A Letter to Dean Chris Waters, Associate Deans, and Faculty Regarding the Ongoing antiBlack Racism at Windsor Law & University of Windsor at Large
By: Josh Lamers
Tags: Law, Anti Black Racism, Discrimination, University Of Windsor, Law School

A Letter to Dean Chris Waters, Associate Deans, and Faculty Regarding the Ongoing antiBlack Racism at Windsor Law & University of Windsor at Large Josh Lamers Nov 9, 2020·20 min read

“As Josh shifts into the field of law, his goal is to truly disrupt the understanding of what the law is and can do for Black life from a rigorous and sustained stance within the Black radical tradition, Black feminisms, and decolonial paradigms.”

Do you remember this one sentence, Dean Chris Waters? This one sentence is the little secret you and I shared the day you mostly read my biography when the Faculty of Law awarded me the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Award. By that I mean, the biography I submitted at the request of the Committee is one I usually use, adding sentences and making changes when necessary. For the most part it stays the same over the years, and so it’s noticeable when something new I add goes…missing.

When you read my biography, you read almost every single word. Except you paused at that one sentence, hesitated, redacted that one sentence, and said: “Give it up for Josh Lamers.” I remember because not only did it stick out to me, I’m known for a detailed memory. Don’t believe me? Directly from the words of the antiBlack complaint one of your students put me through this past summer, the investigator stated this: “I also found Josh Lamers to be credible. His evidence reflected a remarkable memory for detail and which was mostly corroborated by the witnesses and documentary evidence.”

“Redaction comes to us most familiarly through those blacked-out “sensitive lines” in certain government documents that contain information we are not allowed to read…it again became clear to me that so much of Black intramural life and social and political work is redacted, made invisible to the present and future, subtended by plantation logics, detached optics, and brutal architectures. There is, in the Black diaspora (and I include the Continent here because of colonial histories and presents and trans*migration) a long history of Black life, of Black lives being annotated and redacted. There is, as well, continuous resistance to and disruption of those violent annotations and redactions.” (Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, pg. 113–114).

Much lives in what is redacted, left out, hidden behind closed doors, and in complaints couched in unofficial confidentiality directives. As a Black queer child welfare survivor, I am quite familiar with how white supremacy works to keep things secret; redacted. For me Black family lives behind redacted child protection documents, so I’m attuned to the way an institution will do all it can to remove the truth. An upbringing in redaction with white supremacist antiBlack imposition, if you will.

I’d ask you what it was about that one sentence that brought you to redact both it and me — practitioner of the Black radical tradition, Black feminisms, and decolonial paradigms. But some law students at Windsor Law, as well as yourself and some of your faculty, have provided me my answer. But let me not redact: so too does the conduct of the University of Windsor administration provide me my answer, with President Robert Gordon at the helm and Vice-President, Student Experience Ryan Flannagan playing sidekick. Let’s not forget about the white student this duo failed to address in the School of Social Work where he was harassing and threatening Black and racialized women, or the absolutely abhorrent process Jordan Afolabi was put through.

Under your nose, one of your students said the n-word last year during our Orientation Week — and orient I did. It shouldn’t be shocking that a white woman student did that given one of your non-Black faculty did the same thing in a class just months later, or were you trying to redact that in your ambiguous statement released in February this year regarding the anti-Black racism in our law school? Does that mean I shouldn’t talk about that one time one of your faculty members sat back and watched three white men yell at me in class for merely asking a question, and her justification for doing so was that I was “too radical”? There’s no way you forget, because we had a meeting about this, and remember when that faculty member got upset because she thought because she called me too radical privately that I couldn’t have that anti-Blackness addressed? The urge to redact is endemic at this university, just as much as the non-Black fetish with the n-word. So many answers as to why that one sentence is a problem for you, and a problem here at the University of Windsor.

“But slavery was not singular; it was, rather, a singularity — a weather event or phenomenon likely to occur around a particular time, date or set of circumstances. Emancipation did not make free Black life free; it continues to hold us in that singularity. The brutality was not singular; it was the singularity of antiblackness. In what I’m calling the weather, antiblackness is pervasive as climate.” (Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, Chapter 4: the Weather, pg. 106).

