Tabia Lee: The DEI Educator Who Was Fired After Daring to Challenge the Status Quo

[FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW] “I’m a black woman and I’m being called a white supremacist. That had never happened in my entire teaching career. And not only that, I’d never seen teachers calling each other names like that.”

In 2021, Tabia Lee was hired to direct De Anza College’s Office of Equity, Social Justice, and Multicultural Education and to reduce the wokeness of the institution.

“I just went beyond the smaller bubble to the larger community, and said, ‘Who wants to work on actual inclusion and doing some things we’ve never done here before?’” says Ms. Lee.

But after two years, Ms. Lee was terminated for her heterodox perspectives and inquiry-based approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

“I’ve lost everything, basically. And that’s tough,” she says. “But what I’ve gained is so many people coming and saying, ‘Thank you for having the courage. Thank you for raising the issue.’ They’ve said, ‘You inspired me to ask about my equity policy. You inspired me to go into my child’s school and ask to see that curriculum, and to make a public records act request if needed, if people aren’t being forthcoming with the information I’m seeking. You inspired me to push back when I wasn’t going to, and I hadn’t in the past.’ And to me, that’s worth everything, because that’s what it’s going to take to take our nation back.”

We discuss Ms. Lee’s heterodox approach to DEI, inquiry-based learning, the difference between classical and critical social justice, and what it means to genuinely practice inclusion.

“We’re making that small impact with our students, right? But the broader system is just being destroyed and dismantled right before our eyes. And we’re complicit in that because we’re not saying anything,” says Ms. Lee.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek:
Tabia Lee, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Dr. Tabia Lee:
Thank you.

Mr. Jekielek:
Tabia, I was really fascinated to read your article in Compact Magazine, describing the incredible adventure you’ve had coming in as the DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] educator at De Anza College. But it turned out that you had a very different approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion than the default approach. Please tell me about yourself and what happened.

Dr. Lee:
Thank you for this opportunity, Jan. I just want to share with you that I am a lifelong educator, and I really mean lifelong educator. I was part of a gifted and talented program when I was in elementary school, and the teachers didn’t quite know what to do with us, and so we spent a lot of time playing Oregon Trail and being used as peer tutors. That’s when my commitment to teaching really began.

But during that time in my childhood, not everybody was so kind. I had the experience of the very same people that I was helping actually teasing and bullying me. It was at that early age that I had this commitment to the outsider, the outcast, and the person who’s misunderstood. That followed me throughout my teaching career and into my adult life.

I received my formal education and became a teacher. I taught in East Los Angeles public middle schools for a decade teaching English civics and social studies with gifted English language learners. At that time, in California we had an English-only law, the only language of instruction could be English. Some of the teachers thought that you couldn’t possibly be gifted if you didn’t have English language proficiency. I was breaking down those misconceptions, even with my colleagues in the Los Angeles Unified School District, by doing teacher training around giftedness as neurodiversity and doing technology training for teachers, in addition to my teaching responsibilities.

I’ve always served in this role of teacher support as well as actual practitioner. I’ve always had to do that kind of metathinking about those topics, stepping outside of the pedagogy and unpacking it for people. This has been something that has been part of my life’s work, a commitment to elevating different groups who may be on the margins, and a commitment to inclusion of everyone in a space.

That’s what eventually led me to this tenure track position at De Anza College. After a very rigorous interview process, I was selected to be their faculty director for the Office of Equity, Social Justice and Multicultural Education. This is a faculty role. Even though my doctorate is in educational leadership and administration, I’ve always been a lead from the trenches kind of person.

I’ve always been a teacher leader and a co-learner, someone who is very committed to not just making myself a better teacher, but sharing the tools and the resources I have found with other teachers, so that they can be their best possible teaching selves.

Mr. Jekielek:
How is your DEI approach different from the conventional one, or the one that seems to dominate today?

Dr. Lee:
With DEI today, there is definitely a default perspective at work. I didn’t know this going into the work that I did at De Anza College, but I discovered it as I went into this environment. I realized that I thought a little bit differently than other folks, and my perspective was a little bit different. I tried to figure out what the differences were philosophically and pedagogically. I really reflected on that because I wanted to understand why I seemed to be so different from the people that were making the decisions around my tenure position there.

Mr. Jekielek:
Let’s dig into this. You were specifically hired because the administration was worried that things had gotten too woke, and you were invited to come in and deal with that. They were actually hiring someone who thought differently, and they knew that ahead of time. I want to touch on that.

A number of our viewers have been asking me, “How do you even define woke?” We’ve asked this in a number of shows with a number of guests on American Thought Leaders. I saw a definition that you came up with. Please tell me the meaning of woke. How do you define it?

Dr. Lee:
It’s something that’s very contextual. That’s why whenever anyone uses that term, I ask them, “Please define what you mean.” This was the working definition at De Anza, when I was applying there as a candidate. They said, “This DEI office is a little too woke and we would be looking for someone to reign that in.” I asked them, “What do you mean by that?”

They said, “When faculty visit the office, they are often accused of being racist. They’re told that they are practicing racist pedagogy, that their teaching is wrong, that they are wrong, and that their beliefs are wrong. It makes people feel very uncomfortable and they don’t want to go to the office and use it as a resource.”

When that definition was given, I said, “By that definition, I’m definitely not woke. I’m someone who tries to bring together people, and to help people identify common points so we can best serve our students.” In the context of that interview, woke was said to be accusing people of being racist, constantly accusing teachers of being racist, and telling them that their pedagogy was wrong.

As I started to work with my office mates, they had a different definition of woke. To them, woke was being awake to social injustice and taking action against it, so their definition was very positive. Before I had come on, they even had workshops on how to be woke and get paid.

What I discovered is that I didn’t come in with that definition, but with a classical approach to social justice. My office mates and some of the key people in leadership were working from what I identified as critical social justice. They are very different in terms of the outcomes that you’re seeking for society.

For example, from a classical social justice perspective, you would be really emphasizing things like equality of opportunity. That’s very different from a critical social justice approach. They’re emphasizing that a just society is one where we have equal outcomes.

One perspective is trying to manifest equal opportunity and another is really trying to manifest equal outcomes. What are the things that can happen to all of us as a result of that, and to our society at large? How does that even look? Is that something that we would want for society?

The default right now in many spaces is a critical social justice approach, where we’re emphasizing equality of outcomes. That’s going to look differently in terms of personalizing learning and standardizing learning, things that I’ve been very committed in my life to either promoting or standing against.

Mr. Jekielek:
You gave a definition of woke in your article. You said, “A worldview that understands knowledge is relative and tied to unequal identity-based power dynamics that must be exposed and dismantled.” That’s as good a definition as I’ve come across.

