Dear David Oxtoby,

We, few of the Black students here at Pomona College and the Claremont Colleges, would like to
address several of the points made in your Academic Freedom and Free Speech email sent out
to the entire student body on April 7, 2017 in response to a student protest against Heather Mac
Donalds talk at Claremont McKenna Colleges (CMC) Athenaeum. We believe that given your
position as President of this institution your voice holds significant weight in campus discourse.
That power comes with immense responsibility, especially when you could dictate campus
culture, climate, and the alleged mission of this institution. As President, you are charged with
upholding principles of Pomona College. Though this institution as well as many others
including this entire country, have been founded upon the oppression and degradation of
marginalized bodies, it has a liability to protect the students that it serves. The paradox is that
Pomonas past is rooted in domination of marginalized peoples and communities and the student
body has a significant population of students from these backgrounds. Your recent statement
reveals where Pomonas true intentions lie.

Free speech, a right many freedom movements have fought for, has recently become a tool
appropriated by hegemonic institutions. It has not just empowered students from marginalized
backgrounds to voice their qualms and criticize aspects of the institution, but it has given those
who seek to perpetuate systems of domination a platform to project their bigotry. Thus, if our
mission is founded upon the discovery of truth, how does free speech uphold that value? The
notion of discourse, when it comes to discussions about experiences and identities, deters the
Columbusing of established realities and truths (coded as intellectual inquiry) that the
institution promotes. Pomona cannot have its cake and eat it, too. Either you support students of
marginalized identities, particularly Black students, or leave us to protect and organize for our
communities without the impositions of your patronization, without your binary respectability
politics, and without your monolithic perceptions of protest and organizing. In addition, non-
Black individuals do not have the right to prescribe how Black people respond to anti-Blackness.

Your statement contains unnuanced views surrounding the academy and a belief in searching for
some venerated truth. Historically, white supremacy has venerated the idea of objectivity, and
wielded a dichotomy of subjectivity vs. objectivity as a means of silencing oppressed peoples.
The idea that there is a single truth--the Truth--is a construct of the Euro-West that is deeply
rooted in the Enlightenment, which was a movement that also described Black and Brown people
as both subhuman and impervious to pain. This construction is a myth and white supremacy,
imperialism, colonization, capitalism, and the United States of America are all of its progeny.
The idea that the truth is an entity for which we must search, in matters that endanger our
abilities to exist in open spaces, is an attempt to silence oppressed peoples. We, Black students,
exist with a myriad of different identities. We are queer, trans, differently-abled, poor/low-
income, undocumented, Muslim, first-generation and/or immigrant, and positioned in different
spaces across Africa and the African diaspora. The idea that we must subject ourselves routinely
to the hate speech of fascists who want for us not to exist plays on the same Eurocentric
constructs that believed Black people to be impervious to pain and apathetic to the brutal and
violent conditions of white supremacy.

The idea that the search for this truth involves entertaining Heather Mac Donalds hate speech is
illogical. If engaged, Heather Mac Donald would not be debating on mere difference of opinion,
but the right of Black people to exist. Heather Mac Donald is a fascist, a white supremacist, a
warhawk, a transphobe, a queerphobe, a classist, and ignorant of interlocking systems of
domination that produce the lethal conditions under which oppressed peoples are forced to live.
Why are you, and other persons in positions of power at these institutions, protecting a fascist
and her hate speech and not students that are directly affected by her presence?

Advocating for white supremacy and giving white supremacists platforms wherefrom their toxic
and deadly illogic may be disseminated is condoning violence against Black people. Heather
Mac Donald does not have the right to an audience at the Athenaeum, a private venue wherefrom
she received compensation. Dictating and condemning non-respectable forms of protest while
parroting the phrase that protest has a celebrated place on campus is contradictory at best and
anti-Black at worst.

This is not an argument rooted in Heathers loss of free speech or academic freedom. She is a
well-known public figure, her views are well documented. Rather, our praxis is focused on not
allowing her anti-Black platform to be legitimized in front of an audience, which she does not
have the right to. Engaging with her, a white supremacist fascist supporter of the police state, is a
form of violence.

Protest that doesnt disrupt the status quo is benign and doesnt function to overthrow systems of
oppression, which is the ultimate goal.

To conclude our statement, we invite you to respond to this email by Tuesday, April 18, 2017 at
4:07pm (since we have more energy to expend on the frivolity of this institution and not Black
lives). Also, we demand a revised email sent to the entire student body, faculty, and staff by
Thursday, April 20, 2017, apologizing for the previous patronizing statement, enforcing that
Pomona College does not tolerate hate speech and speech that projects violence onto the bodies
of its marginalized students and oppressed peoples, especially Black students who straddle the
intersection of marginalized identities, and explaining the steps the institution will take and the
resources it will allocate to protect the aforementioned students. We also demand that Pomona
College and the Claremont University Consortium entities take action against the Claremont
Independent editorial staff (http://claremontindependent.com/meet-the-staff/) for its continual
perpetuation of hate speech, anti-Blackness, and intimidation toward students of marginalized
backgrounds. Provided that the Claremont Independent releases the identity of students involved
with this letter and such students begin to receive threats and hate mail, we demand that this
institution and its constituents take legal action against members of the Claremont Independent
involved with the editing and publication process as well as disciplinary action, such as
expulsion on the grounds of endangering the wellbeing of others.

Authored by:
Dray Denson PO 20
Avery Jonas PO 20
Shanaya Stephenson PO 19

Co-Signatories:
Victor Bene PZ 19
Bemnet Gebrechirstos SC 19
Jordan Howard-Jennings HMC 19
Gabby Snowden SC 19
Eliamani Ismail SC 20
Katarina Figueroa
Kar Urea PZ 18
Leandra Vargas PZ 18
Malaika Ogukwe PO 19
Journey Simmons PO 20
Mazvita Nyamuzuwe SC 20
Noemi Delgado PZ 19
Sherlan Lord PZ 19
Leya Solomon PO 19
Vanessa Akinnibosun SC 19
Zemia Edmondson PO 20
Neyissa Desir PO 19
Sega Birhane HMC 20
Ramonda Giddings HMC 17
Matt Simon HMC 18
Jillian Cardamon HMC 20
Jasmine David PO 19
Justis Allen HMC 17
Donely Gunn HMC 18