Dr. Christina Sharpe’s words explain these answers, should it not have been plain and obvious in the above examples. For acting as a meteorologist and naming the pervasive climate of antiBlackness in the Faculty of Law and campus at large, we find ourselves in this current moment where your law students have escalated their tactics of antiBlack harassment directed towards me. AntiBlack racism, antiBlack homophobia, and antiBlack sanist rhetoric developing a long ledger of hateful and fragile words because I believe that Black people deserve more and better than the n-word, among many things that take place for Black life on this campus.

“Bitch”

“Crucifying”

“Aggressive”

“Too loud”

“Terrorist”

“Mentally ill and deranged”

“Emotional terrorist”

“Skilled sociopath”

“Extremist”

“Outlandish”

“He caused social anxiety and discomfort from the student body”

“If people are engaging you certain way it’s because they hate you on your own merit because you’re terrible”

“He has definitive anger issues…he was belligerent”

“I feel like his behaviour is detrimental.”

“Many people have been victimized”

“There is nothing positive I can say about him…It is detrimental to everyone including the school”

These are the words of your law students in response to the naming of antiBlack racism, transphobia, antiBlack homophobia, and antiBlack sanism. This is the evidence that your law students, and the University of Windsor, wishes to redact from public view through emails demanding I remove the evidence of the antiBlack vexatious complaint from social media. My resistance to redaction earned me white men law students surveilling my social media, and messaging me calling me a “bully”.

“Decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is clearly an agenda for total disorder. But it cannot be accomplished by the wave of a magic wand, a natural cataclysm, or a gentlemen’s agreement. Decolonization, we know, is an historical process…Decolonization, therefore implies the urgent need to thoroughly challenge the colonial situation…Challenging the colonial world is not a rational confrontation of viewpoints. It is not discourse on the universal, but the impassioned claim by the colonized that their world is fundamentally different.” (Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, pg. 2–6)

But the escalation of antiBlack vocabulary flung in my direction in our current moment is particularly revealing of the colonial situation at Windsor Law. For publicizing Women and Gender Studies professors Ashley Glassburn and Pauline Phipps use of the n-word, I had law students once again message me on social media. This was despite the fact that I made absolutely zero mention of the law school or law students in those posts.

One identifiable white man called me a bully again, and added on “career temper tantrum” and “emotional terrorist.” I also received messages from two separate anonymous accounts which said some of the following things:

“You’re so mentally ill, it’s actually hilarious haha. We’re all laughing at you in this program [law]. What’s funny is that you think you’re so smart, bitch you aint! lol *laughing emoji* You really don’t see that you’re 1) likely not going to graduate (because you’re so stupid and self destructive) and 2) Even if you do your reputation is fucked. Nobody is going to want to work with you in any professional level…”

“The malignant narcissism with this one lol…You’re a punchline outside of your little circle…We’re going to excel. You on the other hand…I really hope your “Okay Werk” podcast does well, cause that’s the only “werk” you’re ever gonna get bitch lol *laughing emoji*”

“This book tells the story of how race gets written into the definition of mental illness. It uncovers the surprising ways anxieties about racial differences shape clinical encounters….the book explores the processes through which American society equates race and insanity…in unintended and often invisible ways, psychiatric definitions of insanity continue to police racial hierarchies, tensions, and unspoken codes in addition to separating normal from abnormal behaviour. Sometimes, the boundaries of sanity align closely with the perceived borders of the racial status quo. Mainstream culture then defines threats to racial order as a form of madness that is, still, overwhelmingly located in the minds and bodies of black men.” (Johnathan M. Metzel, The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease, p. ix)

This is the rhetoric coming from your law students, people who will be dealing directly with Black clients, making policies regarding Black life, and likely make claims to care about Black people. Some are even teaching assistants to Black students and for professors who publish scholarship about antiBlack racism. This is the response that my refusal to redact the antiBlack climate at Windsor Law receives. Your students consider themselves “victims” when asked to be accountable to Black life and to address their antiBlack racism.

