Scott D. Schneider
Hello and welcome to Campus Docket, a Volt podcast about the legal challenges reshaping higher education. I’m Scott Schneider. I’m an attorney and adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law. And I’m joined by my friend, Eric Kelderman, senior writer at the Chronicle of Higher Education. Each episode, we’ll unpack the key legal developments that matter to higher ed leaders from student rights and faculty contracts to DEI lawsuits and government oversight. Let’s get into it.
Eric Kelderman
Hey everyone, welcome to Campus Docket. I'm Eric Kelderman, a senior writer at the Chronicle of Higher Education. Scott Schneider, my esteemed real host here is and we're joined with by Walter Kimbrough, currently the interim president at Talladega College in said Talladega and also you've been president at two other institutions in your career, Dillard University and also Philander Smith. So welcome, welcome to Campus Docket. We're really pleased to have you here with us today.
Walter M. Kimbrough
Thank you, no problem.
Eric Kelderman
Yeah, sure.
Scott D. Schneider
Can I just say this? This is our first guest and I had been really wanting to talk to you. The last several months have been intense. I think for everybody, I've been sleepless and one of the people that immediately jumped to mind to give me some perspective, to give us all some perspective and insight. One of the first people I thought of was you. I don't know if I've ever said this to you directly, but the amount of respect I have for you is off the charts. And every conversation I've ever had with you, I always come away feeling as if I'm out a little bit smarter or maybe not as dumb as I was before. And it's just, I can't tell you how grateful I am to have you and to be with you. All right, my friend.
Walter M. Kimbrough
I appreciate it. Yeah, appreciate it.
Eric Kelderman
Well, let's jump into it. As Scott mentioned, the last couple of months under the Trump administration have been a whirlwind. I often describe it to people as drinking from a fire hose every day. One thing that Scott and I talked about as we were thinking about having you on was, you led Dillard through and after Hurricane Katrina, one of the nation's worst catastrophes. And I wonder if you think about leading college now in terms of sort of through a crisis mindset. Is that where we're at?
Walter M. Kimbrough
Yeah, maybe. I mean, so, for the full context, so Katrina happens in 2005, 20 years ago, so I was still in Arkansas at the time. We actually had some students from Dillard come to Philander Smith, but when I got to Dillard seven years later, the campus still had not been completely rebuilt. We didn't finish opening all of our buildings until January of 2014.
So you're talking about almost a decade of work just to reopen everything on campus because we had a couple of residence halls left to open. And so you're doing that. But then even during my 10 years there, I had two hurricane evacuations, three major hurricanes, two evacuations where we would go to Centenary College in Shreveport. We had the change in the Parent PLUS loan. And we had COVID. So in that 10 years, it seemed like there was one kind of crisis or another. So to me, in some regards, as par for the course, I think being in a place like New Orleans and dealing with hurricanes where you're always having to keep an eye on things and it's unpredictable. Yeah, this is like a hurricane. I mean, I think that's actually a really good analogy for this. And I heard someone yesterday, I think it was, someone was just saying like, and this I think is appropriate for this region of the country, if you hear there's a hurricane and it comes, it’s only a category one and people are just like, ah, it's not that bad. And then, the big one comes, like a Katrina and there are people who stayed who should have left. They said, that's a good analogy for what's happening now. Oh, the first Trump administration, it wasn't really that bad. We don't have to do anything different. And now they're experiencing the Katrina of Trump administrations and they're like, ooh. So, maybe we shouldn't have done what we did. I think that's a pretty good analogy.
Eric Kelderman
Yeah, thanks. Scott, you were in New Orleans during that period as well. How did colleges deal with that internally in terms of their financial and legal risk? Do you see any similarities there?
Scott D. Schneider
Well, yeah, I mean, so I wasn't at Tulane during Katrina. I was in New Orleans during Katrina. I came to Tulane in the aftermath of Katrina. Yeah, I think the easiest way to describe it is there was existential threat. You know, if we don't navigate these remarkably complicated, historically unprecedented decisions correctly, we cease to exist as an institution or we exist as an institution in a remarkably compromised fashion. I mean, I was blessed to have the opportunity to work with Scott Cowan, I mean, who obviously gets a lot of credit for navigating all of those difficult decisions really well. And I think the analogy is actually an apt one. I mean, there are obviously schools and we're watching it play out in real time at Harvard and Maine where these are historically, and that needs to be emphasized, the administration is taking a historically unprecedented position. And, look, Harvard and some of Maine, perhaps, and Columbia, I mean, these are institutions with considerable resources, but there is some real existential risk, especially when you start talking about pulling tax-exempt status and things like that. So I think the analogy is a good one. And the way in which leaders operate in that sort of environment and decisions that are made, which again, there's not a lot you can reliably fall back on or use any sort of anecdotes as a guide. I mean, we'll have a very clear impact on the trajectory of these institutions for the next five, 10, 15 years.
Eric Kelderman
Yeah, the difference being, of course, there's nothing, really nothing you can do about a hurricane, right? I mean, you can prepare your infrastructure, you can build seawalls to prevent some of the damage that occurs after that. But, Walter, going back to the first Trump administration, you had some sort of, I don't want to say infamous, but some very notable interactions with them. There was that sort of photo op in the White House where I think black college leaders were caught completely off guard by the nature of what was happening there. Describe that situation and then, you know, what was it that everybody should have learned from the first Trump administration that we apparently didn't internalize?