Dr. Lee:
Yes, and I would add to that. It’s one that also sees racism as systemic and present in every interaction. I discovered that when our academic senate was drafting up a resolution on racial healing. One of the lines in there was, “We acknowledge that America is a systemically racist country, and that it’s founded on white supremacy.”

I made a suggestion for the document, “Can we add that it’s founded on the principles of fairness and equality?” There was a backlash. They said, “Absolutely not. How could you challenge this principle that we’re founded on white supremacy?” I said, “Not everyone believes that, myself included. I’m one of the people who’s saying we’re founded on fairness and equality. We can debate whether we’ve lived up to that or not. But to say that we’re founded on white supremacy and that racism is everywhere and systemic, that’s problematic.” It’s definitely their worldview.

A lot of my work at De Anza was trying to raise awareness about these ideologies, even in the simple statements we make with each other when we’re talking about making progress. How do we frame that, and how do we frame policy around that? The words we’re using, and the phrases and assertions we’re making about the foundations of society are critical.

Mr. Jekielek:
You wanted to explain to people there are several ways of viewing social justice, and that they are fundamentally different. You wanted to educate on that topic, and that alone was unacceptable.

Dr. Lee:
Yes. That was one of many things that was deemed unacceptable from the start. Even saying that there are many ways to do the diversity equity work, and that different teachers use different frameworks was a no-no. I had my tenure review committee members actually say, “You’re leading people to danger. You’re undermining the work we’ve done here.”

Then I would say, “What were you expecting me to say?” They could never articulate to me what I should be saying, only that I wasn’t saying the right thing by asking questions or by saying there’s more than one way to think or do things. There are multiple perspectives around the topic.

Mr. Jekielek:
Why is it seemingly only one way?

Dr. Lee:
From what I heard from my tenure review committee members, they had a long history at that particular institution of doing equity work. Part of the foundational aspect for me was to define what equity even means. I was told that I shouldn’t be asking that question either. It should just be known, but there was no institutional definition.

I come from a sociology background. Words, meanings, and linguistics are so important to me, understanding what we mean when we say a term or a word. I was doing this initial work and asking, “Can we define equity? What does it mean to you? What does it mean to this person or that person?

That’s when I was told that I shouldn’t even be doing definitional work, “We shouldn’t be doing that. We should just be doing the work.” But no one could tell me what the work was. I would ask them to define equity, and they would show me graphics and pictures, like apples falling from trees. They would say, “Equity means everyone gets some.”

Another one was people standing on boxes, and they would say, “It’s leveling the playing field.” It was never a direct definition that was related to education or educational support. Instead, it was all socially focused, not academically focused. I noticed that in many things during my time there.

Mr. Jekielek:
It’s almost like you were the only one that didn’t know the answer.

Dr. Lee:
Yes. They were basically all of the same accord. Jan, it’s an environment maintained by the actors that are in it. If you are someone who is questioning, you are quickly cast out. Then you can have everyone saying, “Yes, we all agree.”

Now who’s the person who’s the architect behind this? I never could discover that. I was really poking around and trying to find out why we used certain terms. Why were we renaming whole groups of people without their consent with these X terms on the names of racial categories? When did we start to say that this is the focus of our equity work, and where did it come from? Was it a resolution?

I’m a historian as well, so I’m trying to see where the footprints are. How was this collaboratively developed? I could never discover that, but there was a definite unison of voice, “We just don’t do that.” One person would say, “We just don’t do that here. That’s not how we do it.” Then everyone else would just be quiet and say nothing to oppose it.

Here’s Lee, the lone questioner, saying, “But why, and where did this come from?” Even that was unacceptable to people, and it was tightly guarded. I had people who came to my office hours and made veiled threats after I was initially questioning. They said, “We’ve worked hard to advance equity here and no one’s going to get in the way.”

I thought that was very strange. I said, “Why are they perceiving me as a threat? I’m new. What have I done in my past?” But just the fact that I was a questioner was a warning sign to some of the key folks. Of course, you can see it in hindsight. When it was happening, I couldn’t see that immediately.

Mr. Jekielek:
You walked into this so innocently and this has been a centerpiece of discussion for a very long time. You walked in with these innocent eyes, wanting to teach this classical version of diversity, and having been hired to do it. Then you were shocked by what was there. But were you not aware that this ideology had become somewhat pervasive in society?

Dr. Lee:
I don’t know if I was so innocent, Jan, as I take an inquiry-based approach to everything. When I come into a situation, I’m never assuming I know everything or that the knowledge I have is a reflection of the reality that is there. That’s why I started off at De Anza doing needs assessment conversations. This was during the pandemic, and I actually ended up doing over 60 hours of needs assessment conversations, which was pretty unprecedented, even for me.

I would not have had that much access to people if they hadn’t been locked to their computers and not able to go anywhere or do anything.The benefit was that I talked to faculty, staff, and administrators. I got to ask them, “What are the needs here? What are the strengths? What are the weaknesses? What do we need to work on?” I was warned there were not a lot of viewpoints there.

That’s why I knew that was the path I needed to take, bringing people together in dialogue to talk about what we mean when we say certain terms, so that we could all get on the same page and then be able to best serve our students. Even if we have different perspectives, we could identify some points of commonality.

Initially, that was the thrust of my work, and it came out of my needs assessment conversations. People were saying, “We have this long history. We’re rooted in equity, but no one has defined what that means, or how it works in practice.”

Mr. Jekielek:
I wish more people took that approach to things.

Dr. Lee:
Me too. Yes, I welcomed the comments, because we learn from each other. If you’re in an academic institution, that should be the primary thing that we’re doing—engaging colleagues who are both like us and different, and having access to diverse viewpoints. That’s how we sharpen who we are and what we stand for as individuals and as an institution.

That’s foundational, when my job description was to lead a transformation around equity, social justice, and multicultural education, I had to know what was there, and what were the perspectives that were there, and what were the strengths and the needs that we had. I was very committed to uncovering that. But as I started to do that, some people didn’t want the uncovering, and they didn’t want the clarity. When I started talking about diverse scholars and various understandings of race, again, I was told that I was leading people into danger.

What I was really doing, Jan, was sharing what I had learned. Because before this, I wasn’t a race scholar or anything of that nature. I didn’t consider myself one. I’m just an educator. I’ve taught civics, social studies, and English. I never studied race in depth, and what it means to work under race ideologies. I constantly saw race mentioned in every setting. I started to ask, “What are some ways of viewing this?”

