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Blocked and Reported
Episode 304: Pomona College And The $300 Zine That Nearly Destroyed A Department (with Emma Pettit)
01:05:47
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Foreign.
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Welcome to Blocked and Reported. I'm Katie Herzog. And joining me this week, while Jesse is posting flyers around the Bay Area looking for a polycule with an empty slot, we have Emma Pettit. Emma is a reporter at the Chronicle of Higher Ed, where she covers the politics of the American university system. Emma, welcome to Blocked and Reported.
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Thrilled to be here.
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Uh, so, Emma, the reason I wanted to talk to you today is because we have talked a fair bit on this show about higher ed, which is something Jesse and I are both interested in. You know, my parents were professors. I grew up literally on college campuses. Jesse is interested in higher ed because college was where he first spoke to a girl. And I also think that universities are a nice microcosm for the country itself, particularly when it comes to cultural issues. And you've been a really fair and astute reporter chronicling these issues over the last few years. So in the second half of the show, I'm going to ask you to tell me about a story you covered for the Chronicle about Pomona College. It's this massive, sprawling intra departmental fight. It's got racism, it's got poetry, it's got. It's got a little of everything.
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It's got it all, baby.
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B
Yeah. But before we get to that, let's talk a bit about your evolution as a reporter. Because you were not always the pervert for nuance that you are today. And I asked you to send me a few of your articles, and you sent me one from 2020. That today. You said that today you would have done this differently. So that article was. Some scholars have long talked about abolishing the police. Now people are listening. What comes next. So let's start there. Will you sum up that article for us?
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Yeah. So I realized after I emailed you that PDF that this would mean I would need to reread the story, too, which always.
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Painful.
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A
Yeah, extremely painful. I did not make it very far. So, in a nutshell, the story was about sociologists, political scientists, other academics who all study aspects of policing and who define themselves as abolitionists, although not everyone in the story uses that label. But generally it's, you know, scholars who think the role of police in prisons should shrink and some who think it should shrink as much as possible. So I interviewed a bunch of them about their work and how in the aftermath of George Floyd's death, it seemed to them, and to me at the time, like the country was finally embracing these ideas that they've long written about.
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Yeah, so this is sort of typical 2020 coverage. It's now is the time to abolish or defund the police. And you flagged one line in particular for me. So I'll read this a myriad ways these academics are considering how they can best meet this moment, as Stewart put it. That's Forrest Stewart. He's a sociologist at Stanford. He advocates for police abolition. The public is now on board. So the question becomes, what do we give them now? Looking back, you obviously know now that this is a. This was a pretty significant misread of how the public felt and feels about abolishing the police. This is a fringe view. This. I looked up this. So according to polls, around 10% of the population now supports abolishing the police. This is according to a Gallup poll in 2020. So at the height of the racial reckoning, this was still just had by held by 15% of the population. I think they've all now decamped. It's like the entire population of Blue Sky. So where were you getting the impression that the public was on board?
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Twitter. Yeah, I mean, I'm only, I'm only joking a little bit. So I was hired by the Chronicle in 2018 to cover the faculty, you know, how they worked, lived, fought, thought, et cetera.
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B
You know, I think that's actually why I'm interested in higher ed, because like growing up with college professor parents, there is so much drama and infighting.
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It's delicious. And it really is. There's a really common saying that just says, like, never have the stakes been so small for fights this big or something along those lines.
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B
That's academia.
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A
Yes. Yeah, it's perfect. And, you know, back then, when I was working on this story, I followed tons of professors on what was then known as academic Twitter, which I think kind of invokes some PTSD flashbacks among some people. And I don't, I don't think it was clear to me at the time, but it's become clearer in retrospect just how like, bespoke certain views expressed on academic Twitter really are. And also just how those conversations don't even really represent necessarily the average view of a chemistry professor at a second tier research university in the Midwest. Right. It's niche, it fed on itself. It leaned really heavily to the left, but in these very specific ways. But at the time, it was this big part of my information diet. And on there, they loved abolition, couldn't get enough. I don't say that to dismiss the idea out of hand. Like, I think that abolition and these arguments are worth taking seriously. But I do Think it gave me this warped view of its popularity and just like what people in general felt about police and its role in society and what the research even shows about police and its role in society.
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Yeah, I think this is one of the, you know, this is an inherent problem with reporting on what you see on Twitter. And part of that is it can be like very structural. Like when I was at the Stranger, I also spent a lot of time looking at Twitter informing my opinions or anti opinions based on what I was seeing. And part of that was because of just like Ed the Stranger, we had multiple deadlines every day. You can't be out in the public talking to people if you are. If you have to file three blog posts a day, it just becomes impossible.
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Totally.
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B
And so you use the Internet as a proxy for the world, which is, it is very, very skewed. And it particularly was in 2020. And the other thing is, you know, I mean, you mention sort of the difference between like a, you know, second tier chemistry professor in the Midwest and the sort of the academics that sort of rise to the top of academic Twitter. I think this is also a valid criticism of media coverage, including our own, of the university system in general. Because, you know, schools like these elite schools get so much more attention than the schools that students actually like most students, I'm guessing this, but my guess is that most American students go to community college or like kind of shitty public state schools rather than going to.
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Totally. Although I will insert the necessary caveat as a higher education reporter that you can get a great education at many of these places and.
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Oh, totally, totally. I'm a graduate of one of them myself. Although I wouldn't say my education was great, but it was cheap, which is just as important, I think, for sure.
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And no, that's a great point is that like most students in this country are at community colleges, public colleges, regional campuses. They are not at the Ivies or Ivy plus, they are not at these elite institutions. And yet I also think that like some of the trends, some of the ideas do spread to other parts of higher education. And it's worth taking that seriously. But it's also worth knowing when you're in a bubble. And I was in a bubble.
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B
Okay, so how did you figure that out? Because it's hard to see the bubble from within the bubble.
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Absolutely. Totally. Well, I realized that I was wrong sometimes. I mean, that's like, that's a big part of it. Not wrong in the way of like misspellings, but wrong. And you know, in my framing and what ideas and opinions I left on the cutting room floor. I think that abolition story mentions the show Live pd, which, you know, follows police departments around the country.
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Sort of like a Cops kind of show.
