As you’ll read below, it sounds like this anger is really about the president’s unwillingness to divest from fossil fuels.
Campus Reform reports:
GW president pressured to resign after ‘racist remarks’More than 100 faculty members at George Washington University have signed a petition circulated by the GWU Faculty Association demanding that the university’s president, Thomas LeBlanc, resign immediately.Disapproval and frustration expressed by faculty and students had already been growing; however, in early February, after a first-year student asked LeBlanc whether the school would divest from fossil fuels if most students favored doing so. “Doesn’t matter,” LeBlanc responded. “What if the majority of the students agreed to shoot all the black people here? Do I say, ‘Ah, well, the majority voted?’ No.”This sparked outrage among students and faculty, prompting calls for his resignation.The petition goes on to list other reasons for demanding LeBlanc’s resignation.“We understand LeBlanc’s comment to be just the latest evidence of his disregard for both diversity and democracy at GW,” the petition states. It goes on to list several items dating back to the beginning of his administration, one of which would reduce undergraduate enrollment by 20 percent while increasing the percentage of students in STEM programs by 30 percent. The frustrations expressed by the faculty stressed the decrease in diversity and harm to the humanities departments along with the lack of transparency between the president and the faculty.The Editorial Board for GW’s student newspaper, The GW Hatchet, even weighed in on the calls for LeBlanc’s resignation in an editorial titled, “LeBlanc was never the right fit for the University”. The first line of the piece states, “More than 100 faculty members want University President Thomas LeBlanc to resign. We agree.” It also goes on to address the “laundry list of reasons” for the president to resign.
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