I actually discovered the work of a scholar, Dr. Sheena Mason. It was the first time in my 40 years of teaching and learning that I ever heard about the philosophies of race. I had never heard of that. I didn’t know there were different ways to view race and racism. I wanted to share that with my colleagues and with students as well. The way that she laid out the different philosophies of race was so different from the mainstream understanding of race. I grappled with that book and the concepts. They were things that I had never encountered before.

To me, that’s transformative. You have been doing something unquestioningly your whole life, and suddenly you have questions sparked by the scholarship of a person who’s laying out these frameworks. Was it wrong of me to ask questions like, “When we say anti-racist, what do we mean? What philosophy or movement are we rooting ourselves in?” Because there have been several waves of anti-racism, if you will. I just wanted clarity around that.

I was told, “Don’t ask that. We’re committed to anti-racism. It’s right there in the document. That’s us as an institution.” In the educational sphere, I had never encountered being told that I shouldn’t cite certain authors. No one has ever told me to be mindful of my citations.

Usually folks say, “I can use your references as a resource and read up myself.” That’s usually how I structure my references, so someone else can trace what I’ve done and see, “Does this measure up? Did she make valid conclusions?” That’s how I’ve been taught to do scholarship.

Mr. Jekielek:
There is a trend of one person speaking about a whole group of people, as if they somehow have the right to speak for them. That’s very characteristic of critical social justice and this woke ideology in my experience. I want to talk about that.

Dr. Lee:
Yes, that was a way of thinking that I encountered quite often, even early on. I can give you examples. The academic senate in higher education is where the faculty comes together, usually by their discipline. You would have a representative from the sociology department, from the biology department, and from all the departments of learning. That’s who usually comprises your academic senate, and they make decisions about the academic institution.

During part of my tenure at De Anza, there was a push to make racial affinity groups voting members of the academic senate. I found that to be very odd, because I didn’t know what racial affinity groups had to do with academic disciplines, and why they needed a separate representative to come to the academic senate and be a voting member. I asked that very question, “Why are we making this change?”

I started to question the structure of the racial affinity groups there, because I noticed that there were only three. If we’re going to think of those tick boxes, there’s many more tick boxes than just three in a public community college. Why were only three groups of people being considered and granted voting rights? I asked, “Is this legal?” Because all racial groups were not represented.

Then I was questioning if the groups themselves were representative. I know for a fact that some people choose not to involve themselves with those groups. Why are we saying that these groups would represent the black perspective, or what they call the Latinx perspective? Just asking those questions, Jan, was considered an attack. They said I was attacking the racial affinity groups by questioning their legitimacy, and by questioning why they should have voting rights. Then it became an issue of whether everyone should be able to vote and have voting rights. When I pointed out that certain groups didn’t even have a group representing them, that became problematic as well. That’s one example.

When I first came on, we had a women, gender, and sexuality center on our campus, which was part of my Office of Equity, Social Justice and Multicultural Education. That name is so long that I’ve learned to say it. The coordinator for that office was saying that they were receiving complaints about white faculty not feeling comfortable coming to the women, gender, and sexuality office.

My team and my supervising dean said, “What are you going to do about it?” They said, “We’re not going to do anything. This is how we’ve structured this office. It’s for BIPOC.” That means Black, indigenous, and people of color. They said, “We’ve made this center for BIPOC people, and that’s who should be here, and that’s who’s welcome here. We’re not going to change anything we’re doing.”

I thought, “What is this strange universe I have popped into? They said, “Lee, what do you think?” I told them, “From my perspective, we’re a public school. Anyone should be able to come into that women, gender, and sexuality center. Maybe there’s a resource or a book for them. Maybe they want to come somewhere and feel like they’re not being judged. They just want to explore things. They may want to change their major, whatever it may be. It shouldn’t be about their race. It should be that they are curious about the three topics this office represents.”

I was shouted down and told I was attempting to whitewash the history of the office. I was told, “White people have the rest of this campus, and they don’t need our office too.” Again, it was a fissure from the very beginning between how I viewed being a welcoming and belonging place, and the critical social justice view of being welcoming and belonging, and who should be welcomed and feel like they belong.

Mr. Jekielek:
You’re reminding me of this term whitewashing, and whitesplaining is another term. What do they actually mean?

Dr. Lee:
When the terms were used against me, I had never encountered them before. When I started at De Anza with my team, I just wanted to give people a little context. I asked them if they had a strategy, a tool, or a way of tracking agendas and team meetings. They didn’t.

We had a couple of weeks of just informal meetings. Remember, I’m charged with leading a strategic transformation of the campus. I said, “We need to have structure and we need to do something different.” I made a Google doc and said, “We can use this to track agendas, and maybe we can collaborate. I’m new here, and I don’t know what things you normally do and where I can fit in the flow. We can just contribute asynchronously so we’re not loading our time up with meetings.”

As I was explaining this one of the staff members stopped me and said, “Stop what you’re doing right now. What you’re doing is white speaking and white splaining. You’re being a white supremacist, and you’re being transactional.” When they stopped me like that, everyone else on the team had these very smug looks on their faces. They were like, “Yes, get her.” It felt bad, and it felt pejorative.

I said, “I have not come in judging you or calling you any names.” I said, “Please don’t call me names like that. That feels very bad to me.” Everyone in the Zoom room looked at me as though I was the offender for saying, “Please don’t call me that. What you said feels very bad.” From that moment on, every action I took was a confirmation of their idea, “Yes, she’s a white supremacist.”

I didn’t know what they meant. They were meaning something totally different than I had ever experienced or heard of, until I was going to their workshops. I saw this graphic that they would display over and over again. It had poison bottles labeled with the white supremacy characteristics of being on time, being objective, and either/or thinking.

There were all of these other characteristics and features that seemed like a personality to me. It left me very unsettled. I thought, “How dare they call me that? I’m a black woman, and I’m being called a white supremacist.” That had never happened in my entire teaching career. Not only that, I had never seen teachers calling each other names like that. I’d never seen teachers doing name-calling in a professional setting.

I don’t want to make it sound like De Anza is a unique place and it’s only happening there. At multiple community colleges in California, it’s like a system thing where they’re upholding this white supremacy culture and the idea of it as a truth, and using it to screen people out and test people and see if you fit well or not, based on if you are exhibiting certain characteristics.

These are characteristics, Jan, that I tell my students you would need to be a successful person and a scholar. These are the characteristics. You would be on time, you would be objective, and you would be curious. You would be all of these things that are the qualities and traits of a young scholar. That’s what I call it.

Now it’s something that is relegated to whiteness. What does that mean about the viewpoint of the people who are promoting this? What do they think of people of color, that they’re not all of those things? That means I’m not supposed to be objective? I’m not supposed to be on time? This was expected of me? How disappointing.