Walter M. Kimbrough
Yeah, I mean, so the setup for that really was an opportunity for HBC leaders to meet with Betsy DeVos, which I thought was a great idea because she didn't know anything about how she knows nothing about HBCUs. So we were in, I think the Eisenhower building just to have that conversation. So then Omarosa, who at the time, you know, they had this love-hate relationship. So when she was still in love with Trump, she was like, I got this great idea. You know, you can come to the Oval Office and no one even considered that as an option because it was the day before his first address to Congress. So it's like, he's got to be busy doing X, Y, and Z. And actually I wasn't supposed to even be there. I was supposed to be in New York City with the college board doing a presentation. But UNCF got together and there were about 16 presidents that were going to give short presentations to Secretary DeVos to say, here are some of the issues. I was going to talk about the importance of Pell grants. No problem. And since I was the senior person in Louisiana, they were like, you're the one that's going to speak. So I was mad I was there because I should have been in New York and come to the meeting later. So anyway, and so when she announces that we're going to the Oval Office, I'm sitting there and I'm physically ill now because I'm like, this is going to be horrible. This is just bad. I mean, people didn't know a lot about Trump at that point in time, but he was still a real sketchy figure for most people. So I always laugh and I always tell people, if you look at 98% of the pictures from that day, you will not see me. And that was by design. I found somebody taller than me and I stood all the way in the back. And I remember that they said, if the camera can't see you, you can't see the camera, you won't be in the picture. I'm not in the pictures. Okay.
Scott D. Schneider
It's like Gretchen Whitmer.
Walter M. Kimbrough
Right. And so, and when we were walking out, there was a live feed. There were presidents whose cell phones are going off saying, you're on TV. And people took a lot of heat for that. So it was rough. I mean, the thing that we probably knew, but didn't know is that he does like those photo ops. He likes to feel good moments, which has been sort of interesting because I always tell people for Trump in his first term, if he talked about Black America, there were four things that he said consistently. He talked about low unemployment. He talked about criminal justice reform. He talked about opportunity zones. He talked about HBCUs. That was it. And whenever he's challenged, if you say he's a racist, whatever, he goes to his four talking points. He was very consistent. So HBCUs for him were a sign that I'm not this bad guy. Look at what I've done for HBCUs. Now, of course, he lied about how much he did. There were some good things that happened. And as I kept saying, under his administration, the Katrina long that Dillard along with Xavier and SUNO and Tougaloo was forgiven. And he never took credit for that. I'm like, dude, this is what you actually really did. That was really good. But he didn't think it was big enough to talk about. But that was like, you get the credit. The Obama administration did not do it. You did it. But he just made up all these other things that he thought sounded better and they were all lies. So, that’s, in terms of higher ed, he didn't really, to me, play much of a role in higher ed. This is something new. It's like I said, that was like a category one for higher ed. He was just, he mentioned some things, but now this is straight category five where he's coming at the, you know, Harvard. I mean, the other analogy I like to use, which is, you know, I like action shows and I like the CBS show S.W.A.T., the remake of the original. And there have been several, you know, episodes where you have some people come in, they take hostages. And in one of the episodes, there were these high ranking business leaders and they started shooting hostages. So they were like, we need to cut a deal. That's what he's doing. He's shooting hostages. Okay, I'm gonna shoot Columbia. I'm gonna shoot the next one. And so you got people cutting deals. I mean, Scott mentioned just with the law firms. I'm like, y'all know the law. Why are you Kirkland & Ellis? Why are you giving in and saying we're gonna do X number of hundred million dollars worth of pro bono work? You know this is illegal. But there're just like,
we don't want to get shot. And so, I was excited to see Harvard say, no, we're not. And if anybody should fight back it’s Harvard, you're the oldest, you're the wealthiest. And if you have the smartest people on the world, you guys need to win. Because if Harvard loses, it's bad for everybody. They need to take on the fight.
Scott D. Schneider
Can I riff on that for a second? Because, yeah, one of the things, I do a lot of work with different universities, some of which are well-resourced, some of which aren't. I mean, the vast majority of universities aren't. I mean, some of the smaller privates. You know, and one of the questions I get over and over again, you see this in the media as well, is, how do we approach this? Like, we think so much of what is being said, we disagree with, and in some cases, we think, may be outrageous. What is the role of a university leader who has this fiduciary obligation to the institution first and foremost to respond. And let me just riff on that for a second. I mean, there's certainly the Harvard approach now. They've been targeted, and they're going to fight back and certainly are well-resourced to do that. At this point, there doesn't seem to be much interest in going after more low profile targets. Is the best leadership plan to avoid the whack-a-mole? Just keep quiet, don't say anything. Is that a good approach for all of higher education?
Walter M. Kimbrough
Yeah, I don't know if it's a good approach, but that is the approach that people are taking. It's been very clear. There have been some advocacy groups that have told members in those advocacy groups that they represent, just keep your head down. Just stay out the way. Which I understand that to a degree. I mean, and it's been hard for me because, I mean, I've had conversations with reporters on background, which is normally something I don't do. But I'm just trying to be a good team player. But at some point, if the line is really crossed and once again, for HBCUs that line hasn't been crossed. It was an 1890 scholarship for the land grant HBCUs that was briefly paused, but there was a little pressure and the Trump administration gave those scholarships back.