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Yeah, Cops, documentary style, meant to show action. And I think in the top, I mentioned that it was canceled as some kind of evidence that these ideas were gaining purchase. I mean, a couple years later, a version of it was revived, and it's pretty popular. And so I just kept covering controversies in higher ed. And you just realize over time that some people, the people who make grand pronouncements about injustice, don't have an intuitively correct take on the world any more than anyone else. You know, and sometimes those people are trying to launder their own smaller interpersonal disputes through this, like, currency of political correctness. And I think that over time, you know, I do have this, like, heterodox streak that was not apparent in that abolition story, but was in some other things that I wrote. And I think I just got better at nurturing it. You know, you get just more okay with people being mad at you and more comfortable with angry emails. And, you know, part of it is just like, living longer and growing up and just seeing how cyclical things are. Like, I think that, like, in 2020, I think that it felt like we were perhaps striking some final blow to, you know, pick your social problem. Racism, police violence, you know, poverty, crime, whatever. And I've just come to really reject that idea. Like, I just don't think we are ever at the end of history. You know, we're always just in the middle of this big, rollicking, complicated and interesting argument where lots of people have claim to the truth.
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Was there one moment that stands out for you when you were like, oh, shit, I was wrong about this?
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Okay, so there's one moment that does stick out that I talked with colleagues about after it happened. I didn't cover it, I don't think, at the time. But MIT had invited this geophysicist, Dorian Abbott, to give this public lecture. Abbott taught at the University of Chicago. I think the talk was about his expertise, but he had written, I think, some opinion pieces, maybe some videos that had criticized aspects of DEI or affirmative action. And his talk was not about that. It was not about that opinion. But after some backlash, MIT ended up canceling it anyway. And I remember at the time talking with some colleagues who were like, this is different. We've seen controversies over the types of opinions that Abbas was espousing. And his opinions also are ones. When you look at polling of the American public, around affirmative action and around hiring practices. Like, he is not outside of the Overton window. He's expressing opinions that you can agree with them, you can not agree with them, but are completely in line with what people think and debate. And the talk itself was not about those opinions. And yet that seems to have tainted his ability to be seen as a voice worth hearing from.
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Right, right.
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And so there are moments like that. I mean, I will shout out to the Chronicle Review, which is our opinion arm. So when I was covering academic controversies, sometimes we'd be writing about the same thing, but they're the opinion sides, so they publish a lot of people's perspectives. And that kind of widened my lens. I mean, it's a bunch of little things, but over time, I think you start to realize that the aperture should be widened. So the Overton window has really shifted. And I think I started realizing that, like, oh, this. This period in which I'm working, coming to the Chronicle at 2018 and to whenever I started to maybe think a bit differently. 2021, 2022, I was in a specific era of time. Right. I think when I took the job, I wasn't really thinking about, are the conversations that we're having about speech and what's allowable to say distinctly different than they had been five or 10 years ago. And learning more, reading more, talking to more people, it made me realize that, oh, this is a unique moment.
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Did this put you in it? Like, I know, like, I went through a similar thing at the Stranger, and this put me in a. An awkward position, both socially and professionally at the Chronicle. Is it like that? Like, are you the odd man out, or do they have more or more sort of room for heterodox, nuanced opinions?
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Shout out to everyone at the Chronicle listening to this. Love you all. No, I've been. I've been really lucky. Like, I've. I have had great editors, including ones who I think were kind of encouraging me at times to expand and to think about things in a different way. My colleagues have all been great. I know that not everyone maybe agrees with the way that I do my job, or, I don't know, even that sounds a little broader than what it is. But there is a spectrum of opinions in our newsroom about how to do journalism. And I think it's probably fair to say that I might be closer to one side and other people are closer to the other, maybe. But I never found it difficult to do my job at the Chronicle, in part because it is a place where if you want to write about something, you are given a lot of freedom. And that freedom is apparent in the stories that I got wrong with the framing, but that freedom is also apparent in the stories that I got right, you know. So yeah, I, professionally, at least it's been a good time.
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B
Well, it sounds like you've landed at a good place for you.
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A
I have. Although part of the irony of this conversation is whenever this comes out, I will not be there anymore.
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B
Really?
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A
Yeah. So I kind of nuanced my way into a new job. Thank you to Blocked and reported. I as of May, I'm going to be joining Moose's caretaker Andy at Longview.
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B
Oh, nice. Congratulations. Congratulations. That's awesome. Are you going to be doing audio or text?
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Yeah.
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Oh, awesome.
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Yep. Audio. Yeah. So I'm going to be. I was very clear to them that I don't have a ton of audio experience, but I don't have a lot of experience. Yeah, yeah, I got that vibe. So yeah, it should be great. I'm excited.
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Are you going to be. Are you moving to New York? Are you staying in dc?
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No. The first thing I said to them was that my boyfriend and I recently bought a place. I think I applied for the job the same month I got a mortgage. So yeah, I'm. I'm saying put. I'll come to New York, you know, pretty often and. Yeah.
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B
Well that is awesome to hear.
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Thanks. Yeah, yeah, no, I owe you. Or like they owe you. Whoever is getting the better deal on this.
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B
I'll take my finders fee, Andy. I'll take it in a free dog sitting. All right, well, congratulations on that. Okay, I want to move on and talk a bit about some of your, some of your other articles. So you wrote a piece last year about New College of Florida and this is a story that we ever also covered on this show. But just to remind people what happened, New College of Florida was is a small liberal arts school in Sarasota that was known for being weird. So it was founded in the 60s, very progressive, very queer, no letter grades. The education is very self directed. And that model does exist in private universities at places like Hampshire and Smith and Warren Wilson. But New College of Florida, what made it really different is that this was a public school. And so it was this little haven for weirdos on the Gulf coast of Florida. The student body was only like 700 people. And while there are problems and we'll get to that, it was really beloved by many students and alum. So I know, I think three people who went There, one is an academic, one is literally a lawyer for polyamorous families, and the other spends his time walking across the world in Tevas. So that's the sort of alumni New College of Florida produces. And it became this sort of totem for progressivism in education. So tell us what happened in January 2023.