Mr. Jekielek:
A number of our viewers might be familiar with a variant of this graphic. As we’ve been talking here, we zoomed in on some of these bottles that you’re describing. The National Museum of African American History had an infographic that essentially had these exact same points, with just a little bit of a different design, which created controversy here in DC. It was removed for that reason. How incredibly bizarre that these qualities would be relegated to being a white supremacist.

Dr. Lee:
There are actual trainings that we send our staff to. They’re actually held by a private university, University of Southern California, and they focus on decentering whiteness. Initially, my supervisor was sending me emails saying, “I want you to go to this training.” I would look at the topic and it said, “Decentering whiteness throughout the system.” I thought, “Why would someone ask me to do that?”

As we started to get into discussions about what should we be doing or not be doing, that was used as a justification to say, “No, we shouldn’t do that because that’s not decentering whiteness. We don’t focus on this or that because that’s not decentering whiteness.” Now, this was not in the job description. This is not in any written institutional mission or vision. But this is what is told person to person. If you are not in alignment with that, that’s when you must be eliminated. You’re not allowed to be in this space.

I would love to see people be transparent. If you want someone to come in to do your DEI work and you say, “I want you to take a decentering whiteness approach, and you’ll use the white supremacy culture characteristics to do your work,” that should be out in the open. Then candidates can make a decision and say, “That’s what I do. I’ll go in gladly and do that.”

I was told at one point that I wasn’t representing the ideas I was hired to represent with fidelity. If I had known that was what I was supposed to do, and if it was described to me as a candidate, of course I would say, “That doesn’t square well with me. That’s not the kind of work I do. I like to bring people together, and serve our students and our community. I take a servant-leadership approach to things.” Then that wouldn’t mesh well with me to represent a singular ideology or anything like that.

But in practice, that is what’s taking place. Not just at that college, but in many colleges and spaces. Often, these things are held up, like that slide for example. In every workshop that was led by those individuals, that slide would be present, and they would talk about the relevance of the slide to the workshop materials. That’s the framework that’s being used.

It saddens me, because this is a public school, and so we should really be about the community that surrounds the school. That’s how it should be, and everyone should feel represented and included.

Mr. Jekielek:
It’s like everybody knows what it is, but you’re not allowed to talk about it. It’s like Fight Club, isn’t it? I think we’re similar generation, so you know what I’m talking about.

Dr. Lee:
Yes, nobody talks about Fight Club.

Mr. Jekielek:
But why is it like that?

Dr. Lee:
I can only speculate. When I made the charts where I started laying out the race ideologies and what their perspectives were, that had never been done in that space before. One person actually told me, “You’re making us look bad. You’re disparaging my worldview by putting it next to that.”

I said, “If your ideology or worldview can pass the muster of being compared to another, then maybe you have something there.” I said, “What are you afraid of to have that view out and compared to others? Do you think that it won’t stand up? Is that what’s offensive?”

Because to me as a scholar, that’s what I teach my students to do. We make Venn diagrams, we compare things, and we make charts. Comparison is part of critical thinking. To tell me that your ideas should not be compared and should not be put next to the ideas of another, that’s problematic. That’s what got me labeled as not being cooperative. That was one of the statements that was used in my termination, that I did not cooperate, and it was wrongful of me to do that.

Mr. Jekielek:
Please explain to me what exactly happened. You mentioned this board of trustees meeting, and that you’ve never seen anything like it before. I want to roll a clip of it.

Speaker 3:
Dr. Lee has taken positions that directly contradict her role as faculty director of equity. She has repeatedly advocated to remove the language of anti-racism from institutional documents, arguing that anti-racism is a harmful and divisive ideology that prevents instructors from being able to implement diverse pedagogies and violate academic freedom.

Dr. Lee refused to do the work she was hired to do. She’s actively seeking to undo the years of hard work towards anti-racism that so many of us have painstakingly contributed to. Dr. Lee’s conduct has effectively alienated the majority of affinity groups that she was hired to collaborate with in her role as faculty director of equity. However, the impact of her actions extend beyond just affinity groups.

Early on in the academic year, she sent out a statement to the entire campus via multiple listservs that created a chilling effect on people’s willingness to discuss matters directly with her, and that contributed to an unsafe and hostile working environment.

We’re sharing these concerns with the board today because we believe that Dr. Lee’s intentions to rewrite campus and district policies jeopardizes and sets back progress the college has made in developing a racially just, inclusive, and affirming campus environment. We are concerned about the impact of Dr. Lee’s ability to disrupt and co-op equity or her own personal agenda or gain, and worry that if allowed to remain in this role, she will continue to undermine the commitment to anti-racism and equity that our district has fought so hard to affirm.

In fact, her words and actions have already caused irreparable damage to many relationships across the campus that [inaudible 00:34:48] to be affected in her role. Dr. Lee has slowed our campus progress on anti-racist initiatives and work. She has alienated affinity groups from the equity office initiatives under her leadership. She has alienated members of the campus equity office from the office itself, and she has created an unsafe environment for sharing concerns that the direction of equity work under her leadership.

Mr. Jekielek:
Now that we’ve watched this, why is this so unusual?

Dr. Lee:
For me, Jan, that was such an unusual thing. I’m someone who’s been in education a long time. I watch a lot of board meetings. I know they are kind of boring for many people, but public comment is usually used to raise awareness about things. This was an instance where you had multiple speakers. It was a coordinated public comment, where each one gets three minutes. It was 15 minutes of calling for a teacher’s termination, and in this case, my termination.

The reasons that were being given were not clear violations of any kind of harassment, or discrimination policy, or things that I had done that showed that I was professionally unfit or anything of that nature. Statements were made like that comment that I was elevating groups of people who should not be elevated. They made statements that I said, “All lives matter,” which is actually a statement I’ve never made.

They were just trying to show that for some reason, I was inappropriate, just in the essence of the activities I was doing. I wasn’t representing what I was hired to do with fidelity was another statement made during that time. I had never seen a teacher called out and their termination demanded, and this was during my first year. I was at De Anza for two years, and this was the first year in the spring this happened.

It was right after I did my Heritage Month activities, when I did some activities around Jewish inclusion and antisemitism education. The only things that I had done were things of that nature. People were saying that those things were inappropriate, when actually they were collaborative and community-based efforts involving me, staff, students, and community partners. We were doing the work that needed to be done based on the needs assessment conversations where people had told me, “This is where we need to go next.”

Mr. Jekielek:
Please tell me about this antisemitism work that you were doing and some of the reactions to it.