Now he hasn't done the same for the Hispanic serving or Native American institutions that have the same scholarships. So, we've had a little bit more of a favor status with that administration. And I think the plan really is I'm going after the elite institution. So, we really aren't on the radar yet, but there are just still signs people are uncomfortable. And I think even within the HBCU space, there are people trying to figure out what is our move if he does come for us. So, I think people are having that, but I think for right now, people are just saying, if his attention is somewhere else, let him just do that for now. And we'll just go about our business, but we need to be prepared. If he does something like, okay, I'm cutting Pell Grants or Title III programs, then the full force has to come out. So I think it's a wait and see approach. So I look at, even personally, over the last, so I left Dillard about three years ago. And so I've had different opportunities. Some I was like, it's not a good fit. Others I looked at and be like, this is a great fit. But what I'm finding particularly in Southern States where there is a state board of regents or whatever, I can't even get an interview. Because I'll speak up. So it's like, let's pick somebody who is less qualified. People who haven't even been in higher ed are being selected. It's like, okay, wait, so I've done everything you need to do, but because I'm someone that'll speak up. People are afraid. They're just like, we don't want somebody who might challenge the administration. Even though I know they're lying and I call them on the lie, they don't want that.
So they're just like, we're just going to get the person that's nondescript and we'll just go from there. So I, like I said, I'm seeing it firsthand that there are people are afraid to say, you know, we'll take somebody who's really qualified and we'll go with someone who is not as qualified or not even qualified. I mean, in some of those places, that mindset that you see in Washington, D.C. is taking over state capitals and state boards of regions. So they don't want somebody who comes across as very outspoken and liberal. They're not doing it. So, that's what's happening.
Scott D. Schneider
Yeah, I'm kind of curious. I know you've done this for a long time, but is that a pivot? I mean, is that a change in the way, you know, it used to be, I always thought, you know, 25 years ago, higher ed was mostly everybody agreed, hey, our colleges, our universities are, you know, we are global leaders in this space. And we're just going to be hands off. I mean, has that changed? It seems like it certainly has changed. And then what's the prompt? I mean, how did this happen? I mean, one of the things I was doing a speech out in Las Vegas a couple of months ago. I saw this speech that JD Vance gave when he was running for US Senate. And he was something along the lines of the professors are the enemy. How did that happen? How did we get to this point?
Walter M. Kimbrough
Yeah, I don't know because, to me, it just sort of seemed like all out of the blue. I guess it was building quietly over time. So when I first became a president, that's 2004. So even in the W years, it wasn't like that. We didn't have those kinds of conversations, you know, and of course the Obama years you didn't. And like I said, even in Trump one, it wasn't to this degree, but I think some of those things were building over time. And I think that after Biden got in, that's when I think the plan to say we're going to go after all of these institutions. And so I think higher ed became one of the targets and it allowed people like JD Vance to say what he said. I mean, higher ed, broader society didn't value what we do and those kinds of things. And so you add all that together. I think the protest after October 7th added to it when people just started having to say the campuses are out of control. So I think all those things just built up over time. And so now you have somebody who is in power who platforms all of this. And so it's just completely unleashed. But like I said, it's not just at the federal level. In some states, you see some of that. So when you see some states like Florida, they're creating their own DOGE to go after. I think Texas is doing it. So it's just being replicated. And then I think state higher ed boards are doing some of the same kinds of things that they're making decisions based on some ideology. I think the state of North Carolina is a good example of that in terms of how Republicans have stacked their border regions and the kinds of folks that they hire. And so that's changed. I mean, 20, 30 years ago, I'm trying to think. When Fred Humphries was president of Florida A&M, that was late 80s. I mean, he was very outspoken. People in state government were afraid to cross him. Fred Humphries couldn't get hired today. They wouldn't touch anybody like Fred Humphries. So, it's changed a lot because he was very outspoken. He was unapologetic about everything, but FAM, you did very well. And they just had to, you know, try to talk to him quietly to the side and say, can you not. I mean, and we saw it. I mean, think about the hearings after October 7th and Elise Stefanik used that as her platform to say, hey, look at me, I'm great. You know, and she just went after everyone. And I always tell people, I think she did that because they were all relatively new presidents. Nobody had been a president more than a year and a half and they were all women. I would have loved for her to try to do that with me because you talking about going viral. We would have been going viral because I would not have had that. It's like, I'm like, no, you're not coming for me like that. Not like this. So it was just a confluence of things. So, but she spun that as he's placed her out of control. The leaders are weak. They can't answer basic questions. And I think those new presidents rely too much on, I don't want to say wrong thing with my legal counsel here instead of just giving a good answer. And I think that hurt them and I think it hurt higher ed with some of the answers.
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Eric Kelderman
I see the backlash against higher ed as sort of an intensification of a very long-term trend. You can go back to, for instance, Reagan's first run for governor in California, where he talked about the students misbehaving. I think a lot of the focus then was on, it was a generational issue, right? We had the baby boom students coming through the system. It was sort of a big cultural shift during the Bush administration. The second Bush administration, we saw a lot of focus on political correctness and then that sort of gets turned up to 11, right, by the time we get to 2024. And I'll note that, you know, this intensification has happened at the same time that we have seen a broad diversification of the student body, right? Women are now the majority of college students across the country and in most institutions. And of course, the number of students of color has increased substantially, certainly since the 60s and as the white birth rate has shrunk. We're gonna continue to see that. We're gonna be a majority-minority country by 2040. And I wanna turn now to the administration's focus on DEI. And going back to this, the changing student body, we have the Trump administration and Christopher Rufo and others sort of broadening the ruling that the Supreme Court made against Harvard and UNC in the admissions case, right? Ruling that you cannot use race in admissions anymore. The administration has now expanded that definition to say that any sort of program that the university sponsors that focuses on race fits under that. And that's yet to be determined by any court, right? That there's no real ruling that would definitively uphold the administration's sort of interpretation of that yet, I think. But it seems to me like a very old argument. And I wanted to hear sort of, you know, the undoing of DEI seems like we're taking a big step backwards in terms of the integration of the education system. I'd like to hear your thoughts on that, Walter.