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So that month, Ron DeSantis, the state's Republican governor, he appoints this new right leaning majority to New Colleges governing board. Probably the most prominent of the bunch is Chris Ruffo, who your audience knows is this influential activist. He spearheaded the successful campaign against critical race theory, dei, gender ideology and fraud, I think is what he's focusing on now. So the narrative was that these new trustees would be, you know, taking back this hyper woke liberal arts campus that gone off the rails and reorient it in a more rigorous and also like right coded direction. You know, DeSantis office had distributed talking points that describe the college as straying from its days of academic excellence by allowing identity essentialism to run roughshod. Those points I think called out the gender studies program which it said led to students who graduated to quote, dead end pathways and political activism.
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Probably true.
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Well, okay.
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Probably true of many majors.
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Listen, I know I need to speak up for the humanities majors who will always make the point that their job placement and salary placement is much better than people give them credit for. But yeah, it was no secret as to what DeSantis was targeting Rufo at the time. He gave an interview to Michelle Goldberg at the Times and said, we want to provide an alternative for conservative families in the state of Florida to say there's a public university that reflects your values. And it stood to reason that those values were pretty different than the values that New College had held previously.
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Yeah, so we covered this at the time. My problem with what happened at New College of Florida was the fact that nobody asked for this from within the existing community. It was very much a hostile takeover engineered by people like Chris Ruffo who had no existing connection to the place. And I do think that there's a very reasonable question about whether taxpayers should be funding places like New College of Florida. It is ideological, no doubt. And I do think some progressives would bristle at funding if it existed the conservative equivalent. You know, if, like, if public universities were teaching intelligent design, like I wouldn't want my tax money going to that. And I can see why conservatives in Florida wouldn't want to fund a university teaching that there are 22 genders and capitalism is evil or whatever. But the way they did. It seemed very much like a fuck you to the people who built New College of Florida. And this to me is very indicative of MAGA politics. You know, we're not just going to build our own thing. We're going to destroy yours, too. But your piece does complicate my own story about what happened at New College of Florida, because by your own reporting, it was not thriving before DeSantis came in with his battering ram and built a baseball stadium over the gender studies department or whatever. So what was the state of New College of Florida before the takeover?
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A
So it depends who you ask, of course, but most people would agree that it had struggled for many years. It struggled with low enrollment, which is not a unique problem to New College, but plagues liberal arts colleges generally. It always had this goal of like 1200 students and just really did not come close to meeting it.
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B
And universities have been shrinking across the board. Well, I don't know if that's fair. Liberal arts universities have been shrinking. Right.
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A
Liberal arts colleges are struggling to attract students. That's definitely true. And there's been kind of a long list of closures that we've cataloged. So it's not unique to New College, but it was definitely a problem. There was also a sense that the quality of student had declined over time and the standards were lowered to match that the campus itself was a bit neglected. And because the student body was so small, some of the typical issues around self censorship and groupthink could feel particularly heightened on campus. You know, I will say, I think the depiction of New College that misses the mark just based on the professors that I spoke to was this notion that the college was like this particularly gnarly example of indoctrination. You know, like, I think the progressivism was pretty homegrown, but like the teachers there, they under themselves, you know, is not particularly interested in telling students what to think because the place did have this real independent streak. There wasn't this evidence that New College was particularly overburdened by DEI bureaucracies. Connor Friedersdorf makes that point really well in this piece that he wrote in the Atlantic in 2023. So there absolutely were some overblown criticisms of New College, but there were some real problems that were rooted in some truth. And what was really interesting to me about the stakeover was that. But New College was getting a lot more money from the state because of this, which everyone.
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B
Because of the takeover.
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Because of the takeover, because DeSantis was pouring in money. New President Richard Corcoran, he's A political animal of Florida, and they brought in millions. And everyone agreed that money was necessary, even those who hated the new board members and the new direction. And so going into the story, I just wanted to take seriously the idea that maybe these governance changes, whatever people thought of them, could potentially be a good thing for the college. And maybe it had some cultural or other issues that needed to be dealt with.
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B
Okay, so you visited there in 2025. So this is two years after the takeover. And what did you find?
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So I found a campus in flux. To quote myself, New college today resembles neither the conservative dream nor the liberal nightmare. It was part of, you know, everyday small college, part proxy battle and the culture war. But it was plagued by these, like, ordinary questions over how do you boost enrollments amid these levels of outside scrutiny, but also just amid the normal challenges of, like, trying to get kids to come to your school. It is not easy. And so there were these changes that were being made to the curriculum, tiring to campus planning that that many professors absolutely opposed. And they argued that those changes further degraded the college and their authority. There was also just a lot more flowers and fresh paint, and the campus looked a bit spiffier. And there was a beach volleyball court being built and some renovations to this mansion on campus. And they were hiring a lot of faculty who were starting to get integrated into the campus. And then the other really notable thing is that there is this new class of students, student athletes, and they just totally stood out when compared to the old guard.
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B
Yeah. So you describe this, the two types of students. Basically the old new college of students who. They were called novas. Is that right?
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A
So the old guard of students. Yeah. Was known as the novos, which is Latin for the new and new college. And these were artsy kids, weird kids. They wore dark colors, they had cool piercings. They were countercultural. And then the new guard were jocks, which were called the banyans, which is like after the new mascot, the mighty banyan tree.
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B
It was like a swole. Like a looks maxing banyan tree.
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A
Yeah, a banyan tree on peppermint tree. It was a buff, like, Andrew Huberman looking tree.
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B
Yeah, totally.
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Which is not the worst thing for a sports.
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B
It's actually surprisingly gay.
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A
Okay, no comment. But yes. And it was these two groups of students. It was so interesting being in the cafeteria there, because they did not mix. Right. Like, it was like kind of oil and water. Like, I would look over at tables and it would be all kids with, you know, athletic gear on and some cross necklaces. And ponytails. And then I'd look at these other tables that had, like, kids wearing their backpacks really high and, like, art supplies or just, like, Grinch slippers. And it was just furries. It was just really, really clear that, like, these are two different groups of kids. And that's in part because the new, new college really went all in on sports.
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B
Right, right. So. All right, so they didn't mix socially. Do you have a sense? I mean, this. Honestly, it sort of sounds like the university that I went to, I went to small liberal arts school in Asheville, North Carolina. University of North Carolina at Asheville. And it had this sort of reputation for being kind of the. Like, the. The state hippie school, but there was also sports teams. And so we did have that sort of similar dynamic where socially, you know, kind of stratified. You didn't. Like, I wasn't hanging out with the. With the baseball players, but I was in class with the baseball players. And so I think because of that, we act like this was not a school that had any racial diversity, but we did have some diversity of thought because it was basically a hippie school that attracted sort of middling baseball players.