Dr. Lee:
Unfortunately, when you’re in an environment where antisemitism is deeply entrenched, which is what I discovered at that particular institution, there’s a lot of resistance to doing any kind of restorative or reparative work around that. When I first came on, I connected with Hillel of Silicon Valley. They came to the Equity Action Council and said, “We’re very concerned about our Jewish students. There is no Jewish student organization, and they’re been pushed underground.

There’s been some BDS [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions] movements from the student government that we’re deeply concerned about, and our students were shouted down. We noticed that you have a standing against racism page. Would you please make a statement about antisemitism and combating that, and that we want this to be a safe place for our Jewish students and faculty?” That was the ask.

As the people were speaking, one of the staff members was dropping things in the chat like, “Black Lives Matter, and here’s another resource.” They were giving resources that were anti-Zionist organizations. “If you want to learn about Jewish culture, go to this website or that website.” I found that deeply offensive.

I took it back to the team meeting. I said, “I found it very offensive that when we had guest speakers from the community, one of our staff members was putting in the chat slogans and things that have nothing to do with the issue they were talking about, and then directing to resources that were offensive. That’s not what our presenters were talking to us about.” The attitude was, “You’re wrong. You are sharing resources and we can share resources too.”

I said, “Okay, fine. What are we going to do about what’s been asked here?” I was told, “We aren’t going to do anything.” I replied, “We’re not going to do anything? They came with the evidence. They showed us the statements from students. They talked about what our student government has done.”

“You don’t think there’s any need to address this or do some kind of education around it?” They said, “No, we are decentering whiteness, and that doesn’t have anything to do with what we’re focused on.” I said, “Okay.” Again, it’s about decentering whiteness. I needed to come up to speed and find out what they meant.

What I discovered from the ideology is that certain groups of people are at this point in time deemed white, and so they are the oppressors. To them, Jewish people are oppressors. They’re in the oppressor category, according to their matrix of domination and oppression.

Every person or individual is part of a larger group. That group is either a victim or an oppressor, and you are stuck in that status for your entire life. You can never move out of it. You can never move beyond it. You’re born as a victim or an oppressor.

This is now what’s being directly taught in our K-12 schools. This is what’s being taught to faculty members. “This is how you should view your students and tell them that they are.” This is how we’re supposed to view our world.

I had never told any of my students, “You’re a victim or you’re an oppressor.” I don’t use those terms. I always talk about, “You can accomplish anything. You can do some hard work and make your dreams happen.” We are all different. We have different cultures, but we can all work together. That has been my approach to life and to working with people.

To hear this kind of viewpoint and to have it promoted was so different to me. It ended up with them saying, “We’re not going to do anything.” Not only that, but they also said, “We’ve also gotten recommendations from CAIR, the Council on Islamic Relations. They said, “We didn’t do those either.”

Then I said, “Could I see those recommendations?” I’m really genuinely there, Jan. If a community member has brought a recommendation, I want to see it. I want to weigh, “Is this valid or invalid? What does the rest of the community think? Should we act?”

They never showed me those recommendations from CAIR that they supposedly had. They were using that as a counter as to why we shouldn’t do Jewish inclusion and antisemitism work. I never saw those, and I never got to access them.

But I did end up making our first Arab American Heritage Month at De Anza College and our first Jewish American Heritage Month with our Heritage Month work group. I just moved on. I saw that my supervising dean and my staff were saying, “We’re not going to do anything.” And they actually didn’t do anything and they didn’t support the efforts.

I ended up doing a Jewish Inclusion and Anti-Semitism Summit, bringing several guest speakers in. I went beyond the smaller bubble to the larger community and said, “Who wants to work on actual inclusion and doing some things here that we’ve never done before?”

That’s what I did, and I found people willing. They were like, “Lee, you’re so refreshing. This is what we’ve needed for so many years, and no one’s had the courage to do it.” I wondered, “But why? If that’s what this office is for, why has nobody done it?”

I saw the stranglehold that was there, the fact that you have your supervisor and your office mates saying, “We’re not going to help.” And they really didn’t help with any of those efforts. I’m the kind of person that if I have to, I can go solo and reach a broader audience.

That’s exactly what I did, because it was needed. It was a need that was in the community. I couldn’t just idly stand by after hearing from the community members who came concerned and saying, “Please help us.” I’m there to help and I’m there to serve.

I had a duty at that point to move forward, and I did. Some pretty nasty things were said about me. I was called a dirty Zionist. That lets you know what kind of environment it was. It was an environment where this is the norm and this is how we behave, even though it flies in the face of common decency and professionalism.

Mr. Jekielek:
How do you understand Zionism, just so people know what we’re talking about here?

Dr. Lee:
To me, Zionism is support of Israel and the right of Israel to exist at a base level, and support of Jewish people—their peoplehood and personhood and statehood. That is it in a nutshell. Now, I’m given a very brief definition, and there’s all kinds of Zionism. But in a general sense, that’s what it means to me. If someone has a problem with that, I would say that’s something that we need to educate about and talk about. In what I’ve encountered, there’s a misunderstanding of history among many people.

When we did our Jewish Inclusion and Anti-Semitism Education Summit, it went on for many weeks, and we had a new speaker each week. This was not publicized on the college calendar. It was not pushed out to the students so that they could come and learn. Basically, there was low participation from the actual people that really needed to be learning from these experts and scholars that we brought in.

A few weeks after that, there was a panel presentation. This panel presentation was promoted through all the college networks and on the calendar. The announcement was put out to students. The speakers that were coming had titles like anti-Israel, and anti-Zionist activist. That’s what was promoted over inclusion in antisemitism education. You see a differential treatment of different groups and speakers.

Mr. Jekielek:
This is all in the context of you also organizing an Arab-American Awareness Month. I don’t know if that was promoted or not.

Dr. Lee:
No, actually. I started the Heritage Month Workgroup, and I wanted my supervising dean, and my staff, and everyone to be involved. They declined. I went to the broader community, and we took it to the student government and we said, “This is what we want to do. Can we get your support?”

The student government said, “This is wonderful. We support you.” They actually made a little resolution. They said, “We support the Heritage Month Workgroup and the efforts for inclusion. We feel like this is what we need as a college to make everybody feel like they’re celebrated, welcome, and acknowledged.”

I took it to the academic senate and they said, “No, we’re not going to support that, because it seems like this is part of the Jewish stuff that you’re doing, and you’re trying to turn our school into a religious school.” I said, “Hold on. I’m 100 percent a secular person. I don’t identify as any of the Abrahamic faiths. I’m just someone here to serve. This was a need that was stated. How could you equate Heritage Month with that?”