Walter M. Kimbrough
Yeah, that's always been a frustrating conversation for me because people just use this phrase DEI and they don't know what the hell they're talking about. It's means whatever they want it to mean, it was CRT a couple of years ago. They talked about that. It's always been something that's a boogeyman to say, you know, the argument they're making is that people who are less qualified are only getting these positions because of race or gender. That's it. And that's the argument that they're making. And then they don't look at the blatant hypocrisy and you just start with that administration. It's like, so you removed a five star joint chiefs and replacing with a four star that has less experience. Cause you want to say that the black guy who was a five star was a DEI, it's just, you know, I just want to keep pushing back on, people have to push back to say what is merit. And so really when people get rid of any idea of DEI, which is basically saying we want to make sure that everybody has a fair opportunity. They don't want it to be a fair opportunity. It's like, you know, merit is based on whatever they decide is merit. It's like, I don't want you to have any kind of outside accountability for what I decide is merit. Even if you can say, you're not looking at different people or those kinds of things. It's like, I don't have to because I've decided what merit is. And so that's the message that the President gives. And then people who buy into that ideology, that's what they're saying. It's like, this is what merit is. And it's just frustrating that people have not pushed back on that enough. You know, one of the questions I would like to ask people when they talk about it, for example, is that, so 5% of the attorneys in the country are African-American. My wife works for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and she's working with a program to help create more civil rights attorneys, regardless of race. But we talk about this a lot. So I like to ask people who want to get rid of those programs that help improve the numbers. Just like, so are you saying that 5% is the maximum because you feel like black people don't have the ability to become lawyers? Cuz that's what you're basically saying is like, we don't need to have any extra programs. You think they're being traded fairly and they don't have the ability, so this is their ceiling. And I think those questions need to be asked differently to get people to realize that, what this is, is just to keep people out and just to have a certain people who they're comfortable with, that fits their definition of merit. So that's what we see all across the administration. That's what we're seeing take the state of Florida, particularly for public institutions or higher education and how they made some of their hires in terms of presidents. It's like, we're not talking about merit. I mean, not for real. I mean, even when Ben Sasse became president of University of Florida, he'd been president of a little beauty school in Nebraska that nobody had ever heard of. You know, that wasn't a merit hire. I mean, anybody who says it is, is just fooling themselves. So I just think there has to be continued pushback on that idea because getting rid of DEI means I solely decide what merit is and it's very subjective.
Scott D. Schneider
Can I ask this? I've been reading a lot in the news about some really big public institutions. Obviously, the University of Michigan figures prominently in that conversation. So I'll be candid, and I don't know how accurate these numbers are, but when I saw the amount of money that was being put into diversity, equity, inclusion, and some of the infrastructure around that, I was surprised, shocked. Is there any sense that, in some cases, maybe the pendulum swung too far? I know, as a litigator, there's like training pieces that get brought up as evidence of, A, you're really discriminating against other races here, and it’s some of the training pieces, I'll just be honest, are hard to defend. There's a sense that maybe some of the criticism of these programs may be well founded.
Walter M. Kimbrough
Yeah, I think there's some fair criticism. So I think, one of the things that institutions didn't always do enough of, was to evaluate those programs. Because I think some of the things I've seen about Michigan is that, if one of the goals is to increase the diversity on the campus and those numbers didn't move, then you're spending a lot of money and you aren't moving the needle. So I think there still has to be some accountability to say, okay, we spent this money. It doesn't move the needle. So that means we need to try a different approach. And I don't think enough of that was done. So, with any program, I think they're open to some fair criticism. And when we haven't been sometimes internally critical enough, it then opens up the door for somebody like Christopher Rufo to come in and just say, look at all this money that you spend on the X, Y, Z. So we have to own some of that too. We have to really be able to make hard decisions regarding those kinds of programs and evaluate them for their effectiveness.
Scott D. Schneider
Yeah, the conversation, you know, like some of the training that some schools were doing, you know, which has gotten a lot of attention, I think probably disproportionate attention. When I've done reviews now of DEI programs, you start asking questions like, what were we hoping to accomplish here? Did we accomplish? Can we measure whether we were successful or not? Is there any concern that some of this is actually counterproductive? And I know some of the training, there's interesting social science research on, if you do it poorly, you create backlash effects on campus. I try to, on all of this, try to take out some good. And at least there's a more nuanced conversation about when we do these sorts of trainings, what is it that we're hoping to move the needle on? And is what we're doing effective? Or is it making the problem worse?
Walter M. Kimbrough
Yeah, I agree. I think that that's fair. Like I said, I don't think we've done enough internal evaluation of some of those programs within, which then allows them to be more vulnerable for some of these attacks. But now, like I said, the pendulum swings too far one way and then it swings too far the other way. So I think we haven't found the right balance.
Scott D. Schneider
Yeah.
Eric Kelderman
You know, Walter, you talked a lot about, and I think fairly about, the President's propensity for spreading mis- or disinformation, right? And, we're in sort of a, I think, as you and I had some email exchange about this, a sort of post-truth, post-fact world. What's the role of higher ed in pulling us back from that brink? And does it relate at all to allowing more controversial speakers on campus so that we don't shut down debate or dissent, but we learn how to dialogue even with folks whose views we might find abhorrent.
