Below is the letter I wrote to President Will Dudley in response to his statement today:
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“Dear Will,
Greetings from San Diego. I read your response to the Commission with great interest and eventual disappointment. I hoped that you would more clearly follow the commission’s recommendations, particularly regarding the transformation of Lee Chapel from a central campus space into a historic marker with unique significance. By choosing not to follow these recommendations, instead offering a tepid endorsement of the gravity of history, a reinforcement of civility, and continuing the state of affairs as usual, you send two clear messages. First, that students of color should be expected to participate in central university events and rituals in the shadow of a Confederate military leader, and that maintaining historic traditions is far better than actively trying to recruit and retain diverse students and faculty.
You mentioned the strategic plan as emphasizing "the importance of building a community in which individuals from all backgrounds are fully included and able to thrive.” Yet, by bowing to alumni and trustee wishes to continue to create and cultivate an honored central space for Robert E Lee, you continue to perpetuate a space where you ask students of color, particularly black students, to engage in core activities in the life of the university, from the honor pledge to honor hearings to esteemed speakers, in the shadow of the sarcophagus of a man who not only owned people like them, but took up arms in pursuit of their dehumanization.
I am particularly disheartened after discussing these very concerns privately in an exit interview that I had to plan myself because the institution seems patently unwilling to recognize the myriad ways in which it continues to be a hostile space to black faculty and students on a quotidian level. By not taking a bold step in making Lee Chapel a historic site and still continuing to force its centrality upon students, faculty, and staff who bear a disproportionate load of its historic violence, you continue a lengthy history of prevarication, half-measures, and well-worded phrases that ultimately tell populations of color that they are welcome only if they are able to ignore, accept, or ameliorate their personal historic suffering to the satisfaction of the majority. Actions like this perpetuate the truth that Washington and Lee is ultimately uninterested in significant structural change, but a piecemeal parceling out of hope that ultimately leads black faculty to realize there is no real place for them. While I am the most recent black faculty member to leave the institution, I must say that I will certainly not be the last if real, systemic change does not come to this university.
Will, I write you because, as I said to you last spring, I have had the particular honor and privilege of teaching brilliant students and working with thoughtful colleagues. I speak hard truths because I genuinely think such an institution can and should do better, to be less incautus and more diligens with regard to the future (as well as the past). It was a privilege to work at Washington and Lee, but for every joy I felt crushing disappointment at a university more invested in civility over equity, in manners over justice. As a historian, I know full well how difficult grappling with our past in our quotidian interactions can be. But I believe the black students, faculty and staff at Washington and Lee deserve better than this response. And I will remember this when colleagues ask if W&L is an institution that actively cares for populations of color–because structurally it too rarely does, as today has proven.
Respectfully,
T.J. Tallie
former Assistant Professor African History"
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This was the response I received, a day later:
Dear T.J.,
Thank you for writing to share your thoughts with me. I appreciate your candor, although of course I wish you were less disappointed by my message. My commitment to diversity and inclusion at W&L is real. I know that you are skeptical, but I believe we will make significant progress.
Sincerely,
Will