But imagine my surprise last week when I read a student’s statement as they resigned from their role due to the antiBlack racism and unethical and immoral conduct of the Student Law Society. After the Student Law Society released a faculty-wide email last Monday morning stating a special meeting would occur to address the “situation with 2L Windsor Law student Josh Lamers…” and then proceeded to bar the public and law students from participating, including me, the next day the student resigned. In her letter read this: “I was told that one of the actions taken by the Executives was to reach out to the Faculty of Law administration and to ask Dean Chris Waters about the nature of the document and whether it was considered to be confidential and private. I was told that the Dean confirmed the private and confidential nature of the document and that afterwards, the Executives made their decision.”

The Student Law Society participated in its own unethical attempt to redact the evidence of the report posted by another Black student in our Windsor All-Year Facebook group. But shockingly, I come to find out that you, who is actually bound by the confidentiality written on that front cover, are speaking to students — specifically a student body meant to represent my interests — about a complaint process that your administration spent the past four months threatening me with unofficial confidential directives.

When you, Dean Chris Waters who has a fiduciary duty to protect me as a Black queer student and to deal with issues that fall squarely within the Ontario Human Rights Code, went and did this I’m not sure you understand fully and completely the impact of your actions. You see, your students think it is bullying and harassment to inform the public of things they said in that report, and things they said about me. Despite some of the very things taught to us in class about fair comment and public interest in knowing truth. Their justification: Dean Chris Waters said that the front cover was marked private and confidential. You have once again found yourself participating in the redaction of me — practitioner of the Black radical tradition, Black feminisms, and decolonial paradigms.

By now, I’m sure you know just how seriously students are taking this situation given the town hall last Saturday. Where students demanded that various Student Law Society elected representatives step down for their breaches of our Constitution and By-Laws, and for their failure to protect me, a Black queer student activist, and for their failure to represent the interests of radical Black students.

In all this time, with your announcement of an investigation and how “serious Windsor Law takes antiBlack racism,” and with you breaching your fudiciary duty to protect my Black queer life, not once have I heard from you. Maybe if you had engaged me before doing all of the above, I would have told you that the very antiBlack Black student you are all working so hard to protect (hidden in redaction) technically admitted to running around campus and actually attempted to run a “hate campaign” against me and have me isolated — for naming and addressing antiBlack racism. I would have told you about the running list of antiBlack designations coming from your students over the past year and a half — for naming and addressing antiBlack racism.

I also would have told you that the very complaint process I was put through was fundamentally flawed and unethically conducted. While I voiced serious concerns about the investigator, and the process itself, little did I know that by posting the excerpts of the report more truths would come out. Specifically, one student recognized that a section was referring to their witness evidence. However, when they read the report the words were not fully and completely theirs despite the investigator claiming them to be direct quotes. Luckily, this student was smart enough to record themself when giving evidence. Turns out the investigator cut portions to make it sound like the student was condemning me when in fact the student was naming the very antiBlack rhetoric being used against me, and their disagreement with this rhetoric (more redaction). Since the student knew one of the other students who gave witness evidence, that other student was flagged to the issue of essentially doctored evidence. While this other student didn’t record themself, they too read what the investigator claimed to be their statements. This other student also noticed the doctored quality, whereby certain sentences were removed to make it appear like the student was condemning me.

These errors were on top of other errors such as the investigator refusing to engage any social context evidence I submitted, meanwhile she engaged the antiBlack Black law student citing PsychologyToday to call me an emotional terrorist. She also refused to engage certain law students who could evidence that the antiBlack Black law student who launched the vexatious complaint against me was actively harassing me all year long, and who could evidence that the narrative coming from herself and another law student in the complaint process was not true. She made absolutely zero determination about the antiBlack racism, antiBlack homophobia, and antiBlack sanism I specifically named and raised as per the Ontario Human Rights Code.