Walter M. Kimbrough
Yeah, so absolutely. I've always believed in that. Every place I've been, you know, my first year at Philander Smith, well, I started in December. So going into my first full year, I wanted to have a lecture series. I was like, this is going to be a legitimate lecture series. So the first speaker was Michael Eric Dyson. And a few months later, we had Ann Coulter and the hate mail I got, people are like, what, what are you doing? Why are you? I was like, no, it's like, I don't have to agree with her. But at that time, this was 2006. She had a really strong voice and we need to hear what she's talking about. And I tell people we went to dinner afterwards and we argued for two hours and I had a ball. It's like, we probably don't agree on anything, but I had a ball arguing with her, you know, but that's, we have to model that kind of behavior. It was the same thing when I got to Diller and we had Candace Owens and there were people who were just shocked. I was like, no, the students want to know who is this black girl who is riding so hard for Trump. I was fascinated too. I was like, who is this? Who is she? You know, so I think we can model that and I think we have done a poor job in higher ed of modeling that. And so let people hear different ideas and different opinions so then you don't have to get into this post-fact world that we're in now. But I think, the other part which we're gonna have to do now is that we still have to unapologetically call out just the lies, and I don't know, I mean, like I said, Trump lies so effortlessly now. It's just everything. And then I was watching the cabinet meeting recently and you have the attorney general basically saying like, this is like the biggest election win ever. And, I'm like, Ronald Reagan is in the grave rolling over somewhere. It's just like, wait a minute, y'all forgot about what I did to Carter? I mean, it's like, this is crazy. It's crazy stuff, but these are people at the highest levels of the government who just basically just lie. And it's like people just go on about the day and I don't know what the appropriate response is. I mean, I wish the media would just throw their cameras at them or something. I don't know. I don't know what the answer is, but I think higher ed has to provide a form that people learn how to have those debates, understand what fact is from fiction, because I think a lot of the fiction is going to end up getting people hurt because people keep saying, it's not this, it's not this, it's not this. And then we're going to have some, serious problems because of that. So we've got to find a way to help people understand what truth is and for average people to say, no, that's not true. Stop saying that. And we don't have enough of that. It's more of a cult mentality where people just go along and be like, okay, it's like, no, that's provable. It's, you watch a president take a marker on a map to talk about where a hurricane might track. No, that's idiotic. And people just need to say that's idiotic. But the reward structure in places that you don't dare if you're somebody close to him, you don't cross him and those should be the people to say, no man, don't do that. Don't do that. That's wrong. That's not the right thing to do. So they reinforced the bad behavior and now they're mimicking the bad behavior and we haven't found an effective way to check that behavior. But some of the start on campuses we've got a model. We have to do a much better job because I agree with conservatives. That is a legitimate criticism that we just have the same kind of faults. And I've never been like that. I have had Ward Connolly, I've had Charles Murray, who wrote The Bell Curve. It didn't bother me. I tell them every year there's gonna be somebody who makes me uncomfortable. And that's the way to model the behavior. And I didn't have any issues with it. The only time I had an issue is when David Duke qualified for a debate on our campus, and it wasn't my event. I would have been better off inviting him myself and doing the event. It would have gone much better. But that wasn't my event, and we took all that debate and pressed for it. So that's the worst one.
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Eric Kelderman
Is there something in the curriculum or the approach of higher ed that can get at this sort of building a civic dialogue? There's a number of nonprofit organizations that are out there trying to enhance that on campuses. But is there something that you think that you can build in with faculty or staff or student support that would lead to better acceptance of that on campus?
Scott D. Schneider
And can I, like, put a fine point on that too? You know, one of the things that, in my opinion, has changed is the social media and algorithm generated feeds that put people in cocoons. And it just feels like higher ed is uniquely situated to basically burst that cocoon and force people to deal with different sets of arguments and different diverse opinions. Am I way off there? I mean, it just feels like social media and technology has created to a large extent this sort of world that is post-truth. I mean, that dissenting views don't break through, and that fundamentally higher ed has to be about that.
Walter M. Kimbrough
Right, no, I think it has to be on our agenda when we talk about it with our faculty and staff. It's both in and out of class opportunities to expose students to different views and force them to think differently about certain issues or something they might fundamentally disagree with. At Dillard, I taught a class that looked at hip-hop, sex, gender, and ethical behavior. So was a good ethics class, but one of the assignments was, we took hip-hop artists who had notorious court cases and students had to do a five minute presentation arguing why the lyrics should be used against them and why they shouldn't. And so it was always tough for someone who was like, I don't agree with this person at all, but they had to argue for something that they didn't believe in. But that's how you stress them to do that. You know, that was very important. I had several of those students actually went on to law school. One of them is about to finish at Harvard and like her first day of class, she texted me because they were talking about an ethical theory that we talked about in our class. So she was really excited to say, you know what this is, you know, she's intimidated. I'm at little Dillard now I'm at Harvard and they're talking about something we talked about in this class. So, I think there we have to be more creative about how we do that. And so for me that was a creative way to say how do I, how do I, I mean with an ethics class it really is easy to be able to do that but then how do I push them even more? And I think in a lot of our classes we can do that but I think sometimes we get comfortable and faculty been teaching the same way and I think we discount what's happening with social media and how it does, sort of, isolate people. They just see things and hear things that reinforce their beliefs and they don't look at other things or have people in their feeds that they don't agree with. I think that's important to be able to do.
Scott D. Schneider
Is that really like the conservative critique of higher ed has I think become that? No, higher ed is its own little liberal cocoon.
Walter M. Kimbrough
Yeah.
Scott D. Schneider
And I work with a lot of different schools. And my general sense is, it probably skews a little more left than the communities they're based in. But I haven't had the sense and what happens is that argument gets made. There isn't a pushback. And then higher ed gets positioned as a player in the culture war that we need to go after. And that’s what seems to be happening. And I think there's a pretty compelling argument at most institutions that yes, we certainly have people on the left, but we offer a broad range of views on a variety of topics. And we've done a really bad job as an industry, it sounds like of, I hate to use that word, but of selling that. When you bring on Ann Coulter or Charles Murray, you've got a compelling counter-argument to all of that.
