.

- So in some ways, you're saying if there'd been no video, this could be very different, but because this was so explicit in video, it has galvanized a broad segment of the population.

Kevin, is that the way you see it?

- Yeah, I think video's important, right?

So I don't wanna minimize the importance of video.

But we have to also take this moment in context to the other moments that have happened, right, so the way that the nation tends to justify what it's seen and the threshold to be believed for these African American communities.

So there were videotapes of Eric Garner.

There were videotapes in other spaces, but there's always this tension between, well, my eyes see this, but we have this particular level of trust in the state that it must be other explanations.

So that's important and also to place this moment into a historical context, right.

If we think around the publicity that was around the Selma to Montgomery March, that moment is so significant because not only did it happen, other moments like that had happened at that time but also that we were able to record it.

And then the threshold, again, to be believed, right, the question then becomes at what threshold can we acknowledge that sometimes the state is getting it wrong in particular ways and move away from, in this case, the argument has always been even if I believe what I'm seeing, there's a few bad actors.

The bad apples argument versus the relationship between a bad apple and a rotten tree, right, as a colleague of mine, Rashawn Ray, would say.

- Mm-hm, and if you also think about this context and how different this is, I mean, maybe there's no other way to say it but their banners and their t-shirts, and you're putting the letters out on a street in Washington, D.C. Is this suggestive also of a completely different position at this moment of time?

Because it's strikingly different than the past just in terms of how people are sort of entraining this in their own clothing and in banners and in signs that they're putting in their yards?

- I wouldn't say it's a complete change, one, because the banners and slogans and the magazine covers have been a way, I see, as performative and kind of a quick fix, spreading-awareness effort instead of the real change that we want to see.

So, you may have a slogan or a banner outside of a business, but how are you making sure that black people feel comfortable in your business, that you're hiring black people in that same business?

So I think what will be telling is the changes systemically that happen on this issue rather than the Instagram boxes or kind of the easy ways to show support.

But I don't think much will change unless it goes a bit deeper than that.

- Yeah, I would just add that this kind of American culture has always had this weird space between absorbing protest culture without necessarily absorbing the protester themselves.

So I think back to Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their fist in the air at the Olympics.

While they took a lot of social heat from that moment, kind of the cultural aesthetic there was something that plays out in the late '60s and the '70s.

And we have whole movie genres of kind of that black leather on black body kind of black nationalist tones that becomes part of the black exploitation film culture, right?

So we've always had this love-hate relationship for activist culture, and I would agree, I caution against seeing the absorption of that kind of black activist culture as a moment of change.

I much rather focus on things like the hiring practices that are in institutions, both public and private.

- Yeah, so I think both of you are addressing a worry that I have in this space, that becoming a slogan versus what Nyla was saying was deeper change.

And, Kevin, what you're saying is I'd rather see this in hiring practices than perhaps as a banner of some particular time.

So, let's switch to the university environment and start to think about what it takes to have some deeper change.

Do you have a sense now already of these are the few things that would really make a difference in a university environment?

I mean, we pride ourselves on being inclusive and welcoming, and yet we see plenty of evidence that we're not always inclusive and not always welcoming and not always, and many times not doing some of the things that we should do to promote hiring.

So what are the things that come top of mind to you that start to be significant and impactful in a university environment?

- One of the things that I always like to bring up in kind of these conversations is the relationship between activism broadly but also student activism and its relationship to black studies programs and kind of the intellectual tradition of thinking around the relationship between citizens and power, right?

So there's absolutely this relationship and that much of how we see kind of the core of this Black Lives Matter movement, its contours, its shape, is absolutely influenced by scholarship, right?

So the interventions that universities can make oftentimes looks like protecting their black studies departments.

It looks like something that I was a fan of while I was on the job market is Penn State had a cluster hire for black studies scholars.

That's important.

That is absolutely important.

One, to kind of memorialize this moment, also to put it in context.

But also we don't know what scholarship is going to come from where and what student will be influenced by it to then feel empowered to try to change the world.

And that comes from, in particular, not only black studies departments but those in traditional discipline departments who are still doing what's considered to be black studies work, right.

So how do we protect that lineage of thought?

I think around myself, I identify as a critical race theory scholar.

