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Yesterday, I attended a faculty and staff listening session hosted by the campus executive council. What struck me most during this town hall were the many colleagues seeking answers and reassurances (receiving neither) about how to best protect queer and trans students, staff, and faculty from not only the Trump administration, but also the North Dakota legislature — both of which are actively targeting, dehumanizing, and attempting to erase LGBTQ+ communities from society. Again and again, colleagues asked the executive council how the university plans to handle laws designed to discriminate against queer and trans members of the campus community. And each time this concern was raised, the executive council, which is mostly male and mostly white, responded with we will follow the law.* We. Will. Follow. The. Law. We will follow the law landed darkly and reminded me of the good Germans who reported Jewish and LGBTQ+ people to Nazis (original recipe, not our current Trump-Musk variety). Law-abiding Germans looked the other way as Nazis rounded up Jewish and LGBTQ+ people and sent them to concentration camps. Good, law-abiding Germans enabled genocide. Moreover, in the United States, slavery was the law of the land for hundreds of years, and segregation was legal for at least an additional century. At what point do we stop following unjust laws, laws designed to discriminate, dehumanize, and cleanse people from society? We. Will. Follow. The. Law. This response from the campus executive council was bone-chilling and highlighted the limits of allyship. Allyship is rarely unwavering, nearly always conditional. Allies have the privilege of dropping their allyship as soon as they face any challenge, any test of their mettle.
For me, this executive council listening session resurfaced a question I've returned to again and again since the 2024 Election: Are allies worth the effort when allies can and often do sell you out to protect themselves at the slightest inconvenience? I've spent my post-academic life working toward LGBTQ+ equity, inclusion, and belonging — encouraging straight folks to become allies and advocates for queer and trans communities. Over the years, I've received threats and slurs from colleagues on college and corporate campuses. But I continued to coach one-on-one and facilitate workshops on allyship because I believed the work was important and would lead to a better, more inclusive world. But we are experiencing the regrowth of fascism at an alarming rate through Trump's executive orders, general Republican bigotry, and the indifference of good white people — and now I'm no longer sure allyship is worth the time and energy. So in this atmosphere of rapidly rising fascism and waining allyship, I am winding down Creighton Brown Consulting, which offered individual LGBTQ+ professional development and organizational workshops, to focus on Rough-Draft Thinking, which will explore my thoughts on queer and trans inclusion and other curiosities. The next post will be (hopefully?) lighter in tone. Though I will always be me and will to a fault speak up. Here are a few things that have exercised my curiosity, caused me to reflect, and delighted me lately:
I look forward to you joining me on this journey — and would love your recommendations! Thank you very much for your time. If you have recommendations or curiosities, please fill out this nifty contact form. Sending y’all supportive, well-caffeinated vibes, Creighton Today’s Pen(cil): Sharpie [Permanent Marker] * The listening session was recorded and distributed via campus email.
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