Chapman response to Eastman’s opinion ignites backlash
President Daniele Struppa suggested Chapman University isn’t responsible for endorsing or refuting law professor John Eastman’s controversial opinion piece on birthright citizenship. Students, faculty and alumni are disturbed by the administration’s ‘lack of accountability.’
John Eastman is a Henry Salvatori Professor of Law and Community Service at the Dale E. Fowler School of Law, which was founded in 1995. SAM ANDRUS Photo Editor
A Monday morning Chapman-wide email from President Daniele Struppa was ill-received from a large number of students, faculty and alumni. In the message, Struppa alluded to the opinion piece John Eastman wrote Aug. 12 questioning California Sen. Kamala Harris’ eligibility for vice presidency.
“The university is not responsible for the ideas of its faculty. As president, I will neither endorse them nor refute them,” Struppa wrote Aug. 17. “The strength of a university comes in its commitment to free speech and to academic freedom. We cannot simply pick and choose when to support free speech, despite the personal views of the president, provost, dean or any university administrator.”
While no further public statements have been made, Struppa has been responding privately to a majority of the emails he receives on the topic – outside of messages that have vilified him or even sent him death wishes.
“It’s nonsense to say I support hate speech,” Struppa told The Panther. “People who aren’t willing to take a certain stance are seen as racist or misogynist and that’s a sad commentary on what this country has become.”
Struppa’s Aug. 17 statement came on the heels of public outcry for a response from administration to Eastman’s piece – labelled widely as racist and containing “birtherism” – in the form of two separate petitions. In the first, Lisa Leitz, the Delp-Wilkinson Endowed Chair in Peace Studies, put together a change.org petition for Chapman faculty to sign and request a statement from administration to “reiterate its commitment to an environment that welcomes all students.” With over 400 faculty members having signed the petition, Leitz told the Panther that even though Chapman has had a handful of successes in meeting the needs of an inclusive campus, it’s just not enough.
“When our administration doesn’t say, ‘Yes, (Eastman) has the freedom to say that, but here’s who we are and here’s how we support our students and here’s the actual concrete steps of what we’re doing,’ it looks like those statements for Black Lives Matter earlier this summer were just window dressing,” Leitz said.
The other petition came in the form of an open letter emailed to Struppa Aug. 17, which is led by 2019 alumnus Nicholai “Nico” Dowdy and has been endorsed by 17 alumni and current students. The requests made by the open letter echoed the sentiments of the faculty petition and called for the university to take “a stand on either side of the debate to let every student, faculty, family, and other member invested in (Chapman) know where (Chapman’s) loyalties now lie.”
Dowdy and Leitz both clarified that they are not trying to impede Eastman's right to free speech, but rather to call on the institution to publicize its own position on the argument, similarly to how Newsweek spoke up and apologized for the opinion piece being used “to perpetuate racism and xenophobia.” Struppa told The Panther that the administration will not be providing a stance in the future, due to the inappropriateness of publicly condemning a faculty member’s opinion.
“To ask the president is to ask somebody in authority to make a statement,” Struppa said. “The actual debate is not about authority, it’s about ideas. And the best people to express ideas are the colleagues of the professor.”
The Panther was CC’d in Dowdy’s email to Struppa and spoke with the 2019 graduate on the open letter’s central concept.
“Promising to support diversity is not hosting an academic argument or lecture to discuss it; and promising to support free speech is not enabling student voices to use the platform that was hijacked to belittle so many people’s struggles and real-world issues,” Dowdy said. “Promising to support free speech and not enabling our voices is not doing anything like (Struppa) suggested.”
Struppa did acknowledge that it would be easy for him to argue against Eastman’s viewpoint and receive praise for doing so. However, he told The Panther he has no footing on Eastman’s opinion and said it’s essential to allow academic debate and discussion on topics that even a wide audience would turn their back on.
“The university needs to be evaluated not by the words that are so easy to use, but by what the actions are. The Black Student Union has a series of action items; we were already taking significant action with that and I’m disappointed that that seems to never matter,” Struppa said. “We unfroze only the three hiring positions (out of 20 or 30) that went to Black faculty … To me that is an action that is much more important than me saying that I dislike professor Eastman’s position.”
However, Black Student Union (BSU) disagreed with the notion that Chapman is embracing diversity and inclusion. BSU was CC’d in an email exchange Aug. 13 between President Struppa and a Chapman student’s mother expressing her concerns on Eastman’s piece. BSU responded with their distaste from learning that Eastman is tenured and outlined the university’s “disparities between words and actions when it comes to diversity and inclusion efforts.”
“I also believe that almost everybody on campus would agree with you on your assessments on birtherism,” Struppa wrote back to BSU. “I do, and so does everybody I spoke with.”
Ramya Sinha, the president of BSU and junior business administration major, told The Panther that despite the administration professing its efforts in inclusion – most recently in an email Struppa sent to faculty and staff yesterday spotlighting the Fowler School of Law’s incoming class reaching “52% diversity” – she said Chapman simply doesn’t care about its minority students.
“They like to brag … but people have been fighting for the Africana Studies minor for years with no help from the admin. New Black freshmen are coming in because of the initiatives of the Wilkinson College, the initiatives of professor (Justin) Riley and those types of people – not because of the admin,” Sinha said. “(Administration) always wants to take responsibility for that stuff, but when people are catching them in their lies for not doing anything, the admin always wants to deflect – always puts all their responsibility on anybody else except for themselves.”
Leitz believes one of the best ways for Chapman to approach the crossroads it faces is to stop looking at the quick fixes, play an active role in reaching out to donors who can financially support long-term diversity initiatives and follow the leadership set forth by the Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. The school will be introducing the Africana Studies minor in the fall and officially launching its virtual film and lecture series, “Engaging the World: Leading the Conversation on the Significance of Race.”
“If they want to truly be committed to (diversity), we need to see action; we need to follow through as a faculty body and make it part of our curriculum,” Leitz said. “Make sure that students don’t leave Chapman without learning about these issues and discussing them.”
Excluding Struppa’s campus-wide email referencing Chapman’s promise to uphold its commitment to a diverse and inclusive community, neither Leitz nor Dowdy have received a personal response from Struppa – or from any of the other members of administration – addressing their cause for concern. Struppa told The Panther it’s not necessary to publicly speak on Eastman any more than he already has.
“The great thing about the freedom of speech is that you can say something. I can counter you and you can counter me … That’s how knowledge grows,” Struppa said. “I don’t understand why we are having this antagonistic viewpoint; this is what academia is all about … When the university loses that ability, the university becomes useless and we might as well stop being here.”
Eastman did not respond to The Panther’s request for comment.
This is a developing story. Follow The Panther as we continue reporting.