Why Should Delaware Care?
As the flagship university for the state, the University of Delaware’s president commands an outsized platform to speak to the campus and the statewide community. The latest changes come as universities nationwide aim to protect free speech principles following protests and incidents surrounding the war in Gaza last year.
Four days after the Oct. 7 terror attack by Hamas on Israel and the retaliatory assault on Gaza, University of Delaware President Dennis Assanis published a message to his campus community highlighting the tragedy and advocating for peace.
Some in the faculty met the message with criticism, calling it tone deaf and late.
The reaction forced Assanis to issue a second statement the next day, declaring that he and the university “unequivocally condemn the horrific attacks by Hamas terrorists upon Israel that have shaken the world.”
The episode was just the latest comments by Assanis on issues occurring far from Newark. Over the past five years, UD’s president has issued public comments to the campus more than 30 times on topics ranging from COVID to George Floyd, the Jan. 6 attack to university shootings, and much more.
This past spring, heated debate over free speech on college campuses nationwide also erupted around the war in Gaza, leading to student arrests, occupations of university buildings and dismissals of some faculty and university leaders.
Now, the leader of Delaware’ largest university will use his voice more sparingly in order to focus on the needs of the campus community.
“Unfortunately, some political crisis, some war, some hurricane, some earthquake, some devastating and horrible event is happening almost every day around the world,” Assanis told UD’s Faculty Senate last month.
The university president said that he has spent “an inordinate amount” of his time working with staff to craft these statements in recent years to try to “make sure that we do justice to some incredibly complex situations which oftentimes have really no answer.”
Assanis said that he was also concerned that the issuance of such statements may implicitly “infringe on academic freedom, freedom of speech or freedom of inquiry, because … all of you are free thinkers and should be able to freely express your perspectives without the fear that you go against some kind of campus wide statement or institutional perspective.”
Therefore, UD is adopting a variation of the famed University of Chicago Principles that say a university should encourage civil debate but not police the content of speech.
“More and more institutions, at an alarming pace this summer, have pretty much concluded that is probably the right course at this moment in time,” Assanis said. “I will speak up sometimes and make those exceptions if I feel that something is incredibly disruptive to campus operations, is really impacting our community in unusual ways, or is going against our values.”
The changes in approach from Assanis may be as practical as philosophical though, as UD’s Chief Diversity Officer Fatimah Conley, who helped to craft those messages, left the university this past summer.
In response, UD has also split the Office of Institutional Equity that it created under Conley in 2021, sending the two pieces it combined under her role back to their original managers.
The Office of Equity and Inclusion, which includes Title IX, discrimination efforts, and protection for minors, has been moved back to the Office of the General Counsel under the compliance function. The programs related to student diversity, disability support services, and the Center for Black Culture have been returned to the Division of Student Life.
Conley’s role will be filled on an interim basis, and a replacement will be sought, according to Assanis, but what that office looks like in the future has not been determined.
“I want to take this opportunity to reaffirm our unequivocal commitment to the DE&I [diversity, equity and inclusion] and belonging efforts, because that is social justice, and we all need to practice this every day in our daily lives,” he added.
A university spokesman confirmed those plans and commitment to Spotlight Delaware, and noted that UD continues to recruit, enroll and support a diverse population of students. Those efforts come two years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that affirmative action enrollment plans at universities were unconstitutional, now forcing institutions seeking diverse student bodies to go into target communities to recruit students rather than screening for racial demographics.
For the fall semester that just began, UD received a record number of applications — more than 4,540 — from new first-year students who identify as Hispanic/Latino, an increase of 20.3% from the prior enrollment period.
It also received record numbers of commitments from new first-year students who identify as Hispanic/Latino and Black, with increases of 12.1% from both of these groups.
The post UD to curtail president’s comments, split DE&I office appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.