By the way, one of your own faculty members was the adjudicator of my appeal for the counter-complaint I submitted and he didn’t believe these procedural errors, nor the others outlined in my appeal, necessitated an appeal. While he may not have known that the investigator doctored the evidence by altering statements, overwhelmingly Windsor Law in various ways has shown that it will not protect Black queer students. That Black students who speak out in defence of Black life and in the pursuit of Black liberation are to be molested in these kinds of ways, while receiving promotional emails about “social justice” and “access to justice.” Redacted over and over, while never considering that by never adequately addressing the ongoing antiBlackness that maybe your students are escalating in their harassment of me precisely because they know you will not protect me. Nothing about Windsor Law tells me, or them, or any Black student protesting our current moment that Windsor Law takes Black life seriously. Maybe this is why the unidentified accounts said they are all laughing.

“Here, look, it has always seemed impossible to talk or write about this because so many people lived it and many were injured more, more painfully because colonial war is physical and mental harm, so many that I hesitate to write because writing is claiming all the pain and I cannot claim all the pain and because luck and being able to — like a writer — carve out a place where pain is transcended…So each time I speak I must say mine was not the only terror…” (Dionne Brand, Bread Out of Stone, p. 85).

I don’t believe all of the above is spectacular. My experience is not an anomaly. As I experience being redacted, and resist redaction, I often find I come to know the hidden and hushed histories. So many Black students have come to me with their own stories. 3Ls and 2Ls who describe their classmates using the n-word. Black students who describe being afraid to speak out due to fear of reprimand, and an anxiety borne from the civility discourse woven into Black redaction. Radical students messaging me detailing their own appellations. Maybe this is also why collectively these students are coming together to collectively respond, with radical Black students leading the charge whom I shall not name in order to protect them from online harassment. BLSA Canada, BLSA Windsor, various Windsor Law student groups, Law student groups from other campuses, and various community members have condemned these conditions. We all demand that you do more than placate and redirect.

Since I refuse any further redaction and its periphery technologies, my letter to you is published. I will not allow any other Black student be tricked into believing that we are safe in your hallways just because diversity and equity are posted on the walls. I won’t allow other Black students to think that we are alone and should languish in silence as we are outraged at the antiBlack climate we are told to engage “civilly”.

Below are the specific and precise demands I have. I do not pretend that they all will ameliorate the antiBlack precipitation currently at Windsor Law and University of Windsor, but they are more than fair enough as a start at getting to the arteries and extremities of the antiBlack racism happening on this campus.

Investigation-Related Demands

Demand#1: You, Dean Chris Waters, will recuse yourself from any engagement with the investigation regarding the harassment I’m experiencing, including the choice of investigator. You will allow the Associate Deans, and any relevant faculty, to deal with the process. This is directly because you’ve communicated without my consent about matters related to the complaint process to other students, whilst simultaneously doing nothing to address the antiBlack, antiBlack homohphobic, and antiBlack sanist conditions in that report.

Demand#2: You, Dean Chris Waters, will willingly relinquish any communications that were the topic of my complaint process between you and any member of the Student Law Society, or law student not directly involved in the complaint process. This is to allow the investigator to see the full extent of what was disclosed to these above identified parties while you breached your fiduciary duty as Dean to protect me.

Demand#3: The scope of the announced investigation will be specific and as follows: the scope will specifically investigate the antiBlack, antiBlack homophobic, and antiBlack sanist harassment of me. This will include both online and offline conduct, and will allow for matters deemed relevant to the escalating nature of the antiBlack, antiBlack homphobic, and antiBlack sanist harassment. The scope will not be used in a general nature to look into “online harassment”, especially given the rhetoric coming from SLS as a direct result of you disclosing matters. The scope of the investigation will include defining what is meant to be the appropriate and ethical boundary between the Student Law Society and Faculty of Law administration. Absolutely no student will be made to sign any confidentiality agreement, or threatened for disclosing the process of the investigation. The investigative process will be governed closely by relevant and operating laws, including (but not limited to) tests into witness credibility, and discrimination on the grounds of race, sexual orientation, and disability.

