Student Activists Tell Colleges: To Improve Racial Climate, Look Hard at Tenure
When Jennifer R. Warren was denied tenure last year by Rutgers University at New Brunswick, she believed she had ample grounds to protest the decision. Ms. Warren, an assistant professor of communications who is black, said her school had discouraged her from writing a book and had pushed her to change her teaching style, causing her student evaluations to drop. Her annual reviews, she said, had offered no indication that she wasn’t on the right track. Student activists saw a force underlying those issues: institutional racism. "By denying her tenure, Rutgers University says that they do not care about black lives," read an online petition posted in February by the university’s Black Lives Matter chapter.