These racist, homophobic, transphobic, white supremacist posters are showing up all around campus and I am taking them down!

The five values and norms of the Heterodox Way are aimed to discourage inclusion and belonging.

Let’s face it. People from historically marginalized communities on campus do not have the luxury and resources to converse with white, Western, masculine, upper-class, able-bodied, heteronormative, cisnormative, privileged white supremacists whose assumptions are grounded in white, Western, masculine, upper-class, able-bodied, heteronormative, cisnormative, and other dominant culture structures and practices that are exclusionary to those individuals from different lived experiences.

How can we be expected to use evidence, when objective evidence is a white colonialist phenomenon that is not based on our lived experience? There are other ways of knowing.

How can we be expected to be intellectually charitable and humble after being victimized for centuries by the privileged, white, Western, masculine, upper-class, able-bodied, heteronormative, cisnormative, white supremacists?

How can we be constructive when being constructive perpetuates the power differential between the privileged and the victims? We must be destructive before we construct a socially just world.

The most pernicious and dangerous value and norm of the Heterodox Way is the last one: “Be Yourself.” This undermines our goal of inclusion and belonging. Inclusion and belonging depends on identity and intersectionality. Individuality is toxic to the collective. Individuality is toxic to belonging. Individuals do not belong in a perfect world.

After I tore down the hurtful and harmful posters, I noticed that more posters went up, and so I tore them down too. If more go up, I will tear them down too.  I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny . . . and I say . . .  censorship today . . .censorship tomorrow . . . censorship forever.

If we want to have inclusion and belonging, we must not only celebrate censorship but actively censor the white, Western, masculine, upper-class, able-bodied, heteronormative, cisnormative, privileged white supremacists who discourage inclusion and belonging!