Walter M. Kimbrough
Yeah, I've been on several task forces that look at free speech on campus. I've just always believed in it. And it goes back to my days working at Emory, in Greek life when the students wanted to bring Khalid Mohammed and the institution shut it down. I mean, back then, this is ‘94. He was public enemy number one. You had a unanimous Senate condemnation of him and the House voted over like 80% in terms of a censure resolution. So, you know, the institution shut it down and we had protests on campus. And I was just like, yeah, I understand the institution's point, but we should be big enough as Emory to allow this event to happen. So I've always been open and I want to model that, which like I said, is giving me some opportunities to speak on some things that others can't because it's like, I live this, I’m not just saying this. This is like something that I believe and I believe my entire presidency that we're going to do those kinds of things. So I think you're right. And what you've seen is that some states like in Louisiana, they pass certain laws to try to force people to have much more balance. So those are just some of the public things that we could do that I think would help change the impression of what we do. But we, I mean, there have been so many unforced errors. I think a couple of years ago, which top state was going to have Ivanka Trump and then they canceled it, like for commencement. No, let her speak. That was like, you invited her, let her speak. I mean, she, you know, I think it probably could have been an interesting insight into what she's thinking of being a part of that family. But I think we just have too many unforced errors, those kinds of things. So I agree, we should do more of that, but people are afraid. And then the other challenge is, now you have people who won't even let the people speak. So you've got the hecklers veto. There was somebody in the first Trump administration, was at Georgetown Law. And it's like the law students are shouting them down. I was like, oh man, come on, y'all. This is a bad look. This is a bad look. Let the man speak. I mean, y'all are the law students. Ask him really hard questions, but just don't disrupt everything. And so we've gotten into that, which I think then, once again, paints this narrative that we're just these little liberal hotbeds and we won't even allow the conservative people to speak on campus. We're shouting them down. That's a bad look for us too. So we've got to be able to develop a community that allows dissenting voices to be heard and learn how to ask hard questions versus just like we don't want you to speak on our campus. Well, there are people on that campus that want that person to speak too.
Scott D. Schneider
Yeah, and that it's consistently applied. Look, I think some of the criticism of higher ed post October 7th rings true to an extent. I look at, for instance, Harvard. And if you looked at, for instance, the FIRE First Amendment score that Harvard had, which I don't know how that is calculated.
Eric Kelderman
The foundation for individual rights in education, yeah.
Scott D. Schneider
Yeah, but that, you know, they didn't value free speech and now they're clearly trying to pivot back to that in their defense here. But if I were to be the advocate for the other side, I mean, post October 7th, we were navigating these issues and have been navigating these issues for 20, 30 years at this point on college campuses. There was this sense of, wow, anything goes. And if the message was different or the messenger would have been different, a Harvard would have shut this down. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. But what we need to get back to, and you're saying it, is kind of the approach you've always had, which is, I don't care how offensive these people are, how outrageous, controversial. And by the way, I'm getting bored with controversial speakers at this point. I just like people that are smart and insightful at this point, which we've lost touch with. But regardless of what that is, we're bursting the cocoon. We're going to allow these people to speak, and we're going to engage with them.
And yeah, I think the criticism post October 7th was that when it came to certain groups, institutions were much more willing to crack down and stop speech, you reference something in the 90s with Emory as an example of that. And now all of a sudden we've pivoted to free speech is super important. And whether that's a fair characterization or not, it's certainly a characterization that has gained some currency and certainly you saw it in the congressional hearings and you can see it on Twitter and a variety of different places.
Can I ask you a question? Can I pivot for just a second? And talk to you about, I think the first time I was ever involved in a hazing case, I was doing an investigation of a really brutal allegation of hazing. I was brought in to investigate and it seemed like you were doing an investigation of the mob. Everyone, you'd ask them, hey, what happened? And they all had a scripted response back. I know there's been an incident out at Southern that actually hits close to home. The young man who died actually went to grammar school with my son and they were friends. But you're an expert in this space. It's a ubiquitous problem. How do we deal with it? I know we could talk about the Biden, the legislation that passed, but how do we meaningfully address hazing on campuses?
Walter M. Kimbrough
I don’t know.
Scott D. Schneider
God bless. Thank you for admitting it. I don't know either.
Walter M. Kimbrough
I mean, my first job in higher ed was coordinated Greek life at Emory. And I was a person that did the anti-hazing trainings, the judicial boards reported to me. So I've been involved in this. And then I started doing expert witness work in 2000, after there was a death at Old Dominion where I had been director of student activities. It happened after I left, but we had just revamped the hazing policy. Then I took a job in Georgia and then the law firm contacted me and they were just like, hey, you know this the best because you wrote the policy. So that's how I got involved in this work. I've done, you know, all kinds of trainings in a lot of different places. You know, they're trying to pass a new law here. After Max Gruver died in 2017, they passed a new law in 2018 really fast. And I told the state rep, Nancy Landry and the family, I was on a panel with his parents. I was just like, yeah, I'm all about partial penalties, but that's not going to solve it. I was just told him, I was like, and at LSU since he died, there have been hazing cases. It's almost like one every year. So it's like, this boy died on this campus. There are people who knew him, who are still hazing on that campus. I said, so that's not it. They're going to want to pass a new law now that says everybody has to take a one hour credit hazing course. I'm like, no, if you're hitting somebody, you know that's hazing. It's like, you don't need a course to understand that. And I say it's not just a recent problem, it's a 600 year old problem that we can trace back to German universities in the 1400s. And when it first came to United States, it was a hazing of freshmen. We saw that in the mid 1800s, 1850s, 1920s, colleges and universities said no more hazing of freshmen. It migrated to mostly fraternities, then some sororities, and then we see it in sports teams and clubs and you name it. It's just all over the place. So we haven't gotten rid of this. I was talking to a reporter and I was saying it's sort of like this idea of the Protestant work ethic gone wrong, where, you know, if you want to be a part of this group, you have to work for it. You have to earn it, but you still, you're viewed as not good enough. And so you have to prove yourself. And a lot of times that proving requires some kind of challenge, whether it's physical or it's alcohol related or anything in between.