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A
Yeah, that's a point that some professors made to me, actually, which is that, like, the perspectives on campus has changed. And I think that. I mean, the percentage of men increase. I think the racial diversity did increase or improve when they added athletics. So it is this really interesting mix of students who are, you know, maybe not hanging out as much in the dorms or whatever, but definitely are in class together and are, like, interacting with each other in some capacity.
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B
Okay, so obviously, as soon as the Republicans came in, there's going to be resistance from within the existing faculty and students. So. So tell me about that.
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A
So there were protests. Chris Ruffo got spit on. I think the charge was dropped. But, yeah, after a while, like, things calmed down and the resistance was more muted, but still palpable. And I'll tell you, I guess, about one student who I really enjoyed, Andy Trinh, who at the time was a senior, and Andy was involved in this student archive project, and basically, in the aftermath of the takeover, dedicated themselves to saving artwork and signage and other ephemera that used to hang around campus. And so for Andy and for other students, they witnessed this relatively rapid erasure of the things that they held dear about this college. And a lot of people said something along the lines of, if you were the weird kid in high school, you go to new college where everyone was the weird kid. And I Think students really miss that countercultural atmosphere, that embrace of openly queer LGBT atmosphere, safe space and. Yeah, and I think that they had autonomy that they don't have before. And then from the perspective of some of the professors, the new leadership has extended a hand into the curriculum, has kind of embraced the Western canon or Western traditions, and exerted some control over hiring in ways that they feel are inappropriate. I mean, of course, the administration's perspective is it's entirely appropriate and necessary, but there's just this block of professors who are, you know, over it. They. They left. They're looking to leave. They're mentally tapped out. That's not everyone, obviously. But it was a portion.
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B
Yeah. So you talk about. In your piece, you talk about a professor named David Allen Harvey. So he's a longtime history professor, and he decided to collaborate with the new administration. He's now the dean of the Great Books Program. He is seen by his colleagues, or at least by some of his colleagues, as a traitor. He told you that cooperating was the only way to keep the place running. I mean, do you think he had an argument?
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A
Oh, I definite. He had an argument, for sure. I mean, I am a collaborator by nature. I think that that's my personality. I think that generally, resistance might feel really good emotionally, but that lasts for all five seconds. And then you're left with the same situation that you're in, but you've burned a bridge.
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B
Resistance is futile. It belongs on a T shirt.
- [28:22]
A
Yeah, totally. But also, I get it. I understand that everyone has a line. Everyone has a set of principles that they feel they cannot cross. And clearly, for some people, cooperating with this new guard was that line. And I talked to people who'd, I think, tried to cooperate and felt like they'd been burned. And it just seemed like not a high trust situation on any side. But, yeah, I mean, just from a personality perspective, I am more towards the David Harvey end of the spectrum.
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B
So the great irony, and you get to this in your piece, is that this new conservative vision of New College of Florida, and it has its own version of the same problems, Is that fair to say?
- [29:04]
A
The problems it has are the ones that are just plagued by every college of its kind in America. That was something that was also interesting to me, is like, okay, let's set aside the politics. Let's set aside the political valence of this. It is hard to convince students in the value of a liberal arts education right now, you know, and, like, New College has something great going for it, which is this low, low price tag however, that also means that they don't take in very many tuition dollars. Like, I don't know, it's just a lot of math problems, more so than even politics problems. And I do think just to say something in favor of the people who think it's going well, I did sit in on the small group discussion about the Odyssey. It's this new thing where incoming freshmen, we're all going to read it and talk about it in small groups. And it's an idea I can totally get behind. I read the Odyssey in college and loved it. And I sat behind these two girls who were both athletes, and I looked over their shoulders and both of them had jotted down notes in the margin of their books before class. And they'd underline things in a way that seemed sincere, like they had read it, you know, which, like, listen, in 2025, that's like a feat in and of itself to get students to open the book. Totally, totally. And like, one of them was this lacrosse player and the class was talking about the theme of hospitality. And she contributed to the class conversation by saying something about how her grandma always told her never to show up to someone's home empty handed. I talked to her a little bit later and I just thought, okay, this is the type of kid that would not have ever thought to enroll in New College before. But she's here and she's part of this enrollment boost and she's benefiting from this type of education, like this small, careful, discussion based education. And maybe some part of that is still being preserved there.
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B
Well, I don't like to hear this because I don't like Chris Rufo and I don't want to give him credit for anything, so.
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A
Well, listen, people, thanks. Some people would really disagree also. I think they're having a lot of money issues. They're under some scrutiny from the state right now for spending so much money. So I do not good. Mean to imply that things are going great. So you can.
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B
How's the baseball team? That's the most important thing.
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A
Okay, so according to their website, they're playing right now and they're losing 4 to 24.
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B
Take that, Rufo. You. You know, it's funny, like, I remember feeling Matt like mad on behalf of New College at the time that this happened. And yet had this happened at Evergreen State, a school that I think is a lot like New College, that very similar politics and also has been plagued by, I think, even more scandal than New College, I probably would have been on board with that, with that little experiment. If Rufo had just looked a little closer to home. Okay, I want to dive into this big fascinating story you reported on Pomona College. But before we get to that, housekeeping. Emma, you ready for it?
- [32:24]
A
Sure. Okay, so Blocked and Reported is a podcast. I believe you can find more information@blocked andreported.org Yep, subscribing is the only way to support the the show. They have no merch, they have no other way of showing your support. So pony up for a subscription. That's true. And I'm sure there's social media dedicated to it run by other people.
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B
There's not. There's no social media that Jesse was supposed to take that off.
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A
Okay, Reddit.
- [32:53]
B
There is a. There is a Reddit also run by other people. Yes. You can become a member atblocks and reported.org for just $7 a month. You get three point something extra episodes every single month. You also get access to our live chats. You get early access tickets when we have live events, which honestly is very rare. But Jesse does have parties every once in a while and you can also go to those. But most importantly, it is the best and only way to support the show. Please check it out. Blackdoneremported.org okay, so let's go to your Pomona College piece. So this was called when a department self destructs, battles over money, allegations of racism, a chair ousted. So let's set the scene. First, what is Pomona College like?