When I say that there is an entrenched antisemitism, Jan, it is based on actions like that. They say, “We are not going to support one thing, because you’ve done this other thing that we don’t support.” People were openly saying this. It’s unfortunate for the students because it makes the environment unsafe, and I’m not talking about safe spaces and this and that.

It’s literally that if you are a Jewish student in that kind of space you cannot say who you are. If you support Israel, and if you are someone who’s proud of your culture, you have to say no to that in order to be accepted by the dominant group of people here that are so-called progressives. If you’re not willing to sacrifice those parts, you cannot openly be who you are.

That’s what I mean when I say unsafe. That’s a space where not everyone can be their most authentic self. The calendars have already been deleted. They’re gone from the website. We had our 2023-2024 calendars up. The multi-faith calendar, the Heritage Month calendar, the identity recognition days calendar, they’ve scrubbed them. That could have been left as a resource for students and faculty. But it’s just an association, and anything she did must be erased like it was never here.

That’s part of this toxic ideology. We only want one perspective shown. Anything that’s contrary to that, it will be deleted. It will be censored. It won’t be promoted. We will pretend it never happened. We will not speak of it again.

Mr. Jekielek:
Very briefly, what happened in the end? You said you were terminated, so what happened?

Dr. Lee:
I received notice in March that I would not be going to the next phase of tenure. Once again, this was a unanimous decision. The first time it was unanimous, and the second time it was unanimous. The same supervisor was overseeing the process each time, and that person is now retiring. Which is great for the college, but not so great for me because they were able to make that last salvo of making sure that I was eliminated.

Each time I received any kind of evaluation it was literally attacking me for ideological reasons. It was never on pedagogies. It was, “I disagree with what she’s talking about.” It shouldn’t be like that, when you have academic freedom as a professor. But all of that was just writing in a contract, and it didn’t matter in practice. There is no academic freedom if you are not stating the orthodox perspective.

Mr. Jekielek:
Inclusion has almost become a pejorative word in my mind because of the orthodox DEI way of talking about inclusion, which was the work that you were doing. This has been a theme in our discussion, that words are defined differently and in an obscure way that you can’t really know unless you really dig in and find out. This is characteristic of this woke ideology.

Dr. Lee:
Yes. I would say there’s an inversion of words, an intentional inversion of common phrases and words, and things that people have said and talked about for years. You walk in and you hear, “Diversity. Anti-Racism.” You think, “Yes, I’m on board with diversity. Of course I’m against racism.” But that’s not what is meant. It doesn’t mean against racism. It actually means you’re supporting racism and racist policies, when you’re working under the framework of Kendi and DiAngelo and what I call the neo-reconstructionists.

Why I say that term, Jan, is because in the past, race activists and scholars have tried to reconstruct race to be a positive thing, and an empowering thing. If you compare it to the ’60s, that is not what’s happening today. Neo-reconstructionism is reconstructing race in a very negative way. It is reconstructing racism and what that means in a negative way as well.

When we say that racism can only be power plus privilege, that exempts whole groups of people from racist actions. They feel very dignified, even when they’re doing the most racist, terrible, demeaning, and inhumane things to people. They said, “I’m okay to do that because I don’t have the power and the privilege to actually be racist.”

When we start to redefine what these terms mean, even in a different way than the legal definition, that becomes in practice a very toxic and hostile environment, not just for the people that are subjected to it, but for everyone. It’s diminishing all of our humanity. It’s diminishing our ability to connect with one another.

In every interaction with you I’m thinking, “What Jan just said is racist. He showed me a sign that he’s part of that white supremacy culture.” I’m always looking to confirm this bias that’s faulty to begin with. I’m always looking to confirm it in any interaction, saying, “He didn’t shake my hand, but he shook that person’s hand. He’s a racist.”

If we’re constantly doing that to each other, how can we ever connect and make this world a wonderful place that we all want each other and our future generations to be in? We’ve taken this to the extreme. This used to be a very esoteric theory with just certain professors, and now it’s gone into the broader society, and it never should have done that. Now we have to figure out how we can reel back from this, and how we can move forward together in a way that helps us to heal? Because we’ve done so much damage by uncritically embracing this.

Mr. Jekielek:
What is De Anza saying about your termination, as you describe it?

Dr. Lee:
I’m really thankful, Jan, because so many members of the community have written to the board of trustees on my behalf. Other colleagues have even written to the board of trustees saying, “Something happened here that is not quite right. We want an investigation. Can you figure out what has taken place? Dr. Lee shouldn’t be losing her job over these topics, and for the reasons that are being given.” So far, they’ve just really dug in and refuse to be moved by any of the things I presented.

Each time I would get a negative evaluation that was based on purely ideological reasons, I would submit a rebuttal and support from my participant evaluations. When you look at the two, what the participants said about the workshop and what the evaluator said, it was often like they were at two different events. Not only that, all of my workshops were observed and recorded. I would urge the board, “Please look at the recording. You’ll see that it didn’t happen that way.”

But they’ve declined to do that. Anything objective or fact-based has been completely cast out, and there’s no concern about it. No one’s looked at it. If you remember, one of the things that was stated in this position from De Anza that has been publicized, which is so embarrassing for me and humiliating as a teacher, was that I was not cooperative and not collaborative, and that there was no hope that I could ever recover from such a deficit.

The majority of teachers and faculty and staff are decent people. They’ve just been so afraid of the intimidation, the silencing, and the casting out. I even had people who said, “Lee, the one person who did this before, they’re gone. We don’t want you to be gone. We love your approach.” Some of them would say, “Lee, just be quiet. Be quiet until you get your tenure.” I said, “You want me to not ask a question for four years? Then I’m going to pop out and say, ‘Hi, it’s me. I have questions.’ Then it will be too late.”

Some of the changes that were happening were transformative in and of themselves, with the voting members of racial affinity groups that I mentioned earlier. Those are things that can’t be changed. Maybe it could if you made a new amendment, but they’ve changed actual bylaws. These changes are happening rapidly. The individuals that are part of these groups, they’re seizing the moment, they really are. I had a lot of warnings about it, and now unfortunately I am a poster child. That’s not the poster child I wanted to be.

Now, it is said, “Look at what even happened to Lee.” I’ll be used as an example for the people who want to keep a tight hold there, and make sure that this type of thing never happens again. I was an outsider who was hired in. We didn’t touch on that at the beginning. But there was an internal candidate who felt entitled to my position, and this is how all this started. The candidate was a former student, and the mentors of this person were members of my initial tenure committee.