So I don't know. I just, it's just one of those things where it's like we do the, you know, and I mean, and when I do sessions, you know, I spoke last year at Florida Atlantic. I mean, I show pictures from hazing cases I've worked that show you the extent of damage. I mean, it's like gruesome. So they have it, cause like we're talking about hazing and in your mind, you think you know what it is. It's like, you have no idea what I'm talking about. Let me show you what I'm talking about. So they see gruesome pictures about what happens. And I think it could have a short term impact on people, but it's just still something that people want to do who are the members. So I don't know. I mean, sometimes people say we should just get rid of undergraduate chapters on college campuses. Yeah, then they're going to form these unofficial groups like the University of Central Florida has a notorious one called the Ghazoni family. There have been documentaries made about them. And there used to be a Lambda Chi Alpha chapter that went sort of rogue on their own. And their whole thing is, you know, fraternity without the rules. And you're seeing more places now where groups are pulling out of their IFCs and forming their own IFC that is not campus affiliated. Duke has done it. Somebody just recently, I think Michigan is a place and there's another institution, Indiana, I believe it is. They just said, we don't like all these rules and everything that you're putting on us. Southern cows and other place. We're going to have our own IFC, but we're going to be an off-campus group. We're just going to follow the laws of the city.
Theoretically maybe, but you know, that's what people are doing. I have no idea what's going to be the thing to change it. And the other thing I keep telling people is that there's some research out of the University of Maine that about half of college students come to college already having experience hazing. And so part of the problem is we're waiting too late. We need to start having hazing conversations at high school and middle school when we start talking about bullying. They're close cousins. And so I think that's the thing that we're not doing that we should do and maybe that could help some but if you know that I think they say 47%, if people are coming and they've already experienced hazing, you know, they're predisposed to not freak out if it happens at the college level. And then we have these tragedies, you know, usually at least one person dies a year and you have a big outroar about it and then it's back to the status quo.
Scott D. Schneider
Yeah. And it seems like the uproar is almost always despite even a lot of the best efforts at a lot of these schools. It's remarkable to me, the amount of resources that get dedicated to this space that it's somehow the school dropped the ball. And maybe in some cases that's true, but to your point, I mean, when something is deeply baked into the culture, this is not something that Clery Act is going to change. It's not something a one-off training program is going to change. I'm skeptical of legislative efforts in this space. It's fundamentally about, and you've hit on it, is how do we change culture? And a lot of that has to happen, I totally agree with you, prior to folks even coming to school.
Walter M. Kimbrough
Right. Yeah, and even with the technology now, people are becoming more sophisticated about how they try to disguise their planning of hazing. I mean, there's still things, I mean, I've worked cases where you can still get copies of text messages. People are shocked. I was like, yeah, I read the text messages. So, I mean, what prevents the chapter from saying, okay, we're going to share our plan for this and we're going to do it all on Signal. And as long as they don't add Eric to the chat, then the press won't find out about it. You know what I'm saying? I mean, there's so much that they can do right now to coordinate this. Even when I was at Albany State, I was a vice president. This was, you know, early 2000s, we got a tip from a student that there was a sorority that was going to be hazing. So the chief of police and I, we met up around 11 o'clock that Friday night and we rolled around Albany, Georgia, going to parks for like two, three hours looking for them. And I was sort of like, man, they're going to just freak out when they see me walk up on them like this. And we couldn't find them. So then my source comes back later and says, oh, they were in a barn five counties away. Like, what am I going to do with that? What am I going to do with that? So those are the challenges that you have is that using the technology and have access to other places is really hard to find out. I mean, the case at Southern, they were off campus in some kind of storage facility. You know, I mean, the institution is not going to know and be able to have that kind of bandwidth to try to know where everybody's going to be. And that's impossible.
Scott D. Schneider
Yeah. And I know like Southern did a lot of progressive things around hazing and once it's baked into a culture, it's just really hard to move the needle on it. I think I've seen in, over the course of my career, the needle move on sex assault. You know, you go back to like movies in the eighties and like, some of the things that are said and it's really baked into the culture and then the kids show up on campus and the culture has changed and it doesn't mean sex assault has gone away but the incidence rate it feels like it has changed considerably. I could be wrong about that but, yeah, there are real limits to what a university can do if people are really committed to engaging in hazing or whatever the case may be. We didn't ask our our warm-up questions, Eric.
Eric Kelderman
Yeah, we forgot our warm up question, but we'll ask it now. And speaking of culture, so Scott considers himself a New Orleans denizen at heart. And Walter, you lived there for some time. So, we had a couple of New Orleans related questions for you. And I know you're a truth teller, so I know you're going to answer these honestly.
Walter M. Kimbrough
Okay.
Eric Kelderman
What's the most quintessentially New Orleans moment you've ever experienced? The kind of thing that could only happen in that city?