- [33:33]
A
So the word idyllic comes to mind. It's a small, elite liberal arts college in Southern California.
- [33:39]
B
Private.
- [33:41]
A
Private. It's very well resourced. It's very intellectual, very liberal, left leaning and very beautiful. The campus is gorgeous.
- [33:49]
B
This is where David Foster Wallace taught. Famously.
- [33:52]
A
Indeed. Indeed, famously in this department.
- [33:55]
B
Oh, really? Yes. I should have put that together. Yeah. Okay, so before we get into what happened, let's establish who the main character is. So his name is Aaron Koonin, literature professor and poet. And understanding him is essential to understanding the story. So you write, quote, he was branded an autocratic viper, an anti black Eurocentric scholar and a little twit. He was accused of wielding protocol as domination, of engaging in literary blackface, of causing so much stress that he contributed to a car accident. So who is this guy?
- [34:24]
A
Quite the introduction. So Koonin, he's a poet and literature professor, like you said, with a pretty eclectic body of work. He's written about everything from devotional poetry to his own sexuality. He identifies our. He might not use the word identify, but he's a masochist. Or someone who takes pleasure in humiliation on occasion. Personality wise, he's shy, he's kind of odd. I enjoyed his oddness. I spent time with him for the story. But he speaks with a certain rhythm that can be kind of hard to integrate with. I like to think when I. When we drove together and spoke together, I just got this image of trying to play catch with someone. Like having a conversation is trying to play catch where you're tossing the ball, you're considering it, and you feel the weight of it in your hand and you toss it back to someone. And ideally you get into this nice rhythm and there's this nice zip to it. And talking with Koonin always felt like I was throwing him a ball and then he would catch it and then he would put it on the ground.
- [35:36]
B
I know dogs like that.
- [35:37]
A
I would kind of have to walk over and pick it back up and restart. But he knows this about himself. He self identifies as a weirdo and he's very precise. Whenever I was asking him a question, he would really consider it and try and be as thorough and accurate as possible. And he does not say anything he does not mean or he tries to not say anything he does not mean.
- [36:04]
B
Okay, so he ends up chairing his department, which, reading your piece, this seems like it was a terrible idea from the start. Not because he's incompetent, but because he is unsuited for the requirements of the job. And so did he end up chairing because everybody has to chair at some point. This does not seem like a desirable position.
- [36:23]
A
He, if I'm remembering correctly, was kind of through circumstance. He did not raise his hand high for this gig. But I think he was under the impression that if no one did this, then maybe the department would go into receivership, which is something that everyone wants to avoid. And so I think he wanted to establish a habit of we all have to do our duty sometime. This is my duty, I will do it.
- [36:53]
B
Okay, so not suited to it. Both things like handling the budget and the more political aspects. So he. You say in the piece he's neither a numbers guy nor a people pleaser, but he wants things done correctly. So he proposes some new rules. So, for instance, requiring a modified version of Robert's rules of order for department meetings, requiring people to actually attend department meetings in person. And he also wanted budget requests over $1,000 to be approved by departmental vote. And you say these changes went down poorly, in particular with two of his colleague. So their names are Kyla Wazana Tompkins. Did I get that. Right.
- [37:27]
A
Keela.
- [37:28]
B
Keela. Okay. Keela Wazana Thomkins and Valerie D. Thomas. So tell me about them.
- [37:33]
A
Yeah. Before I do, I should say that these rules, according to him and according to the record at the time, he discussed them among people and proposed them and took their feedback. So it wasn't like it was him necessarily, like, imposing his vision at the start. Like, I think everyone kind of agreed that, hey, we gotta get a little more professional around here. Like, we have a ton of money and should be a little bit more careful with how we actually kind of dole it out. But, yes, these were rules that he wanted, and it put him into conflict with these two colleagues. So Tompkins and Thomas, they're both senior scholars in the department. Tompkins works on 19th century American literature, often through the lenses of race culture. She's won big awards.
- [38:23]
B
And she's black.
- [38:24]
A
No, no. Okay.
- [38:25]
B
The other one is black. She's white.
- [38:28]
A
No, I'm sorry.
- [38:29]
B
Wait.
- [38:31]
A
So Tom Tompkins is. Both of them are women of color, is North African and Arab Jewish descent.
- [38:40]
B
Okay, got it.
- [38:40]
A
And Thomas is African American. Thomas is black.
- [38:43]
B
Okay, got it.
- [38:44]
A
Okay. And so Thomas was one of, if. I think she was maybe the most senior faculty member in the department at the time. She focused on the African diaspora and black women writers like Toni Morrison. And. Yeah, like I said, both are women of color. And so both had felt for a while that the department did not take issues of race seriously enough, especially when it came to supporting students of color. So there was that sense of, I guess, marginalization of detachment from one's colleagues already. Before Koonin becomes the chair.
- [39:23]
B
Okay. And he becomes the chair in 2018. Is that right?
- [39:26]
A
I believe so.
- [39:27]
B
Okay, so. But the conflict between the three of them, or him versus the two of them, actually predated his chairship. So this started in 2016 with a course proposal. So tell me about that.
- [39:39]
A
So Koonin wanted to teach a senior seminar on Ralph Ellison, who I'm sure everyone knows as. As the American writer best known for his novel the Invisible Man. Or maybe it's just Invisible Man. So Kunin doesn't specialize in American literature.
- [39:53]
B
And for our. Sorry to interrupt you, but for our international listeners, I know we have at least one person in North Korea. None in south, but one in North. So he's a very famous and influential black writer.
- [40:06]
A
Yes. And so Kunan doesn't specialize in American literature, but he taught Ellison's work before, and he'd become really interested in him as a writer, and he didn't see any overlap in the curriculum of what the department currently offered. So he wrote a proposal and he submitted it to the department chair. And importantly, he didn't consult with Thomas or Tompkins first, which became an issue.
- [40:34]
B
Right. So they're pissed that this white guy is going to be teaching Allison, and they think he's going to be doing it in a way that erases race from the discussion, and this will be harmful to students. And Thomas seems particularly pissed about this. She says that Koonin was going to be gentrifying Ellison. You got this from emails. And so she complains about this to higher ups, what happens to the course?
- [40:55]
A
So I should say that Koonin really disputes that he wanted to teach the course by erasing race. He says that that is not the case, and that's not representative of how he'd teach Ellison. I remember him telling me it would be weird if I taught Ellison without referencing Grace.
