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Volume XLVIII • Number 45
‘City
of
Roses’
www.portlandobserver.com
Wednesday • November 20, 2019
Committed to Cultural Diversity
PSU Black Studies at Risk, Professor says
photo by b everly C orbell /t he p ortland o bserver
Professor Ethan Johnson, who heads up the Black Studies Department at Portland State University, says he doesn’t feel like celebrating the department’s 50th anniversa-
ry because the university is failing to support the department and even more is failing to listen to the concerns of minority students and teachers at the school.
Administration
called out for
toxic environment
b everly C orbell
t he p ortland o bserver
This school year is the 50th anniversa-
ry of the formation of the Black Studies
Department at Portland State University,
a momentous occasion for celebrating the
formation of a degree curriculum devoted
by
to the history, culture and politics of black
people, but the African-American director
of the department doesn’t feel much like
celebrating.
Ethan Johnson, who has headed the de-
partment for the past 15 years, says the uni-
versity is failing to support the black stud-
ies curriculum and even more is failing to
listen to the concerns of minority students
and faculty at the school, a result that is di-
sastrous to their wellbeing.
In a blistering four-page letter, John-
son accounts for the dismal support PSU
gives his department and for black students
on campus in general, from the arming of
campus security with guns to not support-
ing black professors and administrators for
hiring and promotion, issues he believes af-
fects the health and even threatens the lives
of black employees and students at PSU.
As an example, Johnson said that it
was not long after the school’s Board of
Trustees, whom he referred to as “an un-
elected group of overwhelmingly white
men” voted to form a campus police force,
that Jason Washington, a black man, U.S.
Veteran, postal worker and father of two,
was killed by campus police on the edge
of PSU campus. Johnson said virtually all
faculty and students were opposed to arm-
ing PSU security.
Added to that danger, Johnson says, as
shown in peer-reviewed articles, is that
the stress of daily doses of racism affects
overall health as it “gets into our bodies
and overworks us, causing breakdowns in
our hearts, reproductive systems and other
C ontinued on p age 4