What I say now to friends is that this person embodied the fruits of their labor, because that was the person who called me the white speaker and the whitesplainer. At the beginning, they told me, “This position was supposed to be mine. I don’t know why they selected you. I was a student here. You don’t belong here. I don’t know who you are, and you’re going to have a rough ride.” Then the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism came in and said, “Something’s off here. You guys might want to take a second look. We see some irregularities. Our legal team is prepared to defend you.”

They pulled back in the first year when they were trying to terminate me. Then I served this second year. Again, it was the icing out, the shunning, and the silencing. This whole year has been like that from all quarters. It was like a message was sent out. “Don’t speak to her and don’t respond to her emails.” It’s like you’re in an echo chamber.

My solace was the broader community, the majority of the faculty, and the people who would come to me on one-to-one and say, “Lee, I support you. I see what they’re doing. It’s so wrong. I’m sad that they’re acting this way.” These are people who are tenured and who have been there for many years.

They would rely on me and our whisper channel, saying, “I can’t ask this because I don’t want to deal with the headache, but I know you’ll ask Lee. Could you ask the question?” I said, “Sure, I’ll ask the question. It’s okay to ask a question.” They’d be like, “No, it really isn’t.”

At one point, Jan, in my tenure review meeting this year, I said, “I’m committed to be here.” I’m a product of California Community Colleges. I was a dual enrollment student. I went to community college when I was in middle school and high school, and I took so many credits that I graduated two years early. I said, “This is my life coming full circle and I plan to retire from here.”

I said, “I am not going to leave.” I said, “Some people have been very mean and they’ve been very rude. They’ve been self-righteous and just nasty.” I said, “But I have friends here who counterbalance that for me. I have people who’ve never engaged with my office who are coming out to workshops, and who are getting involved.” I said, “I’m not going to be pushed out. I’m not going to just resign.” I said, “You’re going to have to do something different.”

They did something different, and that was a conversation had with the tenure review community. That kind of conversation shouldn’t be taking place, but that was the environment that was created. I said, “The message needs to be that we can’t just cancel each other. We can’t just tell each other, ‘I don’t like what you said, so we’re not going to work together. I think you may have this perspective, so I want to destroy your career and your livelihood.'” I said, “We can’t treat each other that way.”

I said, “I took this position knowing it’s a DEI position, so I’ve worked with and through adversity. I’m okay with that. It will take time for us to build trust and relation with each other, but I’m committed to that work.” They didn’t come around. Instead it was, “She’s out for sure.” It was a unanimous decision to make sure that I couldn’t advance further.

That’s what that situation was, but I’m someone who is very resilient and resourceful. I’m going to find the good, elevate the good, because we are good. There is still goodness here, even in the darkest place. That’s just how I was raised and how I’ve walked through the world.

I’m thankful for that, because you could become very jaded with this kind of thing and become a hardened person. You could say, “I’m going to fight them like they fought me and be their way.” No, you don’t have to do that. You don’t have to succumb to that kind of pressure.

You can still be a decent person, a loving person, and a kind person. Keep being yourself, even if the people around you and the context around you is something different. I do that by staying grounded and by reaching out to the broader community. One of the orgs I’m with is called Free Black Thought. I don’t know if you’re familiar with them.

Mr. Jekielek:
I’m very familiar with the Free Black Thought. I didn’t even fully realize that you were with them until just the last few days. They have been very helpful to me as an organization for understanding a lot of the issues of the day. I’ll just put in that plug and say thank you to whoever is on the other side of the Free Black Thought social media accounts and the journal. Anyway, please continue.

Dr. Lee:
Yes, that was one of the organizations that I found as I was experiencing all of these things; the shunning, the silencing, and the ostracization that was taking place at De Anza. I found Dr. Sheena Mason’s work through Free Black Thought as well, and then connected with her. I actually brought her to De Anza for an in-person workshop at the beginning of this fall.

Jan, I’ve been asked, “Why did you stay?” The reason why is because when you’re doing this kind of work, small changes are great changes. The small change of someone who had never come to the equity office now getting engaged after being on staff for decades, to me, that’s showing that a change is taking place. It’s small and it’s one person. But then there was another person. Then they would bring another person. That’s how you affect a change.

I knew that, and of course my committee members knew that as well. That’s what enraged them so much. They’re saying, “You’re making the change that we don’t want to make. We want to keep the divisions. We want to keep the victim-oppressor mentality. We want to keep saying that America is founded on white supremacy and that racism is everywhere.”

I was bringing perspectives that were saying, “There’s another way to view that.” I would say, “Not all of us here believe what you’re saying. Can we make a space where we can all feel free to talk?” I don’t want to talk about how I’m a victim, and I’m oppressed, and I should feel guilty, and we need to make reparations, and the grievance-based aspect of things. That’s not what most people want to focus on.

But that’s what we’re being made to focus on, because there’s a small minority who are very loud, intimidating, and they’re bullies. It makes everyone else cower and say, “I don’t want to be labeled. If I say something, then they’re going to tell me I’m on the other side, that I’m on the wrong side, and I shouldn’t be here.” And of course, I want to be here. This is my community.

If it was up to me, I wish a judge or someone could come down and say, “Restore her position. This person was just getting started. We’re not going to let people bully each other out of positions as a community college. Multiple perspectives should be here. It’s okay for people to be different. Let her do the work, as she was just laying the groundwork for it.”

It was really just groundwork, and I hadn’t even gotten started. Imagine if we might just be transforming California if it was given the opportunity. I just wonder to myself, “How many other times has this happened? How many other people never even got to raise a hand and ask a question, because someone saw that her face looked like this and they said, ‘Get her out of here. Make their evaluations disappear.'” What is happening is a subversion of a whole system to advance this ideology that’s so toxic for so many of us.

Mr. Jekielek:
It’s a powerful plea you’re making here, and I find myself moved by what you’re saying. It’s very much the spirit in which I view the world, yet you’re out of a job. What is next for you here?

Dr. Lee:
Jan, when I made this decision to go public, if you will, I conferred with my mentors first. They told me, “Lee, if you talk about this, you will not get another tenure track position in California. You would have to move to another state, you are done here.”

I had to weigh that, because I have a family. I have all of these things that I’m working on career-wise. The tenure track is why I got my doctorate. I became a doctorate of education so I could be a professor, and be in the academic freedom world and support people.

This was ideological skinning and quartering. They’re holding me up as an example of, “You will comply with us and you won’t ask questions.” That wasn’t something that felt right to me at this moment in history. Too many of us were just quietly resigning, going along, going with the flow, and keeping our benefits and checks coming. We live paycheck to paycheck. We don’t want to make that a concern for our family or for us. So, we just go along with it.

