Sixty-two years ago, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., ignited America with his dream of what this country could be. Regrettably, that dream turned into a nightmare when Walter Carter, Jr., the president of the Ohio State University, declared that OSU would “sunset the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI)” as well as the Center for Belonging and Social Change (CBSC), effective February 28. So the sun is going down on diversity and inclusion at OSU? Is OSU now a “sundown town?”
For those of you too young to remember such places, they were towns that made it clear that Black people were not welcome there “after sundown,” often displaying these hostile sentiments on large billboards on the way into and out of town. Who is welcome here, and who is now excluded from the OSU community? What ideas and thoughts are welcome here, and which are excluded? Carter could not have made it more clear by leaping to obey legislation that has not even been enacted yet and federal executive orders that do not carry the weight of law.
