LEAP Calls on Purdue University Chancellor's Dismissal or Resignation
For Immediate Release
Linda Akutagawa
We belong.
During a season when we all want joy, happiness and love for each other, LEAP and members of the Asian and American community are sadly experiencing different emotions: profound hurt, great offense and extreme anger at the recent racist mockery of Asians and Asian Americans by Purdue University Northwest Chancellor, Thomas L. Keon.
On Saturday, December 10, 2022, Purdue University Northwest held two commencement ceremonies. As graduates and their families for one of the ceremonies gathered and the commencement program began, what should have been a happy and special day for all the students, quickly turned hurtful and hateful for the University’s Asian and Asian American graduates and their families.
His nonsensical words and babble, jokingly referred to as his “Asian version” of the previous speaker’s comments, evoked deeply painful feelings and memories for many of us in the Asian American community who have, and continue to be, subjected to such torment. That these repulsive remarks were voiced by the Chancellor of the University, the senior-most university executive, clearly communicated that it’s ok to make Asians and Asian Americans the butt of jokes on his campus. In other words, we don’t belong.
It is for this reason, that LEAP strongly supports Purdue University Northwest students and faculty in their call for his dismissal or resignation. His tone-deaf, crisis-PR agency-boilerplate apology, which came four days after the incident, was hollow and insincere. His remarks which he excused as “unplanned” and “off-the-cuff,” is conduct unbecoming as a leader. Adding more insult to injury is the refusal of the Purdue University Board of Trustees to take any meaningful action and instead chose to stand behind him and excuse his behavior in their “formal reprimand.”
For Purdue University Northwest’s Asian and Asian American students, families, faculty, staff, administrators and the broader Asian American community, his ridicule, and the board of trustee’s tolerance of his behavior became yet another unwelcome reminder that despicable and bigoted actions against Asians and Asian Americans are still acceptable, even normal.
Over the past three years of the COVID pandemic, Asians and Asian Americans have been subjected to unprecedented acts of violence, harassment and bias fueled by anti-Asian ignorance, hate and racism. No city, state or region was exempt from these acts against their Asian and Asian American residents and community members.
Awareness of anti-Asian hate and efforts to stop the bias and violence reached unprecedented levels. Yet a supposedly learned man, a university chancellor no less, who “takes great pride in being welcoming and inclusive to all people,” did not consider the impact that his action, as the head of the university, would have on others. This is an intolerable failure of leadership at multiple levels of the Purdue University system and an indicator of the complete lack of respect for the Asian and Asian American community by Chancellor Keon and the Purdue University Board of Trustees.
Asian Americans, along with our friends and family in the Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, Native American and Pacific Islander communities have been fighting for equity, inclusion and belonging for decades. Asians should not have to continue to have our over 2300 unique and beautiful languages and dialects jumbled into incoherent gibberish by a man with no respect or understanding of our cultures and communities.
As a leadership organization focused on growing Asian and Pacific Islander leaders, we have sent a letter to the Purdue University Board of Trustees to seriously urge them to demonstrate and model the leadership and accountability that Purdue’s students, faculty and administrators are looking to them to showcase by dismissing Chancellor Keon or demanding his resignation. As they have chosen not to hold Chancellor Keon accountable, we again reiterate our strong support of Purdue University Northwest students and faculty in their call for his dismissal or resignation.
"You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it."
~ Grace Lee Boggs, globally respected activist and philosopher
Take action and make your voice heard on this matter by signing this petition started by a concerned Purdue Northwest student. Send an email to the Purdue University Board of Trustees and urge them to dismiss Chancellor Keon or demand his resignation.
Together we can advocate for societal change that leads to respect for Asians and Asian Americans because we belong.