Demand#4: The results of the investigation will be made public and accessible to all students, staff, faculty, and community members through the Windsor Law website. I expect that names and specific situations will be removed, but that the report will outline in a general way the events, conditions, as well as recommendations that Windsor Law will adhere to. Part of the investigative process, particularly the recommendations, should include the possibility of a more general investigation in the future that looks into the experiences of other students who address issues of antiBlack racism, anti-Indigenous racism, racism, xenophobia, transphobia, homophobia, ableism, sanism, and sexism. However, this current investigation will not be turned into an equity, diversity, inclusion free-for-all.

Demand#5: I will be given a list of names of the possible investigators, who will all reflect an expertise in antiBlack racism. While I will not choose a specific investigator, I have a right to rule out any investigator especially after the conduct of the last university-chosen investigator. My ruling out will be reasonable, and grounded in an assessment of their expertise in antiBlack racism and any possible conflict of interest.

Faculty of Law

Demand#6: The Faculty of Law will amend its policies on classroom and student conduct to specifically name antiBlack racism, and condemn the various forms it takes in these settings (ex: calling a Black student terrorist for naming antiBlack racism). This will include the various forms of discipline that can occur should students engage in antiBlack racism. These policies will be directly embedded into every syllabus and faculty will be required to read these sections and engage in class discussion about it at the beginning of the semester, just as they read policies about plagiarism.

Demand#7: The Faculty of Law will commit to the creation of one scholarship for a Black student that funds at least one academic year. However, given the salaries of faculty and the clear ability to fundraise, I do not expect it would be difficult to create a renewable scholarship. Upon graduation, the scholarship could once again be open for application. Do not be afraid to make more than one. The criteria of the scholarship will include a clear dedication to Black liberation through evidenced community work for Black communities. Grades should not weigh heavily as a factor, and instead an essay on the topic of Black liberation, the Black radical tradition, Black feminisms, and their relationship to the law should weigh more alongside evidenced community work. The deciding committee for the scholarship will be strictly Black people, whether students or faculty, or faculty-designated community members.

Demand#8: The Faculty of Law will offer the Child Protection course in the 2021–2022 year, and hire a Black child protection lawyer to teach it. I came into law strictly to learn this information. Myself and other child welfare survivors are tired of self-teaching ourselves, and given the current state of the law school I think deserve at least this one form of compensation. Should you not know any Black child protection lawyers, I will happily refer some to you.

Demand#9: The Faculty of Law will endorse the demands of RAACES. Specifically, the Faculty of Law will implement necessary curriculum changes to include Black scholarship and curriculum about anti-Black racism throughout multiple courses. A curriculum review and report shall be conducted from now until mid-Winter semester highlighting the gaps and areas to include this scholarship. The Faculty of Law will develop and implement in a timely manner at least two courses specifically on antiBlack racism and Black scholarship, and will be taught only by Black lecturers. These courses will be offered every semester. The Faculty of Law will hire at least three Black faculty in cluster-hire format and with long-term contracts, and with clear indication of expertise in anti-Black racism scholarship. Timelines regarding the development and implementation for these courses and curriculum changes, and hirings, will be announced and will reflect the urgency and dedication the Faculty of Windsor continuously cites in their announcements.

Demand#10: The Faculty of Law will create a well-funded low barrier Black student initiative fund. This fund will allow Black law students to create and implement different projects related to anti-Black racism in all its multiplicities. The criteria will allow either individual Black students, or Black student groups/teams to submit applications. Only Black staff, faculty, students or community members will be adjudicators for applications. Applications will be read in a general way when it comes addressing anti-Black racism, and will allow for diverse approaches. This includes the creation of Black-only spaces, such as Black student healing spaces. This fund will be implemented by the Fall 2021 semester.

Demand#11: The Faculty of Law will restructure the Indigenous Legal Orders course to dedicate at least three weeks throughout the year to the topics of Black and Indigenous Solidarity/Co-Conspiratorship and Black Indigeneity. The reality is one of the most recent people to say the n-word was an Indigenous faculty member. Last year it was an Indigenous lecturer in the Faculty of Law who said the n-word. It was an Indigenous guest lecturer who came and said antiBlack rhetoric in the Access to Justice class. It was an Indigenous faculty member in the Faculty of Law who allowed three white students to yell at me while, and called me “too radical.” I take Black and Indigenous solidarity very seriously, and it is time for the substantive engagement with the topic to begin.