I’ve even had teachers tell me, “I don’t go to the academic senate. I don’t want to go to your office. I teach my students. I don’t get involved with any of this other stuff. I close my door and I teach.”

That’s what so many of us are doing right now. We’re just closing our door, and we’re making that small impact with our students, but the broader system is just being destroyed and dismantled right before our eyes. We’re complicit in that, because we’re not saying anything. We’re not raising any questions. We’re not raising an objection. We’re just doing our small little thing in our classroom, and the world around us is literally being lit on fire.

I realized the urgency of it. I said, “I’m going to speak out. I’m going to speak about what has happened, and I’m going to have the courage to do that so that others will do it.” Now, what is the consequence? I have lost my job and my livelihood. I’ve lost the tenure track, the two years that I’ve put in. I’ve lost my health insurance. I’ve lost everything basically, and that’s tough.

But what I’ve gained is so many people coming and saying, “Thank you for having the courage. Thank you for raising the issue.” They’ve said, “You inspired me to ask about my equity policy. You inspired me to go into my child’s school and to ask to see that curriculum, and to make a Public Records Act request if needed, if people aren’t forthcoming with the information I’m seeking. You’ve inspired me to push back when I wasn’t going to and I hadn’t in the past.” To me, that is worth everything, because that is what it’s going to take to take our nation back.

To inspire each other, we have to ask the questions, and we have to make the time. What I hear, Jan, is a lot of talk about dismantling, destroying, and tearing down systems. What no one has been able to articulate to me yet is what comes after that.

From what I’ve experienced and what I’ve seen, what comes after that is not going to be something that all of us will want for ourselves or for our future. It’s going to be something that is authoritarian, totalitarian, and that is the reverse of everything that we’ve built.

This is an imperfect experiment. It is a grand experiment, and it’s a worthwhile experiment. It’s something that’s worth advocating for. It’s worth protecting. It’s worth taking the time to find out what’s happening in your local public school or private school, and what’s being told to those students, the faculty, and the staff there.

So much has been seized upon at this moment. People call it the racial reckoning, and we’re going to right the wrongs of the past. Maybe we’ve gone too far too uncritically, and now it’s time to bring us back to where we can talk to each other. The civil discourse has almost disappeared.

We need to get together and talk. We need to have different perspectives available in a learning environment for our students and for their wellbeing. If you have one perspective and one lens to view everything through, that is the definition of indoctrination. When we no longer have critical thinking and multiple perspectives available for people to make their own educated decisions, that’s problematic.

That goes against all of the democratic principles that we have that are supposed to be guiding us. As a public school educator, you take an oath to protect the Constitution. That should be real and that should be front and center in everything that we do.

Mr. Jekielek:
What a powerful message. How can people reach you?

Dr. Lee:
I do serve as a board member for Free Black Thought. That’s one place you’ll always be able to find me. I do have a website. It’s drtlee.com. It’s just my little personal website that I’ve always had. Not much up there, but I do consulting as well. As you touched on before, there’s been a lot of people coming to me now and saying, “We’re interested in your perspective. How would we do this at our school? What resources could we use?”

I’ve got to meet so many amazing people who are doing things in the DEI world that are not this default stuff. They’re not talking about racism being systemic. They’re not talking about victims and oppressors. They’re talking about human dignity, free will, and agency. How do we join together as communities?

There’s many people doing the work, but they’re not mainstream, so you don’t see them promoted. They’re not part of the multi-billion dollar DEI industry. They’re on the fringes, and that’s something that Free Black Thought elevates. They elevate heterodox thinkers.

Because when we’re talking about victims and oppressors, we’re going to make changes towards equity and equal outcomes. What you don’t see is a piece of measurement and accountability to go along with that. If you’re not having measurement, accountability, and evaluation, then what are you doing with all of the public funding that’s going in to fuel these efforts? How does the public know what’s happening with that funding?

That’s something that people need to start looking into, and asking questions more about, using the Public Records Act, and other mechanisms that we still have to ask for that accountability if it’s not forthcoming.

Mr. Jekielek:
As we finish up, what would be your suggestions to people, parents, teachers, and anybody who’s concerned about these realities in our society today?

Dr. Lee:
I would strongly encourage people, Jan, to keep asking questions, even if you’re the only person in the room raising a hand. Because often, when we’re hearing these words; racial equity, diversity, and inclusion, many of us have questions about that. But we’re in environments where some of the people act like no one should be questioning it, and we should all be on the same page.

What I’ve learned is that there are many lenses to view these topics through. There’s not just one. So often, in so many settings, it’s almost like there’s a default explanation or understanding of things, and that no one questions it because it’s repeated so often. We all just say, “Okay, I’ve heard that before. I’ll just go along with it. No one else is questioning it.” If someone tries to tell you that you shouldn’t be questioning, then that’s your key or indicator that you’re on the right path.

Because only in settings that are authoritarian, where there isn’t freedom of expression, can you not ask a question. That’s how we learn, through dialogue in communication with each other. So much of what we see in our world around us right now is just one way. Then we all say, “Okay, that’s the perspective. This is what the expert has said.”

But experts are not perfect or infallible. They’re human beings as well. I hear a lot of people talking about cultural humility. What I would really love to see us embrace in our academic, civic worlds, and everywhere else is intellectual humility and the idea that not one of us has all of the answers. We are all exploring and trying to figure it out together.

No one has the magic solution, the magic bullet, or the magic framework. We all need to get back to the magic of learning from one another, being in community and dialogue with one another, being able to disagree with someone, but still working with that person.

I don’t know what happened with that, but it seems like nowadays, if I disagree with you, it’s like I want to cancel you, and you shouldn’t exist here or anywhere else. That is so toxic.

I’d like to see us get back to more compassion-based, more communication-based, more dialogue-based interaction, and more of an inquiry-based approach. What are some possibilities we haven’t even seen yet? What are some ways that are out there that are being suppressed, because we’re being told there’s only one way?

That’s what I would like to see more of, an encouragement of multiple perspectives and critical thinking. Sometimes it can feel intimidating, “That’s the school. They’re the authority. I shouldn’t ask them anything because they’re educators.”

They are there to serve you. You are the paying public. Your tax dollars are what makes that institution possible, so they have a responsibility and a duty to answer your questions.

Mr. Jekielek:
Tabia Lee, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.

Dr. Lee:
Thank you.

Mr. Jekielek:
Since this interview was recorded, Dr. Lee has filed a lawsuit against De Anza. We reached out to the community college, which declined to comment specifically, but said faculty members have comprehensive due process and appeal rights.
Thank you all for joining Tabia Lee and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek.

This interview was edited for clarity and brevity.