And kind of the national conversation right now on censoring critical race theorists, it's going to take the interventions of universities and allies to say that this is the type of scholarship that needs to be here and to do what's been a longstanding tradition within universities of protecting the the lineage of thought that may not necessarily be popular in the moment but be necessary to the long arc of history.

- And how important is it that we're also drawing from across the university for this scholarship as opposed to creating a particular cluster or program?

- So I think this definitely has to be a both-and, right?

I think kind of the history of national hostility towards the field, right, if you look across the country, most black studies departments are not necessarily stable, right?

And because of that and also the long history of exclusion of black thought and black scholars from the traditional discipline, there needs to be that home for, disciplinary home of black studies.

But there also needs to be this intervention that happens within traditional disciplinary departments, right?

The Africana thought that we find in sociology is very much different because of method but also kinda just training than the Africana thought we'll find in a communication studies or a legal studies.

They have enough similarities where they can be in conversation.

But certainly much like most scholarship, the methods and the training there produces a level of diversity.

How we have that conversation of protecting those scholars that are in the space looks like thinking around what it means to have that type of contentious scholarship going through a tenure promotion process.

What does it mean to have scholars that their scholarship is very much about changing a discipline when so much of the discipline is about establishing canon, right, establishing a standard.

And we have a particular brand of scholarship that's saying, let's rethink the standard.

Let's rethink the canon.

Those are intentional conversations that I think sometimes on a national level we have that happens organically, and I think it needs to happen much more intentionally.

- And, Nyla, your thoughts?

- Yeah, so to your previous question, I think that's something over my past three years here we've talked about, once we get someone from administration in the room, what do you want to ask them for?

What do we want to talk about?

And I think for both faculty and students, just recruitment and retention and making sure there is resources just allocated to that and that it's consistent and that there are black folks on the recruitment teams and on the search committees to find those folks, what Kevin said about tenure for professors.

Also, I think there has been, since so much of this burden is put on those black faculty members, black staff, and black students, they often have to wear many hats.

So they're student and facilitator and activist and leader and doing so many things at once, where I think having that duty to make this campus welcoming and inclusive should be on everyone.

It shouldn't just be on your select few or the regular few.

And it should be everyone's duty within their job description or their task, I think.

And along with those student activists, like making sure that their mental health services are effective.

It's hard when there aren't counselors that look like you, or you go to a counselor, and they commit a microaggression towards you.

You don't wanna have that experience again.

So now there's a lot of burden and nowhere to really release that stress.

Also looking at policing and making sure that your police force is, one, diverse but also looking into the ways you can train and create this different culture around it so that students actually feel safe and protected.

You can't move on and focus on these rigorous courses if you don't feel safe in your classroom or on the sidewalk or in your dorm.

So I think those are all things that we point to we want to see change on within the institution.

- Well, I appreciate that there's a lot there.

Maybe you would also, Nyla, point out how something like Black Lives Matters connects to a student code of conduct.

- Oh yeah, so I think there was a very literal transition over the summer with seeing everything that was happening.

And if my life matters on this campus, like as a student, then if someone else tells me that my life doesn't matter, what happens to that?

What becomes of a climate or a campus when students are able to spew hate speech with no consequence?

How am I supposed to feel welcome somewhere?

And that's all a part of just having a quality life, is to feel safe and wanted and valued on this campus.

So with a code of conduct, especially being a public university, we saw how difficult it is to sanction things like hate speech.

But I think communicated through a code, one of the most important things is what is Penn State?

What is the culture here?

What are the values that Penn State holds?

And I think through a code of conduct, you'll be able to tell what Penn State is really about and what students are signing up for, what type of duties and responsibilities and rights are afforded to them here.

- So I'd like to switch topics.

Kevin, go ahead.

- Well, no, I'm hearing that, I'm also very mindful of these moments for administrators where you have competing values, right?

So I'm thinking around hate speech that oftentimes gets protected under free speech, right, versus also the very real need to make sure that students feel safe, right.

So how do we work out those moments where the values that we already laid bare are in conflict with each other and the process to work out, okay, how do we handle it when I'm not necessarily dependent upon one clearcut value to guide my decisions here?

- If you're sitting there worried about your safety, it's hard to get an education.

- Absolutely.

- And if you're bumping up against the rules of the constitution, then you have limits.

So how do you manage two things, free speech and safety on campus and have those balance becomes incredibly important and presents a challenge on a lot of university campuses.