University of Windsor

I endorse all the demands put forward by RAACES which are reproduced below. In addition I also demand:

Demand#12: Given the serious allegations of doctoring evidence and procedural errors, University of Windsor will launch a complaint to the Law Society of Ontario regarding the conduct of the investigator they hired to conduct the complaint investigation. The University of Windsor will willingly produce any and all communications between the University of Windsor and the investigator. This includes communications from Ryan Flannagan, Clayton Smith, and any other university staff and faculty.

Demand#13: The University of Windsor will terminate Vice-President, Student Experience Ryan Flannagan as per the demand from #ExposeUWindosr. Vice-President, Student Experience Ryan Flannagan has repeatedly failed Black, Indigenous, and racialized students in the complaint process. He has made serious errors, solicited directives not grounded in any University policy, and has failed at his role.

Demand#14: The University of Windsor will decentralize the complaint process from the Office of Student Experience. It is clear the Office of Student Experience is unable to govern itself accordingly and adequately respond to Black, Indigenous, and racialized students’ complaints. However, it was also a Faculty of Law professor who adjudicated my appeal. This necessitates that as this authority is taken from the Office of Student Experience, specific third party investigators with expertise in anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism, and anti-racism will be chosen to handle Black, Indigenous and racialized students’ complaints.

Demand#15: The University of Windsor will outline in its complaint procedures what is considered a vexatious complaint and abuse of process. Should a student engage in a vexatious complaint and/or abuse of process, this shall be grounds for serious disciplinary measures such as suspension and/or expulsion. This will apply throughout the university, and for consistency should not be the authority of individual faculty and programs to outline.

Demand#16: The University of Windsor will outline the criteria in which third party investigators should be chosen. This should include grounds for excluding certain candidates, such as conflict of interest and past history with University administration and faculty. This criteria must be given to students engaging in the complaint process at the beginning of the complaint process, so as to allow students to properly assess and address any possible ground enumerated in the policy. This will apply throughout the university, and for consistency should not be the authority of individual faculty and programs to outline. The University will assume liability should the respective faculty not properly assess for exclusion, and the student undergoes a complaint process which is prejudiced by the violation to not exclude the investigator.

Demand#17: The University will implement an aspect of the complaint procedure which allows students to motion to have the case dismissed on relevant and appropriate grounds, such as an abuse of process. This process will be publicly outlined for students, and the necessary requirements for a motion to dismiss given in detail. Should a motion to dismiss be submitted, the University shall make a determination on that motion to dismiss first. The motion to dismiss should not be folded into the investigation, but instead understood as an intervention to end unnecessary, unfounded, and vexatious complaints.

Reproduced RAACES Demands

1. your ineffective and largely performative OHREA office needs to be abolished;

2. you must publicly apologize to Jordan Afolabi for the unconscionable ways in which the University of Windsor has treated him and for the emotional burden he, as a Black student, is still forced to bear;

3. there is no safe space or recourse for Black students who are forced to experience violence of the kind experienced by Jordan or at the hands of Dr. Glassburn-Falzetti;

4. the University of Windsor claims to care about “Student Experience.” Yet Black students had to resort to social media to find support after the Glassburn-Falzetti incident because they are not receiving that support from the University. You are therefore being perceived as taking no responsibility for keeping Black students safe;

5. Black students are asking for a Black-identified mediator selected by RAACES and Black students. The mediator must be able to help Black students and Black Faculty deal with the painful fallout of this most recent situation, since your office has lost their trust;

6. the University of Windsor needs a strong policy of antiracism and zero tolerance policies;

7. the University must recruit and hire a cluster of Black faculty in all departments, and must offer more courses focusing on the richness of Black experience and epistemology;

8. the bullying and gaslighting that Black students face through the Office of Student Experience must end NOW. Importantly, the University of Windsor must address how non-academic misconduct cases are mishandled by that office where Black students are demonized and white students (even when presenting a danger to the community) are protected. The University of Windsor must clarify the complaints processes, and on how vexatious complaints to silence Black students are handled.