Racial Slurs, and the 15 Days That Shook Syracuse

Still, dozens of interviews with students, faculty members and administrators indicated the sit-in had grown out of long-simmering tensions at a university that has often seemed to be pulled in two directions.

For decades, Syracuse has aspired to be an enlightened model of tolerance, inclusion and diversity. Administrators often note that the university expressed public support for Japanese-Americans when they were being placed in internment camps in the 1940s, never excluded women and rejected quotas for Jewish students when such practices were common.

But Syracuse also retains a strong fraternity and pre-professional culture that at times appears to have fostered antipathy to students of color on its central New York campus.

Founded in 1870, Syracuse has roughly 22,500 students, more than half of whom are white. About 6 percent are black, 8 percent are Hispanic and 6 percent are Asian. One in five students comes from outside the United States.

Like many universities, Syracuse has resources for racial, ethnic and religious minorities, including administrative offices geared specifically toward them. But students of color contend that what they call the administration’s halting response to the racist and anti-Semitic incidents this year revealed a hollow commitment to diversity and inclusion.

In the spring, some black students reported being attacked and targeted with slurs near the Syracuse campus. Others reported several instances of professors at a campus in Madrid using a racist slur. Then came the November incidents.

Source: The New York Times

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