Here & Now

Eric Wilcots on Racism and Protests by UW-Madison Students

Frederica Freyberg:

Despite that, more than 50,000 people have signed a petition calling for the student in the racist video to be expelled. Here to talk more about all of this is UW-Madison interim provost Eric Wilcots. Thank you for being here.

Eric Wilcots:

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

Tell us why the university cannot discipline this student.

Eric Wilcots:

It’s a great question and one we get a lot. I know folks are not happy with the answer, but let me point to a couple of things. One is with federal law, particularly something called FERPA, which I’m sure you’re familiar with, we can’t speak of that individual case. The other thing is we have seen cases after case, and it’s really established case law of instances at a public university where this kind of speech, as abhorrent as it is, as horrible as it is, is protected speech under the 1st Amendment. Because of that, we are not able to act on this, even though this speech is absolutely horrid because it is protected legal speech under the 1st Amendment of the country.

Frederica Freyberg:

Black student leaders told us that they were disappointed in the response to the situation by the chancellor. As it didn’t feel, they said, like a call to action. What’s your response to that?

Eric Wilcots:

I think the chancellor’s communication and response starts out first by she and the entire leadership team are deeply, deeply hurt by this. This is abhorrent, and we do apologize to the students and other members of our community who are offended by this. This is horrible. Sustain that, then what is it that we can do going forward to be better? That’s something that we as a campus, I think have been really dedicated to, particularly over the past few years. We’ve gotten — we’ve moved a lot of great directions in this space. I want to point to the Rebecca M. Blank Center that we have. That is the extension of the public history project that we did last year with sifting and reckoning. So we’re making steps. We have increased the diversity of the student body overall over the past few years, and I deeply recognize. I’ve been on this campus 27 years. We have not made great progress in increasing the percentage of Black students on our campus and we need to do better and we will continue to work towards doing better. So we are making steps. The students had — in their demands a set of issues where we as campus leadership really want to sit down and think about how can we move forward on a number of things that we are interested in and that’s the conversation that we have to have going forward.

Frederica Freyberg:

You just spoke about the kind of lack of diversity, particularly diversity of Black students. On this campus and system-wide, system-wide, it sits at something like 2.9% of the student population. So how do you change that?

Eric Wilcots:

With a lot of hard work, and I think some of that hard work happens on our admission side, on our outreach into different communities to recruit students to come to UW-Madison. Part of that is our ability to bring scholarship and other dollars to the table to take that financial concern off the table, to be able to recruit students. Part of that is what kind of programming do we have, what kind of academic programs do we have that excites students about being here. I feel like you’re about to jump in.

Frederica Freyberg:

I was going to ask is part of that the culture that these students find here?

Eric Wilcots:

Part of that is the culture. And that is — if you listen to Chancellor Mnookin’s words over the past few months, particularly in her vestiture speech, a clear focus on what she is calling flourishing, and that is that notion that we all belong at UW-Madison, regardless of our race, our gender, our ethnicities, to get that sense of belonging so we can all flourish here and that is dealing with that cultural piece. How do we do that? How do we begin to change minds? And I think one of the things that has emerged over the past 48 hours, and I’ve seen a lot of email from different academic units on campus doing a bit of that self-reflection, saying, okay, what is it that we need to be doing within our particular unit to make sure that our climate, our culture is one that is welcoming and inclusive of all.

Frederica Freyberg:

How much does this kind of thing set all of that back?

Eric Wilcots:

It’s a ding. It’s a ding. We will have to — it’s a step backwards. We’re going to have to keep charging forward. I think we’re all dedicated to doing that. Since I’ve been on campus 27 years, I’ve been a dean for the last four years. I see within my colleagues, across leadership, across campus, a real commitment and a dedication to not just that demographics. That’s sort of an easy thing to say let’s improve our numbers and we see that happening in the student body. We see that happening in the student body but how do we make sure we’re changing that culture.

Frederica Freyberg:

Just super quickly, before we go, I wanted to get your reaction to the idea that the Republican Legislature would like to eliminate campus diversity offices in return for state funding.

Eric Wilcots:

I think that’s a horrible idea, and I think this incident proves the need that we need to focus on making sure our campuses are open and welcoming for everybody and that requires dedicated professionals who are in these positions who are allowing us to understand what are the best practices and that’s what these roles can deliver for our campus and decree the climate that our students are really asking for.

Frederica Freyberg:

Eric Wilcots, thanks very much.

Eric Wilcots:

Thank you. Appreciate it.