Here’s a tale for those who’ve wondered what happens when two Designated Victim Groups – both accustomed to deference – collide. Specifically, “Indigenous faculty members” at Wilfrid Laurier University, and the black Dean of the university’s social work department.
At the centre of the conflict is Kathy Hogarth,
That would be our aforementioned black Dean and self-styled “radical.” A radical who invokes the “burden” of her unspecified “trauma,” who works “in the name of resistance,” and whose melanin-related grumbles include “the system of white mediocrity,” onto which her paler colleagues allegedly hold with “a vice grip.” One can only hope that Dr Hogarth’s “trauma,” whatever it might be, was at least partly soothed by the $200,000 salary.
Professors in the faculty of social work had some pre-existing grievances with Hogarth: they found her untransparent about hiring decisions and said she had a generally uncollegial attitude.
I’m assuming that includes using social media to publicly badmouth colleagues based on their race. All that “white mediocrity.”
But it was at a faculty retreat in September 2022 that the showdown between Hogarth and the Indigenous Field of Study (IFS) social work faculty came to a head.
Since you ask,
The IFS describes itself as a distinct programme within the faculty that is based on Indigenous “traditions, languages, and territorial protocols.”
In short, magic brownness.
The IFS asked to participate in the retreat remotely because its members were still scared of contracting COVID, but Hogarth had a preference for the department’s members to appear in-person. Hogarth allowed the IFS team to participate remotely in the morning, but said the afternoon session was not conducive to virtual participation… The IFS team said they experienced feelings of “confusion and exclusion.”
It’s perhaps worth keeping in mind that the claims of emotional injury – and the subsequent escalation in rhetoric, which we’ll get to – started with a question of whether attendance via a Zoom call was ideal at a retreat intended to “foster community.”
With outcry, the in-person faculty attendees created a new Zoom link for the IFS to participate in the afternoon session, and Hogarth “relented,” though she did not apologise.
Still, everyone’s happy now, right? Time for some collegial bonding.
The IFS team… claimed Hogarth’s “exclusion” of them was “an act of anti-indigenous racism” and “colonial violence.”
Ah, maybe not.
Hogarth later recounted in a report that the faculty were “rowdy” during the retreat, interrupting her and challenging her decisions, and that they wrote phrases like “less colonialism” and “less bullshit” on the end-of-day feedback notes. Hogarth interpreted this as “implicit racism.”
Shots fired.
Following the retreat, Hogarth sent out an email to the department faculty and senior leadership,
Before we venture further, you may want to pour a large one.
As one of less than a handful of Black Deans in Canada, I cannot divorce my Blackness from my leadership identity. The experiences of colonialism are embedded in my DNA. The enactment of colonial violence on my Black body is unrelenting.
And suddenly, we’re in the realm of opera. Capes are a-flutter. The dry ice will be billowing any minute now.
After being bloodied and bruised at the Faculty Retreat, and nursing the bloodiness of the day, I was forced to dry my tears, put a smile on my face and go welcome a new cadre of students to our institution. And I ask, how can I do that with integrity after witnessing and experiencing such violence at the hands of social work ‘professionals’? Yet, I had to be strong because that is what is expected.
Dr Hogarth was being strong, you see. Stoical. Not drama-queeny at all.
As a leader, and more so as a Black woman leader,
Yes, she has all the medals. See how they catch the light.
there is always a justling for power. I saw that. I saw the subtle and not so subtle attempts at destabilising, the micro-invalidations, and the micro insults. Anti-black racism was as real and alive as it has ever been on Wednesday. As painful as it is, I am naming that.
She suffers, heroically, and yet she pushes on, also heroically.
This accusation of racism – particulars of which were not forthcoming – was followed by an appeal to take the high road, to abandon “toxicity,” and to forge a “healthy community”:
I will not join the toxic. I will not engage in the violence. Those are not negotiable. I challenge you, both perpetrators of violence and bystanders, to do better.
Alas,
Days after Hogarth’s email, the tenured faculty sent the higher-ups of Laurier a petition to have Hogarth removed as dean, claiming a “crisis of leadership.” The petition was endorsed “with the unanimous support of all 16 tenured faculty of the Faculty of Social Work (FSW).”
And,
The professors wrote that Hogarth’s… email had been “extremely distressing.”
So many feelings. We’re going to need more tissues. And louder music.
“Unfortunately, the toxic and violent climate at the FSW as a result of Dr Hogarth’s actions have deeply impacted morale, weakening our sense of belonging and community, and have negatively impacted faculty members’ wellbeing.”
And then, inevitably, the big guns boomed:
“The anti-Indigenous racism enacted by the Dean is in itself completely unacceptable. Under no circumstances should any faculty member be intentionally excluded from participating in collegial meetings, especially a meeting designed to foster community and engage in planning,” read the faculty petition.
A second letter from the Indigenous faculty, sent to the university’s senior executives, continued the tearful thundering:
“We have recently experienced colonial violence and anti-Indigenous racism at the hands of our Dean… During our remote participation, she was actively violent towards the IFS team as witnessed by our FSW colleagues.”
Again, particulars of this “violence,” indeed “colonial violence,” remain oddly mysterious. We are, however, told that the Zoom meeting was “harmful and humiliating,” a “marginalising experience,” and “resulted in the team feeling unsafe in the workplace.”
I’ll spare you the full letter, which goes on to invoke the “aggressive and assaultive” properties of Dr Hogarth’s email, albeit in oddly non-specific terms, followed by a demand for a change in leadership “effective immediately.” Apparently, Dr Hogarth’s presence no longer enables the “meaningful decolonising” that the faculty regard as their Holy Mission.
Despite the competing feats of Olympic-level hyperbole, two formal investigations by the university uncovered no evidence of racism or indeed violence, whether colonial or of some other kind. However, the social work department – this bastion of “equity,” “diversity,” and “decolonisation” – was described in one of the reports as an intimidating and hostile workplace, with one witness favouring the phrase,
cliquey, scary, and tense.
In the wake of the dramas above, Dr Hogarth has relocated her talents, and her radicalism, to pastures greener:
Hogarth currently chairs the Canadian Military Colleges Review Board, a position to which she was appointed by Defence Minister Bill Blair in December 2023. Hogarth is now in charge of deciding if Canada’s two Royal Military Colleges should continue to exist, and if so, what their curriculum should look like.
So, nothing to worry about there.
Wilfrid Laurier University and its farcical employees have of course been mentioned here before.
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