BY EMILY K HOBSON AND JENNA N. HANCHEY

Since August 2017, when one of our students became a symbol of the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) has seen a rise in white nationalist activity and hate speech on our campus. Yet, UNR is just one target in a national campaign of white nationalist activity on university and college campuses. Students, faculty, and staff who are people of color, LGBTQ, Jewish, Muslim, or other religious minorities, undocumented people, and women have been particularly affected. Those who speak out against racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and other forms of bigotry—whether in the classroom or on the quad—are also made vulnerable. To combat the growing presence of white nationalism, UNR faculty, staff, students, and community members have banded together through an open letter to the university president, Marc Johnson, calling on the UNR administration to take substantive action. We hope that you will consider joining us by signing and sharing. Together with your help, we can win a real change in campus climate and strengthen academic freedom. 

Dear President Marc Johnson,

We write as faculty, staff, students, and others who are deeply concerned with the UNR administration’s responses to acts of white nationalism on campus. We are dismayed by the many white supremacist, anti-Semitic, sexist, and anti-LGBTQ messages that have been posted, painted, carved, or otherwise displayed in dorms, classrooms, campus buildings, and online. We are deeply alarmed by your administration’s inadequate response to the presence and impacts of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) on our campus, and by your failure to fully support students who organize anti-racist speech, protest, and action.

TPUSA is waging a campaign to recruit students at colleges and universities nationwide. They have significantly increased their activity over the past years and months. Despite the group’s claims to simply embrace a conservative agenda, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Anti-Defamation League, and others have identified TPUSA as linked to white nationalist organizations and figures, among them American Identity Movement, Identity Evropa, Fraternal Order of the Alt Knights, and James Allsup (1). Actions regularly undertaken by members of TPUSA include verbal intimidation, doxxing, inciting mass media spectacles, seeking to limit faculty speech, and making threats of legal action against those who criticize them (2).

Their actions, made in the name of free speech, work to silence others. TPUSA is well-funded and has worked to influence student governments nationally, as well as to diminish or eliminate barriers to hate speech. In addition to their toxic effects on campus climate, many of their actions threaten or potentially threaten the privacy and safety of students, faculty, and staff through the use of bullying and publicizing names and personal information. Members of marginalized groups––including those who are people of color; Jewish, Muslim, and other religious minorities; LGBTQ; undocumented; and others––are especially vulnerable to being targeted.

By choosing not to take a substantive stance against white nationalist tactics, the UNR administration creates a campus atmosphere that enables such tactics to continue and even flourish. This has put our campus and local community in danger from increased activity by white nationalists, whether they are affiliated with UNR or not. It further makes marginalized students, faculty, and staff unsafe, unprotected, and unwelcome at UNR.

We are especially concerned by two patterns of action at UNR: the selective application of free speech and student conduct policy; and the lack of commitment to systemic transformation of the racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic atmosphere on campus. Examples include:

• The retraction of the Anti-Racist Student Coalition’s permission to post sandwich boards displaying, in their words, “positive messages for those who have been affected by racism.”

• The arrests of a UNR student who brought a sign reading “Abolish ICE” to the UNR stadium, and who argued with campus TPUSA members and knocked over their display table. Both arrests were carried out by the Reno Police Department with no apparent attempt to resolve conflict through campus resources, and no communication with the campus community.

• No apparent consequences for TPUSA members tearing down anti-racist artwork and signage and verbally intimidating students of color, as occurred on October 4, 2019 in The Center.

• No apparent consequences for those responsible for racist vandalism on campus, including swastikas, items with Ku Klux Klan insignia, and anti-black messages.

• No apparent consequences for those responsible for racist and anti-LGBTQ speech online, including video apparently showing UNR students burning a LGBTQ pride flag.

• Failure to monitor or otherwise counter harassment of individual faculty, including attempts to infringe faculty speech and academic freedom.

These events follow a broader pattern of protecting freedom of speech for a small group of students and non-campus organizations, at the expense of anti-racist responses. In August 2017 our campus was thrust into the national spotlight by a UNR student’s participation in the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” Rally. How is it that two years later, these issues not only persist on our campus, but their presence and impact on campus climate have intensified? On September 17, 2019, you—President Johnson—issued the statement that “This University unequivocally condemns/denounces all efforts that seek to marginalize any member of our community.” Despite these words, the UNR administration has fallen short in making a substantive commitment to ensuring and realizing its stated principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Instead, you leave marginalized students and their supporters to carry the burden for transforming campus climate, while at the same time, restricting their ability to do so. In the midst of this fall’s increase in racist, anti-Semitic, sexist, and anti-LGBTQ speech and action on campus, your administration remains complacent and thus complicit.

We call on your administration to respond decisively and assertively to the concerns we have raised here, which echo those students have raised and are raising. We stand with the student groups who have formed an anti-racist student coalition and support their demands, including that you meet with them; that you institute policy protecting anti-racist speech, and protecting students, faculty, and staff who are targeted by white nationalist tactics; and that you investigate and evaluate how current UNR policies may adversely affect or inadequately protect students, faculty, and staff who are people of color, LGBTQ, religious minorities, women, and other marginalized groups. We further demand that you pursue a systematic policy of investigating and containing the growth of white nationalism on campus. We are deeply concerned that the racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric that has been continually increasing over the past two years may escalate into physical violence, including gun violence. We believe that it is crucial to prevent an established pattern of intimidation from escalating further.

To use your words following the events in Charlottesville, “peaceful assembly and exchange of ideas is part of the bedrock of any free society. We will maintain a commitment to the safe, peaceful expression and exchange of ideas on our campus” (3). We call on you to pursue and support actions that make that statement real.

Sincerely,
A growing list of signatories

To add your name to this open letter, please visit https://unragainstracism.weebly.com, which links to a Google form.

Guest bloggers Emily K. Hobson and Jenna N. Hanchey submitted this post on behalf of the writers and signatories of the open letter. Hobson is associate professor of history and gender, race, and identity at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), and Hanchey is assistant professor of communication studies at UNR.

References

1) See reports from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Anti-Defamation League, and the American Association of University Professors.

2) See the Chronicle of Higher Education, April 6, 2018.

3) As reported by the Reno Gazette-Journal, August 13, 2017.