And in keeping with your usual habit of telling HALF the story, you mention that some professors and the student government backed the demands and that Dick Gregory weighed in, while neglecting to mention that DICK GREGORY EXPRESSED HIS SUPPORT OF DEAN KELLY.
Do you realize how obvious your slant is just from the way you write? Good LORD, man!

"Kelly will remain on leave pending the outcome of formal complaints lodged with the university's equity office and a broader review of "issues associated with her leadership and management."

Administrative leave (that means "with pay"). The last day of class is Monday. There's summer quarter, and then school starts again in the fall. Plenty of time for the "formal complaints" and "broader review" to happen, the Dean to come back from a nice long paid vacation, and the whole thing to blow over.

We'll have to wait to see what sort of "win" this really is.

@1: What @2 said (I only said he weighed in, not that he supported or opposed anything, because his position is complicated and nuanced), but also: I edited the sentence since its construction seemed confusing for people.

@2, 5: I don't understand how you come to the conclusion that he supports the students over the dean. The Twitter statement literally starts with, "Please allow me to take a moment to issue a declaration of support for Dr. Jodi Olsen Kelly, Dean of Matteo Ricci College, Seattle University."

He also implies that the students were literally judging the book based on its cover and flying off the handle (which, granted, may be a reductive or incorrect summary of the events). He also said that he'd spoken to her directly, and in his 84 years, has learned to identify oppressors and true racism, and "[she] ain't it."

You could make the argument that he's trying to act as a peacekeeper, that she means well and would be an ally in this movement, and maybe he is. But if anyone's looking for an "us vs them" statement here, I don't see how they can land on him supporting the students.

@2, 5: Did you fucking READ what he wrote? https://www.insidehighered.com/views/201…

You know, just for once I'd like to actually directly support some kind of advocacy/protest instead of Goddamn policing those who are because they can't stick to the facts. Shouldn't we liberal activists have some kind of standards in this regard?
As usual, Mr. Herz, your yellow journalism is a disgrace to the noble profession.

How does that old saying go again??? Something like..."Of course University politics is vicious, the stakes are so small".

@9: Wait wait wait. You think the response that the students wrote is evidence that Dick Gregory WASN'T backing Dean Kelly? Tell me, how does THAT work?
Did you also read the part about how Mr. Gregory thought that the student activists were taking maybe the wrong approach to improving curricula?

"While I strongly support their right to air their grievances, I ask these students to ask themselves if the scale of their movement is appropriate for a curriculum discussion."

"I have read the students’ list of demands, which include issues such as 'Classrooms which encourage healthy academic discourse.' That includes fostering dissent, analyzing diverse narratives, discussing the intention of others and dealing with microaggressions."

Thanks, Ansel. Keep up the great work.

Congratulations, the very students who left their countries of dictatorship, to become Americans, to live the free life have won. They abandoned their countries to live the very life that these dead white people made for them, now they want what they left. IRONY

The university puts a dean on paid leave during the summer to investigate/change nothing, leaving the students get to feel accomplished and find something else to be outraged by, therefore allowing the dean to return the next year when no one cares anymore.

Win/win.

Hear, hear, Venomlash @8!

As ever, Seattle "activism" = facts optional. So tiresome.

Too bad so many assume that students are justified in their "demands".
And you Ms. Catalina.
I would have expected better!

The question that always gets me is why are universities responsive at all to these demands? They almost always seem to come from the humanities department of a liberal arts school. Is it because even elite universities are terrified that good paying customers will wake up one day and discover that degrees in the humanities are only useful to trust fund kiddies who won't need to produce an income when they graduate? Why not respond to customer demand? There is so little market value for the finished product, why bother to defend the intellectual integrity of the Western canon?

Yet another win for the glorious cause of destroying someone's life.

21 dear, it's Mrs. Vel-DuRay.

And what do I have to be ashamed about? I was merely looking at the bureaucratic process and questioning whether or not this was a "win". I personally find this "cause" to be extremely dubious, and have said so on many occasions.

Well that's absolutely frightening.

@23: Hey, someone has to pay for hundreds of years of cultural teaching favoring European work.

If it has to be the nearest white person of authority these students can influence, so be it. It matters not from where the blood flows.

@7: Yes, it does still stand. But that applause was directed at Occupy Wall St and Black Lives Matter. He does keep referencing the title of his book as if that were the spark for all of this, yes. But starting with the first sentence of the second paragraph, he keeps questioning their protest.

I just cannot fathom how you come to the opposite conclusion.

@27 Or maybe the students shouldn't have picked a Jesuit school. I'm sure there are plenty of minority majority schools outside of the US that would offer a non euro centric curriculum.

Seriously, this is like someone going to Notre Dame and complaining about the Catholicism and football.

Woops, should've been @26

@28, stop bringing logic and personal responsibility into this.

lots of people hating for the sake of hating & hot takes, damn. thanks Ansel, you're doing great work. hopefully the MRC students (who are brave and brilliant) can now be free to shape their pricey education in a way that can actually benefit them. dean Kelly's responsibility was to them and she failed them on multiple levels. hopefully she can finally acknowledge her transgressions and learn from them. surprisingly good institutional progress in Seattle tho! thanks again for giving this coverage Ansel!

Seattle University Reeducation Camp - now accepting applications for "education shapers".

Employers are going to be clamoring to hire these kids!

"The specific testimony of the interaction behind closed doors, in which Dean Kelly encouraged a young black student to re-claim a violent racial slur, has been inappropriately used by the media to individualize our concerns."

So they labeled an individual dean a racist and demanded she be fired, not because of specific acts of racist behavior, but because the general curriculum of the school she is the dean of is perceived as racist by a group of students that just know better?

I can't even..

I thought when fascism came to america it would be quoting bible versus and wrapped in a flag.. apparently its not.

@28-30: Pretty sure that Theodore Gorath was being sarcastic.
@24: You're quite Margaret Dumont-esque, you know that?

Universities were not designed to cram facts into pliable storage containers and spew out regurgitators of those facts. Universities are places where people learn to think, where they are given background for developing their approach to the world and their philosophy as citizens. When a university turns itself over to the students it's supposed to be teaching, it loses its raison d'etre. Did these young people think signing up for education in a Jesuit institution was going to give them permission to tear down the walls and turn it into St. Boniface Academy?

venomlash dear, that's the one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.

Well we'll agree to disagree about the meaning of your earlier comment but I want to humbly and appropriately apologize for miss-titling you, Mrs. Catalina Vel-DuRay

Very nice. A wonderful, posed photo of smiling students with the caption "Direction action works".

"Journalism", The Stranger style.

#28 So they should leave the country in order to obtain a proper education? Ladies and gentlemen, we've got a Trump supporter on our hands.

Ignoring the leave-the-country part of that asinine statement, students seeking a more diverse curriculum couldn't just up and leave to any other school. A "canon" is a canon because it is taught everywhere. Saying students should go to another college is ridiculous because they will encounter the exact same thing wherever they go - that's how a canon of texts works.

Lastly, SU's reputation is that of a school focused on social justice issues. These students should have come to expect more diversity within the school, and that would have been based on the reputation SU itself promotes.

@41: As a graduate of a better institution than SU, I can tell you that your claim that curricula are the same everywhere is full of soup.