Universities are expanding their menu of optional graduation events focused on participants’ identities and segregated by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and even income.
Georgetown University, the University of Oklahoma, Illinois State University and Grand Valley State University in Michigan are among the growing number of schools holding special ceremonies for Black graduates in upcoming weeks as the academic year winds down.
Dozens of campuses have added special graduations for LGBTQ students, illegal immigrants and Pilipinx — the gender-neutral term for
“Filipino” favored by liberals — in recent years.
Diversity advocates promote the ceremonies as “affinity groups” that create safe spaces for marginalized students to celebrate their achievements. Critics say the events divide campuses by excluding straight White male students.
“Often, mainstream graduations lack the type of cultural celebrations that are valued by minoritized populations,” Tyrone C. Howard, a Black education professor at the University of California, Las Angeles, who specializes in racial equity, told The Washington Times. “Affinity groups do no harm to any other groups and should not be deemed as problematic.”
UCLA and the UC Berkeley, both members of the University of California system, will host “Pilipinx” and “Pilipino” ceremonies for Filipino American graduates this year.
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“It’s part of a ‘linguistic revolution’ that aims to move beyond gender binaries and is inclusive of the intersecting identities of Filipino American descendants,” states a page on the UCLA website. “In addition to men and women from all racial backgrounds, Pilipinx also makes room for people who are trans, queer, agender, non-binary, gender non-conforming or gender fluid. Switching the F to the P celebrates identity, as we learn about the larger frame of decolonization.”
Some universities, including UCLA, add the celebrations to existing commencement weekends. As the practice spreads from the East and West coasts to liberal enclaves in Middle America, others are holding multiple graduations instead of a single ceremony.
The University of Oklahoma is conferring graduation certificates at five segregated ceremonies from April through June for American Indian, Asian American and Pacific Islander, Black, Latinx and “Lavender,” or LGBTQ, students.
Some conservatives say the trend is not a good sign for higher education.
Self-segregation dilutes the “unifying experience” of graduation while ironically evoking past practices that “forbade Black participation,” said Curtis T. Hill, a Republican and former attorney general of Indiana.
“While segregated or special graduation ceremonies might be intended to celebrate the separate cultural identity of graduates, events like Black graduation also promote racial divisiveness and exclusion,” said Mr. Hill, a member of the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Project 21, a network of Black conservatives.
In the Midwest, Illinois State University is hosting four ceremonies for different identity groups: a “MAPS” graduation for Middle Eastern, Asian, Pacific Islander and Southeast Asian students; Nuestros Logros for “Latinx graduates”; a Lavender Graduation for “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and ace-identified graduates”; and Umoja for “students of African descent and from the African diaspora.”
On the East Coast, Georgetown University will confer special stoles on minority students at three multicultural events: the Asian Heritage graduation for Asian American and Pacific Islander students, the Harambee graduation for Black students and the Despedida graduation for Hispanic students.
Lawyer Peter Kirsanow, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, admonished Illinois State University in a letter Thursday and Georgetown University in an April 25 letter, saying the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars them as recipients of government funding from offering such programs because they exclude White students.
“Many such segregated programs and events are patently unlawful, but worse, they’re just plain stupid and juvenile,” Mr. Kirsanow, who is Black, told The Times. “Most of adult America has transcended this preoccupation with race and identity.”
The Cleveland-based Mr. Kirsanow, whom President George W. Bush appointed to the commission in a 2001 battle that went to the Supreme Court, is serving a fourth consecutive term that expires in 2025. Former House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, Maryland Democrat, reappointed him to his current six-year term in December 2019.
Campus Reform, published by the conservative Leadership Institute in Arlington, Virginia, reported on April 20 that 17 colleges and universities are holding Lavender, Latinx and other identity-based graduation events this year.
The list includes special graduations for students with disabilities at private Harvard University and public California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. In the Ivy League, Harvard and Columbia universities will also offer graduations for first-generation college students. Columbia says in a press release that it will additionally recognize the “low-income community.”
In San Luis Obispo, Cal Poly will host a Monarch Commencement, which the school says “uplifts the academic accomplishments and personal successes of the undocumented and DACAmented.” It is one of several separate commencements that the school holds over several days each year for Black and LGBTQ students, among other minority groups.
Cal Poly and UC Davis will offer Black graduates Kente stoles made from traditional West African cloth to wear over their robes. Advocates of the practice, which has become popular on many campuses, point out that it’s completely optional.
“You might not approve of the ‘segregated’ ceremonies, but you shouldn’t stop other people from choosing to participate in them,” said Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor in the history of education at the University of Pennsylvania. “Isn’t that the American way? The First Amendment guarantees freedom of association.”
On Thursday, North Carolina State University was set to host a Multicultural Graduation and Reception for “multicultural graduates,” one of several identity-based ceremonies on campus.
Most universities hosting affinity graduations did not respond to requests for comment, but most have defended the separate ceremonies as student and alumni expressions of diversity, equity and inclusion.
In a statement to The Times, a University of Oklahoma spokesperson noted that all students are welcome to attend each “smaller and unique celebration” of minority graduates as part of yearlong multicultural programming on campus.
“Graduates receive verbal recognition, a certificate and a cultural stole,” spokesperson April Sandefer wrote.
The practice of self-segregated graduations started with Black students shortly after the 1960s Civil Rights movement. California State University, Northridge, hosted its first Black graduation celebration in 1972.
Harvard held a Black commencement for the first time in 2017, and Columbia added six ceremonies in 2021 based on race, ethnicity and other multicultural factors.
As of 2019, 125 colleges “segregate graduation ceremonies,” the conservative National Association of Scholars reported.
Dividing students by race suggests that campuses have grown more divided in recent years, said Robert Weissberg, a retired political science professor at the University of Illinois.
“It reveals that universities have decided that group identity trumps learning,” Mr. Weissberg said. “The idea that all students share a core common identity — Americans — is now officially racist.”
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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