The “no business as usual” ethos of the Black Lives Matter movement has shut down highways, shopping malls, and government buildings, but last week that disruption occurred inside a classroom at UC Berkeley when students at the School of Social Welfare turned the tables on a professor they accuse of making racist remarks.
About 60 graduate students in the two-year social work program took control of Professor Steven Segal’s classroom on Tuesday, February 24, and held a “teach-in” on racism with Segal as their primary student. Jeffrey Edleson, the dean of the School of Social Welfare, was also present.
“We all experienced the emotional impact of your actions. We would not be here today if this did not really immensely impact pain on all of us,” Erika O’Bannon, a student and protest organizer, said to Segal in a YouTube video of the protest. “We cannot stand by this institution that supports your beliefs and the beliefs that you’re teaching to this class. We refuse to let this class continue as usual.”
The students also hung a banner reading “School of Social Welfare: Striving to Maintain Oppression Since 1944” outside the School of Social Welfare’s building on campus.
Tuesday’s protest was planned in response to comments that Segal, a white tenured professor who has taught at Berkeley for more than 40 years, made at a Black Lives Matter event on February 9 and again in his classroom on February 10. According to Ariana Allensworth, an African American student in the program, Segal disturbed attendees at the event, which was co-planned by the school administration and student activists, by emphasizing the importance of “black on black crime” during a small group discussion and sharing a rap song he had written.
“He was saying things to the effect that black on black crime is part of the problem, and I think that a lot of students in the group were offended by what he was saying,” said Allensworth. “The focus of the event was on the Black Lives Matter movement, and it felt like he was decentering the conversation from that focus.”
The next day, Segal arrived at his mental health policy class with another rap song featuring lyrics about the need to ‘stop scapegoating the cops’ and more statistics about black on black crime.
Emphasizing “black on black crime” in order to divert attention from police violence against black people has become something of a cliché. To anti-racist activists, it’s a red flag indicating a desire to blame black people for crimes committed against them.
The next day, Segal arrived at his mental health policy class — a mandatory course for all students concentrating in Community Mental Health — with another rap song featuring lyrics about the need to “stop scapegoating the cops” and more statistics about black on black crime. Amina Mohabbat, one of the students present in the classroom, says that when students challenged their professor’s analysis of systemic racism and police repression of black communities, he raised his voice and the conversation became heated.
“There was a point where he interrupted, his voice was raised, his posture was getting in [one female student’s] face — maybe less than a foot away — and he was raising his hands in her face,” recalled Mohabbat. “That was actually the most shocking thing to me. To me, it was him using his institutional power to make a statement. This student was sitting down in her seat, he was standing up, and his voice was raised, and he had interrupted her and stated that only he was allowed to talk.”
According to Mohabbat, several students became very emotional and left the classroom early that day. Some reported the professor’s behavior to the dean.
Both Allensworth and Mohabbat say that Segal has a poor reputation among students in the social work program. RateMyProfessors.com has only two reviews of Segal, one of which warns, “I’d say I respect his long carrier [sic] in MH [mental health] field. However, he has no sensitivity to cultural groups and diversity, which is hard to stand.”
Segal did not respond to a request for comment. In a February 12 email shared with The Bold Italic, he wrote to students: “I am truly sorry if I offended any of you in class this past Tuesday. This was not my intent nor was it my intent to in any way diminish the significance of the Black Lives Matter movement. In fact my intent was quite the opposite.”
According to the student organizers of the protest, the dean discussed Segal’s behavior with Berkeley’s Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination, which filed a complaint. Arrangements are also being made for mental health students to transfer into a different class not taught by Segal.
Students like Allensworth want to see more from the university, which has a less-than-stellar reputation as a welcoming environment for black students. (A 2013 report by the East Bay Express found that nearly 60 percent of admitted black students chose not to attend Berkeley, often because they wanted to go to a school that could offer students of color a larger community and more support).
“Our hope is to have the school show a commitment to improving faculty training and reflection around issues of power, privilege, and oppression and to also show an institutional commitment to improving the recruitment and retention of underrepresented students of color,” said Allensworth.
Following Tuesday’s teach-in, Edleson announced that he will host a listening session for faculty to hear student feedback about institutional racism on March 10. But to Allensworth, the time for listening is over.
“Students are kind of tired. We feel like there’ve been plenty of meetings already about what our concerns and grievances are,” she said. “We just really want to see action on their part.”
Photo courtesy of Keegan Houser/Flickr
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