Activist group demands university hire a slave descendant as next president

In a recent op-ed, activists at the University of Rhode Island demand that the school hire a slave descendant as its next president.

The piece was written by the Diversity Think Tank, a group founded this year by a professor at the university aiming to teach students to be “advocates of structural diversity in academic institutions,” among other things. The university shared a statement with Newsweek Tuesday saying the group has no affiliation with the school.

“Some Black, White and Latino students shall join in another class action lawsuit if the next URI President is not an African-American with an ancestry to slavery,” reads the piece, published late last month in Uprise RI. “And, if anyone reading this asks why the next president of URI must be an African-American but has never questioned why URI has had 128-years of white presidents then you must be a racist.”

Additionally, the group claims that diversity at the university is “an abysmal state of de facto Jim Crow racism,” and stated that in order to end “128 years of all white-supremacy” at the school, “The next President of the University of Rhode Island must be an African-American with a lineage to slavery.”

Titled “Declaration of Diversity,” the op-ed outlines a list of 46 demands and complaints. The group claims that “there is a deliberate and racist dehumanizing exclusion of highly qualified African-Americans/Blacks, Latinos/Hispanics and Native Americans from positions of senior leadership and other positions throughout the university.”

The op-ed’s publication comes as the university is seeking to replace President David Dooley, who announced his decision to retire in May, effective June 2021.

In response to Dooley’s announcement, the group demanded that “African-American Presidents from other universities are immediately included in this search process for President Dooley’s replacement.”

According to the op-ed, the group also demands that, “All current search committees that have produced the same URI senior leaders for 128 years without a single African-American, Latino, Native American or African-American with an ancestry to slavery must be disbanded with immediate effect.”

The group also criticized white faculty members who have not “expressed a problem with…the glaring fact that there are NO BLACK FACULTY members in the [university’s] Criminal Justice Department and only a couple at the Harrington School [of communications and media].”

“You white professors do not need research to find out about systemic racism at URI—you are part and parcel of the creation and maintenance of systemic racism at URI through your self-serving policies, unapologetic excuses, discriminatory behavior and your hegemonic culture of impunity,” the group writes in the op-ed.

The Diversity Think Tank was founded by professor Louis Kwame Fosu, who has faced backlash for the op-ed, according to an email obtained by GoLocalProv news in Rhode Island.

According to GoLocalProv, the email was sent from Dooley and Provost Donald DeHayes to Fosu and reads:

The document includes numerous inaccurate statements as well as unwarranted, unsubstantiated, and defamatory personal attacks on several members of the URI community. Furthermore, the document also causes unwarranted damage to the good name and reputation of the University. We cannot in any way condone such overt attacks and your efforts to demonize members of our community with whom you may have disagreements. In our view, the document that you have prepared is neither well-researched nor effective advocacy for the critically important efforts needed to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion at URI.

Newsweek reached out to the Diversity Think Tank for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.