- [41:13]
B
It would be like teaching Ibram x Kendi without race.
- [41:16]
A
Right. It would be quite odd. And so. But the chorus at the time, the chair asks Koonin to withdraw it, and he does. He's going on sabbatical anyway. But, you know, he left the situation feeling blindsided by how it was handled. And just the fact that, like, his colleagues took their issue not to him, but to the chair and I believe also the dean.
- [41:42]
B
Okay, so this in 2016, in 2018, he becomes the chair. He tries to impose some order, you know, the Roberts rules of orders, this thousand dollar budget threshold. And that's where things really start to go sideways with these two colleagues in particular. And much of the conflict played out via email. So there's a record. So walk me through what happened that year.
- [42:04]
A
Right. So Kudin becomes the chair. These changes are, on paper, pretty standard governance things, but. But in this department, which had been operating informally, it's this pretty big shift. And I'll just talk about a couple flashpoints. One of them is a $15,000 allocation that is tied to a new hire. So Koonin, as chair, had approved the money as part of the hiring process. He'd actually asked the former chair if he was allowed to do that, and that guy told him yes. But when Tompkins and Thomas learn of it, they push back.
- [42:40]
B
And was the 15,000, was this going to go directly to the salary or was this for expenditures within that apartment?
- [42:46]
A
I think it was tied to a conference that this new hire that they wanted her to bring to Pomona.
- [42:53]
B
Gotcha. Okay, Gotcha.
- [42:54]
A
So when Tompkins and Thomas learn of this they push back. But their argument is essentially, wait, why didn't this go through the new rules that you just created? And Koonin's response to that is, well, this is a hiring negotiation. Like, we don't do that by the full department. But Thomas in particular, she reads this as, like, a slight. She's someone who's been working in race and diversity for years, and she just feels like she has to scrape together funding. And so to her, it looks like this preferential treatment and heated emails follow.
- [43:32]
B
Okay, so there's another dispute about zines. Explain that.
- [43:36]
A
So, right, so there's these increasingly just like, granular disputes about money. There's a whole emails firing back and forth. Emails firing back and forth. So Thomas wants $300 for zines for a class. She asks Koonin about applying for a grant for the cost. Kunin directs her to that.
- [43:56]
B
That form.
- [43:57]
A
And then Thomas is like, well, can the department just pay for them? And Koonin says, apply for this grant because that's what it's for. This grant was a college grant for course materials and the like, but if not, the department will find the money. And Thomas is basically like, why are you making this harder than it needs to be? The department has plenty of money. She accuses him of punitive nickel and diming, which just gives you a sense of how these just small administrative decisions are kind of interpreted as hostile acts. Whereas from Koonin's perspective, he's trying to be a good steward of the department's money. He was shocked at how much. He think. He was shocked at how much money the department had. And also I think what little bureaucracy or what little, like, rules were in place and oversight were for managing that money. And he was kind of freaked out about that.
- [44:52]
B
And he. You write in a piece that he was freaked out. He basically didn't want to be held responsible if there were concerns with the budget. Like, he's the guy in charge. He doesn't want to get in trouble if, like, if there's issues with record keeping, with budget shit, right?
- [45:07]
A
And so for the zines issue, Thomas basically says, hey, it's time sensitive. And so Koonin offers to pay for them himself out of his own, like, department pot funding and then just be reimbursed by this grant that Thomas indicated she'd applied for. So that's smoothed over, but by now we've got this bigger pattern, right? Like there's these small disputes. They turn into these bigger conflicts. They're playing out over these long, increasingly heated email chains. And I will say the heat. I say heated email chains. The heat is coming really from one side. Like, you can, you know, readers can read the emails for yourself. Koonin says that he doesn't really engage in a language of, like, professional flattery. I think that's quite true. But the accusations and the sense of, like, being wronged, that's really coming from Thomas and to, like, a lesser extent, Tompkins.
- [46:03]
B
Okay, so you write about this time. You write in retrospect. These were the good times, not promising. So how did things devolve from there?
- [46:11]
A
Okay, so in 2018, towards the end of the semester, they decided to have this big budget meeting where everyone in the department can see, I think, for the first time, hey, here's how much money we have. It's in endowed funds. We can all talk about it together and approve requests. So professors at this meeting, they submit requests, they get them approved. I think Thomas gets over $30,000 approved for projects. But instead of calming things down, this meeting seems to reinforce her view that earlier hurdles or things, I guess things that she interpreted as hurdles, like the zines issue, were unnecessary. So days later, she brings up the zines issue again, and she asks Koonin that department money pay for the cost. And Koonin is like, hey, remember our agreement? I paid for this out of my own department funds, and you agreed to apply for this grant. And she tells him to cut the static and just refund himself for the department's coffers. She also brings up this other funding issue. So she needs $2,400 for something called Inner Light Method Training.
- [47:33]
B
Sounds culty.
- [47:34]
A
Yeah, I cast no aspersions on Inner Light Method Training, but it is a little woo woo coded. But she said that she'd brought it up before at a different meeting. Koonin went to look, he said that there was no mention of it at that meeting and that Thomas herself is the one who took the notes. And then Thomas. Thomas replies to that by saying that she was dealing with a torn ligament in her right hand at the time, so she should not have been taking minutes at all, but did it to support you as chair and to be a team player. And may have missed reporting the dismissiveness with which my request for the course support was not addressed. So things are tense. And Thomas, just from these emails, seems to have a sense that, like, despite being granted more than $30,000 at this May budget meeting, she's still being denied resources that she's owed, perhaps due to bias.
- [48:29]
B
And this just the amounts of money that we're talking about for, also for our international listeners. You can tell the difference between like a school, like New College of Florida, basically any state school that is dealing with, with state legislatures and governing boards trying to attract students for low cost education. And, and these elite schools like Pomona, which as you said, have these endowments, basically alumni, give them millions, billions of dollars. Very different issues. Not all private schools, but Pomona in particular.
- [48:59]
A
Yes, that was the biggest takeaway after the story came out, as I heard from a lot of English faculty being like, what the hell? They have thousands of dollars. Each professor in this department got, I think it was around $5,000 that they can spend how they want. And then we're not even talking about the general department fund, so like, yeah, they're kind of rolling in money.
