Dive Brief:
- The student role in ousting the University of Missouri's president and its flagship campus' chancellor have emboldened students of color at other campuses including Vanderbilt and Ithaca.
- Inside Higher Ed reports students at Ithaca have been re-energized in a push to get rid of President Thomas Rochon, and hundreds of students and faculty members participated in a walkout Wednesday, one day after Rochon announced the creation of a chief diversity officer position.
- Students and their allies at Vanderbilt have resumed a call for action against tenured professor Carol Swain who teaches political science and law and wrote an incendiary column about Islam in January following the Charlie Hebdo attacks. In the name of free speech, campus leadership has not sanctioned Swain.
Dive Insight:
Ithaca is not the first college this week to announce it would hire a chief diversity officer to address student and faculty concerns.
The University of Missouri, also in response to student protests, announced the creation of the same position earlier this week and the University of Oklahoma acted identically following the uproar after a racist fraternity chant video went viral in March. Purdue, in July, eliminated its chief diversity officer position, folding the duties of the former chief into the role of provost.
SUNY schools, on the other hand, did not wait for campus tensions to bubble over so publicly, announcing in September it would place a diversity officer on every campus in the New York system. Creating the position — some say too late — did not save the leadership in Missouri. Only time will tell if students and faculty are assuaged in Ithaca.