Walter M. Kimbrough
That's a really good question and I don't want to give just a little superficial answer. I think it's probably when you're having some interaction with some random person and they start calling you baby. Baby, blah, blah. You know you're in the way that they say it and you hear it. It's like, yeah, I know where I am. But it's just some random person that you just start having this conversation with because those will pop up and they just get comfortable. It's like, well, baby, and there you go. So to me, that's part of New Orleans.
Eric Kelderman
Scott, I want to hear your answer for this.
Scott D. Schneider
It's such a great answer. So I'm in Austin now. But the last case I tried, it was like a two week trial and we're staying at a hotel. And Walter, I swear to God, man, and I'm like originally from Kenner, all right? So the guy every day as we were leaving the hotel, same thing, man. Y'all look good. Get it, baby. And I'm just like, it feels good to be home, man. You know, and then like, it was right after the trial was done, we were walking. It was the first weekend of Mardi Gras, just walking around and all these people like, I had taught at Tulane, so all of tons of my students are coming up to me, it's just very community oriented. I don't know how else to describe it and the thing I love about New Orleans is like these enormous personalities that you just don't get anywhere else. And sometimes like I'll do my big personality in Austin and people look at me like I am a lunatic. And in New Orleans, it's just part of the culture. And it's what makes the place special, and I miss it.
Walter M. Kimbrough
Yeah, just the personalities, just, I call them the characters. They just stand out and you remember these folks and it doesn't matter who they are. It's like, the person who was over the president's house at Diller, Miss Cat, her name is Mary Catherine, but she goes by Miss Cat. Her car tag says “Meow.” I mean, so you know what you're dealing with when you're dealing with Miss Cat. You know, I mean, just the way we interacted that nobody couldn't say anything bad about me. And it's like even for her, she'll say, doctor, now the people work hard. You should let people go home early today. And I would send out campus email to say, Miss Cat told me to let you all go home early today. So everybody go home. Those kind of personalities and me being from Atlanta, you know, I just I notice it is like, this is this is different.
Scott D. Schneider
This is a funny story. So I'm teaching out at UT in the law school. I'm an adjunct and they had a monitor there watching me. This was like literally this week. And one of my students said something and I just, I went, bro. If I was home, wouldn't have been an issue. I was not home anymore, so.
Hey, what's your restaurant place? What is like, the meal?
Eric Kelderman
Yeah, so what's the one restaurant you would eat at in New Orleans for the rest of your life and why?
Walter M. Kimbrough
So the place I always refer people to is a place called Neos in Mid City. They've expanded since we've been here, I don't even go as much now because it's just always so packed. One of the first times I went there was during Mardi Gras and Big Freedia was in there. So it's just, it's one of the places that, you know, I always tell people, I mean, people always say Dooky Chase and I like the family. You know, that's a good place. There's a place called Lil Dizzy's that I like on Esplanade, but when I have people come from out of town, I always say, go to Neos. The food is always good. It's a really good menu. Yeah, that's my spot I always recommend.
Eric Kelderman
Scott?
Scott D. Schneider
Katie's is mine, which is real close to...
Walter M. Kimbrough
Been there. Yep.
Scott D. Schneider
I just, I love being there. I love the food and it's just filled with characters, man. It's just phenomenal. So, yep.
Eric Kelderman
Alright, last thing gentlemen, Scott and I have decided the way we like to end all our episodes is we're going to talk about one thing that we're looking forward to in the next week or so. So Walter, what are you looking forward to?
Walter M. Kimbrough
In the next week… Well, so Talladega will have two finalists on campus to be the permanent president. So I'm looking forward to those visits and I hope they go really well because if they don't, I'm gonna be there a little while longer. So I'm looking forward to that. I need to be very preferable for those to go very well and that the board likes one of them enough to hire them. So I am really looking forward to that.
Eric Kelderman
Alright, Scott?
Scott D. Schneider
Saturday night, I'm a big music guy and Saturday night at a venue called Emo's one of my favorite 90s bands is playing. The Melvins or just Melvins, which I don't think Eric has ever heard of, he can pretend like he has, but…
Eric Kelderman
No idea.
Scott D. Schneider
Yeah, Buzz Osborne, who's the leader of the Melvins is the guy who introduced Kurt Cobain basically to music and was sort of shepherded him into music. Much too within a way that benefited me because I obviously love Nirvana but I'm very much looking forward to seeing them Saturday night.
Eric Kelderman
That's great. One of my cousin's children is getting married a week from Saturday. And so, I'm going to go there. I'm going see my sister, who I haven't seen for a while. I'm going to get dressed up, which I don't really do. I actually like to get dressed up and wear a suit every once in while, but I don't always get the opportunity. So, I'm looking forward to that. It's kind of boring, but I think it'll be a nice time, so.
Scott D. Schneider
There you go. The Melvins will be much more fun and much more interesting. I will not get dressed up. I'm just letting you know that.
Eric Kelderman
I'm sure you will, yes. I have no doubt about that.
Scott D. Schneider
Man, it was so good seeing you, Walter. Appreciate it.
Eric Kelderman
Yeah, thanks. We appreciate you and thanks for joining us today.
Walter M. Kimbrough
Yeah, you too. it. I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you.
Eric Kelderman
Yeah, thanks. We appreciate you and thanks for joining us today.
Scott D. Schneider
There you go. Well, look, thanks for tuning into Campus Docket. You’ll find links to everything we discussed today, including related cases, articles, and a full transcript, and the show notes, and on voltedu.com. Be sure to follow Campus Docket wherever you get your podcast. And while you’re there, check out Trusted Voices and Higher Voltage, two more podcasts in the Volt lineup that look at higher ed through different lenses. On behalf of the Volt team and my friend, Eric Kelderman, thanks again for listening. We’ll see you next time.