- [49:23]
B
Yeah. Okay, I want to, I want to read a, a section of your piece. Kudin called an emergency meeting for the next day after, after a department reception. Thomas didn't attend. She had missed the meeting invite, she told her colleagues in an email, because she had, quote, taken a break from email. A break she said was prompted by Koonin's emails to her, quote. I didn't expect to miss the meeting, obviously, but, you know, self care. She wrote in another message months later. She'd claim to Pomona's chief human resources officer that Kunin had held the meeting, quote, without telling me when it was happening, so I couldn't attend. So she's taking this very personally. He clearly did invite her to this meeting. She didn't check her email. Yes, but you know, because hashtag, self care. But I wonder how much you think this conflict resulted because so much of it was unfolding via email instead of just in person talking to each other. It's just so much harder to be a prick to someone's face.
- [50:15]
A
Totally.
- [50:16]
B
I've tried, believe me.
- [50:17]
A
Yeah, I mean, at a certain point, like, Thomas is calling Robert's rules of order this violent protocol. I mean, she likens Koonin to a, quote, payday loan shark. She calls him a, quote, autocratic viper. I just think it is hard to say that to someone's face. And I also think like that is, that was Koonin's MO Going into being a department chair. That's why he was like, we decide things in meetings, we decide things face to face. Email has proven poisonous for this department. It is where things escalate. So, yeah, I think that if this had been talked about in person, I have to imagine that it wouldn't escalate this way. Department Wide emails. It's really easy to misread the tone. Although, honestly, Autocratic Viper has a pretty obvious tone, but you're also kind of performing for this.
- [51:08]
B
If you put a smiley face emoji at the end of it, maybe that Autocratic Viper, like, love Comic Sans. Yeah, right.
- [51:15]
A
But, yes, I think that, like, it could have cooled down if they were in a room together, but the emails were just, like, a huge part of why this kept intensifying.
- [51:26]
B
Okay, so things continue to devolve, and this becomes, at some point, not just this fight between these. These three colleagues. You write in September 2019, quote, two words uttered by Koonin at a department meeting that September would cause another spasm of accusations. So what were those two words? What happened?
- [51:43]
A
So the two words were, keela, please.
- [51:46]
B
Bitch, please.
- [51:49]
A
So in Koonin's version, the department was discussing a funding request put forward by one professor. He had, I think, thrown out a number, and then Tompkins, I think, had offered a bigger number, and Koonin wanted to give people more time to think. But according to him, Tompkins became impatient and started to take a vote, which is. Is something that, again, according to him, she'd done before. In other meetings, Koonin thought that Tompkins was being disrespectful. So he said, keela, please. According to him, as he'd write later on his subsec newsletter, I spoke quietly, with a falling intonation. I intended to assert that I was chairing the meeting and that it was my job to administer the vote.
- [52:32]
B
So how were others who were at the meeting perceive this incident was. Did everybody gasp? Was this obviously a racially charged.
- [52:39]
A
It depends on who you ask. As all things do in this story, when all of these things were eventually investigated, Tompkins would tell the investigator that she was, quote, taken aback by his comment, which was, quote, personal and angry, and other people in the room did not hear it that way. So a different professor would tell the investigator that it just seemed like Koonin was, quote, frustrated that the rules were being rudely and sarcastically thrown aside. Another professor reached out to Koonin privately and said that he read Thomas's characterization quote with real puzzlement. What could she even be referring to? Oh, it was just you trying to run the meeting.
- [53:18]
B
Okay, so in the midst of all this, Koonin decides that he once again wants to teach the Ellison course. So how does that go over?
- [53:25]
A
So someone needed to teach a senior seminar in the spring of 2020. By that point, Tompkins had gone on leave, so she couldn't do it? Koonin asked, I think around four other people who all declined or were unavailable. So it looked like he might be on deck. And he wanted to offer a version of his Ellison seminar. It was somewhat reworked. So Koonin decides to ask Thomas if she's interested in teaching a senior seminar. And if she was unavailable, he told her in an email that he would probably have to do it. And he told her that his course, quote, would be some version of the seminar we discussed in 2017. American writers who defend literature against sociological analysis, including Ellison as one of those writers. And then things explode. So Thomas told Pomona administrators that Koonin's course was, quote, a bid for permission to use Ellison as literary blackface while attacking a black woman. She also said that she strongly felt that the nonstop stress caused by Koonin, along with the English department's, quote, complicity, contributed to a car collision that she was involved in. And she wrote, how long is he going to be allowed to be a loose cannon aimed at me? And Tompkins also objected. She emailed Pomona leaders, including the President, accusing Koonin of bullying and saying she wanted to, quote, witness his abuse publicly so that Thomas would not carry it alone.
- [54:57]
B
So they're trying to get him removed from his job at this point, it
- [55:00]
A
seems like that at least removed as chair. And I should say that Koonin says that those assertions are absurd. He didn't propose the course to troll his colleagues. He was not threatening Thomas or bullying her with his course design. I will say that some of his other colleagues in the department thought that it was, like, not a good idea and at worst, provocative of him to reintroduce this course possibility. Now, that was their perspective on it. But, yeah, Koonin, to him, the idea that he would be proposing this course as a deliberate troll is untrue. But that does seem to be how a couple people read it, at least.
- [55:42]
B
Okay, so eventually, Thomas and Tompkins file a discrimination complaint, and there's a long and presumably expensive investigation. And what does the investigator find anything to do with?
- [55:53]
A
Tompkins was tossed out because the investigator had not demonstrated that the professor, quote, suffered an adverse employment based action based on race, gender, or retaliation for protesting Koonin's actions. So, but ultimately the investigator and Pomona decided that Koonin had retaliated against Thomas for her complaints in three instances. The $300 zines issue, the 2,400 interlite method training issue, and then with his second Ralph Ellison course proposal, okay, so
- [56:30]
B
they do this investigation, they file it he is found guilty, although it's not a criminal court, but found that he is guilty of retaliation. So what is the prescription there for Koonin?
- [56:43]
A
So the dean of students determined that he must complete implicit bias training, that he could not be chair of the English department again for 10 years.
- [56:56]
B
Sounds like he would like that.
- [56:58]
A
Yeah. That he'd need to take leadership training before chairing any faculty committee, and that he could not have any role in decisions about Tompkins promotion. This dean also encouraged Koonin to apologize to Tompkins and Thomas, saying it would be an olive branch.
