Students rally to keep director of university’s African American studies program

At least 100 students at Loyola University in New Orleans last week protested the firing of the director of its African and African American Studies program. The protests came after the university’s decision last fall not to renew the contract of assistant professor R. Scott Heath, a move many students and staff advocating for Heath call unjust.

“This is a clear attack on DEI at Loyola,” Carson Cruse, a sophomore and president of the university’s Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter, said during the rally, using the abbreviation for diversity, equity and inclusion.

Students marched on campus to the administration building and protested for almost two hours, demanding that university officials reconsider dismissing Heath, a faculty member for four years and the English department’s only Black professor. Students and other faculty members say Heath’s dismissal puts the future of the University’s Black studies program in doubt, because he is its sole faculty member.

Heath teaches about culture, music, literature, film and the African diaspora. Some of his courses include “Octavia Butler Now! Reading Race, Gender and Critical Futures,” “Reading Black Public Culture,” and “American Playlist: Black Writing and Sound.”

The administration confirmed last November that Heath’s contract would not be renewed but did not give him a “straight answer” why, Heath told NBC News. One fellow professor said he was told that there were student complaints, but he said the details of those claims were not shared with him.

The university cannot comment on “specific personnel matters,” Rachel Hoorman, Loyola’s vice president of marketing and communications, said in a statement to NBC News. Each department is responsible for reviewing and making recommendations on their colleagues’ tenure and contract renewals.

Heath said he learned he lost his position with a 3-2 vote from within the English department. He suspects the decision was prompted by an emergency trip to North Carolina in September to coordinate the funeral of a lifelong friend, Brian Horton, a director of jazz studies at North Carolina Central University.

“My friend, he had no immediate family,” Heath said. “His mother and father had passed years ago. His sister had passed years ago — and I was the closest person.”

Heath said he immediately notified the English department and students of the situation and “kept in touch with my students remotely” while he was away. But while he was in North Carolina for 10 days, Heath said he missed the deadline to renew his contract, which he must do annually. The English department did offer Heath an extension but did not provide a new deadline. Heath said he tried submitting his materials to the department in October and January, but “they just didn’t respond,” he said.

Heath learned his contract would not be renewed by the English department in late October. That decision was confirmed in early November in a letter sent from the dean, Maria Calzada. Heath said he believed it “is possible” that his dismissal was planned. Calzada did not provide a comment to NBC News, but pointed to the university’s statement from Hoorman.

“This experience is just a reminder that there are a lot of institutional bodies that see Black people, Black faculty as disposable — replaceable,” Heath said. “It’s one thing to be uncomfortable in a workspace. But there are some people who have gone to lengths to let me know that I’m unwanted.”

One of the two professors who voted in Heath’s favor is Mark Yakich, who has taught at Loyola for 16 years.

During the first faculty meeting the English department had about Heath last year, Yakich said the department chair, Timothy Welsh, wanted the group to submit a decision to the dean, despite not having Heath’s contract renewal materials. The dean, Yakich said, called an “informal formal” meeting in March with Yakich and four other English professors and provided a list of things Heath “had done or not done with respect to his job and performance.” However, Yakich said he never saw the alleged complaints from students about Heath’s teaching performance and that there was “always some kind of excuse for why we couldn’t see these things,” Yakich said.

Welsh told NBC News that he could not comment on the matter beyond the statement Hoormann provided.

Sophomore sociology major Camilla Johnson took Heath’s “Reading Black Public Culture” class while he taught remotely from North Carolina. Johnson, 20, said that during that period, Heath was on top of communicating with students about the lessons for each day.

“I truly believe that he made the best possible decision as a professor as he could as someone in that situation,” Johnson said.

Having witnessed Heath’s passion for teaching, Yakich said he voted for his contract to be renewed and also signed the petition demanding that the university keep him on staff.

“I want to support the students, too, and what’s most beneficial for them,” Yakich said. “And him leaving doesn’t seem like it.”

Students like Crow Carson, a sophomore English major, soon learned that Heath did not have any classes scheduled for next semester. Carson said that when Heath confirmed he was let go, the news incited “a lot of feelings in me,” Carson, 21, said.

Carson, who is white and uses they/them pronouns, said they chose to attend Loyola because of its racially diverse student body, the opposite of what they experienced growing up in Connecticut. Heath is also the first Black teacher Carson has had.

“He shouldn’t be the only Black professor in the department to begin with,” they said. “He shouldn’t be the only professor teaching African American studies. Him … getting fired is only, you know — it’s a symptom of a problem that has been ongoing at the school.”

Carson took several of Heath’s classes, including one about Afrofuturism titled “Hashtag Africa: Speculative Fictions of the #Black Diaspora.”

“He’s so passionate about” teaching Black culture, Carson said. “When you have a passionate professor, it’s so much easier to learn from them.”

Hoormann said the university’s “commitment to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in our faculty remains strong,” and Loyola is “conducting several searches with the goal of continuing to add to the diversity of the faculty and expanding the African and African American Studies program, starting in the fall of 2023.”

Last week, Carson, Cruse, Johnson and other students signed an open letter calling for the university to reinstate Heath, which garnered over 600 signatures.

In an email sent to students on Friday morning, the university’s president, Justin Daffron, said that he is reviewing Heath’s case, “including interviewing all key leaders involved in making the current recommendation.” He added that “as part of that assessment, I am taking extensive steps and consulting with experts to ensure that we are acting in a manner that is true to our values and equity-minded.”

Heath said he filed an appeal with the university’s conciliation committee to reverse the English department’s decision. He said the experience has had a negative impact on both his mental and physical health, including his diabetes.

In all of this, Heath also said he has not had the opportunity to grieve the loss of his friend. “I feel like it is an insult to my loss,” he said. While he didn’t tell his students to get involved in the situation, Heath said he appreciates them standing up for him. “They’re more fearless than I am.”

Aside from his appreciation for his students, Heath said teaching Black studies is “necessary,” especially in a time when “Black people are under attack across the nation.”

Black studies are also not just for Black students, he added, but benefits all students who learn the history of Black people.

“I don’t think you can understand what’s happening in the United States right now, or in the world, without understanding it through a Black lens,” he said.