Well, in the little bit of time we have left, I also want to ask about how does this have staying power?

I used to, when I was very active in a lot of research areas related to weather and climate, we would see an event.

Maybe it's a Katrina, and there would be this flurry of activity for two months and new laws to pass and how we're gonna protect coastal cities.

And then it would just disappear.

And then the next event would happen, and it would be, okay, we've gotta do something.

And you have this surge of activity, and it fades away.

Or you pass a law, and, okay, we did it.

We create some new scholarship.

Okay, we're done.

How do we give this the staying power because this is clearly a longterm issue and an issue for which we need to be moving in a direction over in a way that is persistent and deliberate.

How do we give it staying power?

- I think, quickly, on the very basic level, it's what's being written into policies.

What are the new practices being made?

What oversight is there consistently and checks on power that are put in place?

I think it's moving away from temporary, three-year taskforces or commissions or things that maybe wait out students.

So new students come in, and maybe an issue goes to the back burner.

But I think it's putting, writing things, embedding them, but also creating a culture and a climate that reflects those values so that when something attacks those values, it seems out of place.

And everyone is triggered by that on a very basic level.

- Kevin, you get the last word.

- Yeah, I think sometimes we forget that institutions are made of people (laughs) at the end of the day, that it's important who we hire.

It's important that not only do they fit a particular brand for us, but also that we give them enough space and structure, empowerment, to challenge us when we think we're already doing the job, right?

But it's also important for us to believe our students in this case, if we're talking from the context of the university.

I would argue that students have always organized around their human condition, right, that that part of it is consistent.

The part that changes are the institutions' openness and readiness to listen to them to give attention to that.

So it looks like this wave pattern in many ways, but the beautiful thing about a university is the students change every year, right?

So there are new students who are coming into this space, recognizing for themselves what their human condition is and wanting to do something about it.

In this particular space, that energy is constant.

It's the administration's openness and readiness, the context, what pressures are coming from the outside?

Where's the hearts and minds on the inside?

Who are the people who were hired here who are empowered to challenge us first?

Though that tends to fluctuate more than the students' readiness to express what's going on in their everyday lives.

- Well, thank you, and thank you both.

I really appreciate you coming on the show and sharing your thoughts.

And I appreciate it, thank you.

Hope you have a great day.

- Thank you.

- So thank you for being here, President Barron, and talking about this really important topic.

So going back to the systemic change you guys spoke about, scholarships, accessible resources, how diverse do you think Penn State student body and faculty is?

And is Penn State doing anything at the moment to diversify our community even further?

- So, it's interesting.

Compared to 30 years ago, it's far more diverse.

Is it good enough?

No.

And probably one of the slowest areas of change is in the professoriate.

And there are a lot of reasons for that, the challenge as you're looking at expertise, and you're in a committee, and you're attending to sport, even the sub-disciplines that you have interest in.

So there is a lot of effort to make sure that we are thinking about this strategically in terms of objectives and how we build offices and also in a tactical way in terms of what a committee should look like, what the training is for individual.

But we have a long way to go, and I think we need to start to think about some big things in this space.

- Yeah, for sure.

So that's great.

I'm glad we are moving forward to be more inclusive, but on a few occasions like recently, racial slurs have appeared either in social media or protests by Penn State community.

So where do you stand on the use of racial slurs, and do you believe that there should be consequences?

- So it's offensive, absolutely offensive.

It's against our values in terms of providing a welcoming and inclusive community.

And there are all sorts of court cases and rules and regulations about when it is you can take action and when you can't.

And so there's large body of legal material that guides us in that.

So there are many, many times where I think it's really important that we should take action, but your hands are tied.

That doesn't mean there isn't a lot more than we should do.

And I think what you heard Nyla say is there's a lot of things that you can think about in this space in terms of restorative justice, in terms of when is the university interest really strong in terms of promoting culture and inclusivity.

But this is challenging space, but it is, hate speech is offensive.

- Yeah, yeah, it is challenging.

So thank you for being here, President Barron.

I'm really glad we got to touch on this topic.

- Thank you.

- Support for Digging Deeper comes from the Penn State Alumni Association.

Connecting alumni to the university and to each other, the alumni association is powered by pride.

Learn more at alumni.psu.edu.

And from viewers like you, thank you.

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