- [57:20]
B
So Kunin disputes the investigator's findings and he hires lawyers. They file suit against the college. And you write a judge would now have to sift through fiddly academic disputes over the provenance of $300 for zines. And who's allowed to teach Ralph Ellison to decipher whether a Renaissance poetry scholar was being appropriately punished. That case takes two years. Who knows how many thousands of dollars. Meanwhile, they're all still in the department, so I assume shit is awkward as hell. And in the end, what does the judge find?
- [57:50]
A
So the judge pulls an UNO reverse. He found that the investigator's report was essentially less than persuasive. And I can see why, having read it myself. To give you just one example, the investigator wrote that Koonin had approved a white faculty member's request for a $1,000 honorarium, even though, according to the rules, such a request must be voted on by the department. He would have been permitted to approve. $999. But $1,000, that needs a department vote. So it's one of the pieces of evidence that the investigator relies on to determine that Koonin was, quote, inconsistent and how he treated Thomas's funding requests compared to those made by her non black colleagues. But the department had voted on the white professor's request. The investigator was just wrong, the judge wrote. And she made some other mistakes at certain points in the report. She refers to both Thomas and Tompkins as black women, plural. But Thompkins is not black, which seems like, to me, kind of a big deal if you're trying to suss out allegations of racism. And so ultimately, the judge decided that, you know, Koonin was, quote, rigid and Thomas was, quote, lax when it came to her funding requests. And there was obviously this conflict between them. That is not proof, you know, direct or circumstantial of retaliation.
- [59:15]
B
And so what happens after he. After Kunin wins the lawsuit? Does he not have to take the implicit bride's training? Do they cancel The Robin d' Angelo contract.
- [59:23]
A
I don't think he ever took that training, but I'm not totally sure.
- [59:28]
B
Well, what he does do is start a subsack.
- [59:30]
A
Right, Right. So that's where I come in.
- [59:32]
B
Yeah.
- [59:33]
A
That's how I got turned onto this story. So he started a newsletter called Weird at My School, which is named after the Pixie Song, where he writes about all of this. He filed these records publicly or had his lawyer file these records publicly so they could write about it. And he uses pseudonyms for his colleagues. But it's pretty clear who is who. They align with, what people study. And it's funny. It's pretty biting. In his introductory post, he writes, quote, imagine a workplace where some of the workers are afraid that their colleagues might be white supremacists, and some of the workers are afraid that their colleagues might be on the verge of calling them white supremacists. There is usually some overlap between the two groups, and in most workplaces of the sort, no white supremacists at all.
- [60:24]
B
Mm. And Tompkins also is writing her version of the story on substack.
- [60:29]
A
She had had a substack. She's talked about it obliquely on there and in at least one other place, but she's never delved into as much detail as Kunin did.
- [60:42]
B
Okay, so he's really dishing. Dishing the dirt on his substack. And no one else in the department would talk to you, but you did get the investigative reports. You got all of these emails. Do you have a sense of how this conflict affected the department as a whole or how Kunit's colleagues view him? I mean, especially now that he's. He's posting about them.
- [61:04]
A
Right. So I'll mend that to say no one else from the department talked to me on the record. I talked to a decent chunk of people in the department off the record. And, yeah, my general sense was that, you know, it was a range of opinions, but I think people were more on his side during the whole dispute itself. I think anyone reading those emails, which we've quoted from, but are quoted from more in length in this story, anyone I think can see being on the receiving end of those emails is, like, not a fun experience. And I think that people privately were sympathetic to him and to also his perspective. But I think that that probably soured when he started writing about it publicly, which, you know, I. I understand that.
- [61:56]
B
Yeah. All right. Well, thank you for that, Emma. We will post a link to this story in the show Notes. There's a lot more detail that I think people would enjoy. And I'm curious, you know, it's not unreasonable to assume that a story like this one is going to be used. You know, we've all seen how the Trump administration has used stories of censorship or progressive over or diversity initiatives to defund universities, including universities that are doing really important research on things like, you know, cancer. So how has that very real threat affected your reporting, if at all?
- [62:28]
A
Yeah, it's a good question. So my beat now. Well, my beat as of, you know, my last day at the chronicle, which is April 22, is covering criticisms of higher ed that emanate from the right, but also from liberals and the left, left, and just trying to take it seriously, trying to look for spots and look for stories that exist on the fault lines of those criticisms and explore it from all sides. And you can't do that job without highlighting problems that might lend themselves to a Trumpian agenda. Like, that's true. And I realize that's a potential downstream effect. And I hear from people who are essentially of the mind that you are not covering the most aggressive threats to academic freedom, and you are elevating concerns from people who hate us anyway. And I hear people out. I think that the way I think about myself is I think about what I'm doing in a media ecosystem, and I have colleagues who are doing amazing jobs covering the Trump administration and the threatened cuts to research and, and threatened deportations over speech and the civil liberty concerns. And I think that's all great, and I'm proud or have been proud to work alongside them. But I also just think that higher ed journalism, these epistemic institutions, the institutions that help us make meaning out of this world, are in this mess in part because they did not examine themselves enough and ask hard questions. And I really just, I really believe that regaining some of that trust starts this way, not the other way. I just don't think that battening down the hatches and pretending like conservatives don't have a point and acting in this defensive mode and trying to, like, go into your turtle shell, I don't think that that is a good pathway towards truth. I don't think that is a good pathway towards art. Not to sound too high minded about it, but yeah, I just, I think the best way through is to kind of grapple with the messiness, even if it can maybe give some people political ammunition, in part, because I also just don't think it's my job to think about that. I think that when I start thinking about that too much that is not the purpose of journalism either.
- [64:57]
B
Yeah, that inevitably leads to self censorship. All right, we will post links to all of these stories in the show notes. And where can people find you online
- [65:05]
A
so people can find me on Twitter? I'm @emmajanepettit, but I would really love if people sent me story ideas to my brand new email address. It is Emma Pettit. So P E T T I T Longview Report.
- [65:25]
B
Awesome. Well, good luck and we'll be listening.
- [65:27]
A
Thanks.
- [65:27]
B
Thanks again to Emma Pettit. It this has been blocked and reported. Our show is produced as always, with help from Jessica the 80s baby. We'll be back next week. Bye.