Purdue’s Mitch Daniels, after calling black scholar ‘rarest creature,’ says he’s ‘misunderstood’ ‘I’ve never felt so misunderstood,’ Purdue President Mitch Daniels says, as students and faculty frustration builds over his comment about top black faculty being the ‘rarest phenomenon’

Dave Bangert | Journal & Courier

WEST LAFAYETTE – As social media hashtags piled up and he was called out by faculty on the University Senate late last week for referring to a black scholar as “one of the rarest creatures in America” and the “rarest phenomenon,” Purdue President Mitch Daniels said he felt his comments were being treated unfairly.

“I’ve never felt so misunderstood before,” Daniels told the J&C, after comments he made in an impromptu conversation with students Wednesday night in Pfendler Hall spread across campus.

“I was saying that, this very week, we’re working on a superstar who happens to be African American,” Daniels said. “Extraordinarily rare talent and one of our target populations. That’s what I said. And to have that stood on its head as an indifference to diversity, or worse, it hurts. That’s all I’ll say.”

What students heard that night – as captured by reporting and audio from reporters at The Exponent, Purdue’s independent student newspaper – wound up in exhausted exchanges about campus life on social media, punctuated with the hashtag #IAmNotACreature.

And faculty on the University Senate’s Equity and Diversity Committee followed up with a statement saying that “the idea that there is a scarcity of leading African American scholars is simply not true.” The faculty committee called for training for university personnel to understand what the professors called “problematic” language from Daniels.

“To all Purdue students who have experienced persistent dehumanizing comments in their lives, we want you to know that we acknowledge your frustration and support you,” a statement released Friday by Audrey Ruple, chair of the Equity and Diversity Committee, read.

“Regardless of intent, referring to people of color as anything less than human is tied to our country’s history of oppression and discrimination,” the faculty committee’s statement said. “We do believe that … this was a mistake. However, it is the type of mistake that can be avoided with training to increase one’s understanding of the concepts of privilege and power dynamics.”

The exchange between students happened Wednesday night, outside a Purdue Student Government meeting. That night, Daniels had been pressed by students about his administration’s response after a Purdue student had been denied the sale of cold medicine because a clerk and a manager at an off-campus CVS Pharmacy across from Mackey Arena had rejected his Puerto Rican driver’s license as sufficient ID.

That incident, in late October, led to student protests demanding that Daniels address concerns of minority students.

PURDUE STUDENT: CVS rejects Puerto Rican ID, asks for immigration papers to buy cold medicine

As reported by the Exponent, several students asked Daniels to continue the conversation in one of Pfendler’s hallways. The question they posed, as posted in a recording by the Exponent, looked to distill Daniels’ contention that there was always room for improvement on the diversity front: What specifically was the university doing?

Daniels pointed to the Purdue Polytechnic high schools, two charter schools in the Indianapolis Public Schools district. He said a third Purdue-led high school is in the works.

“Why? Because we cannot find enough minority students. The school system in this state is not producing them,” Daniels said that night. “It’s my initiative. … We are building our own pipeline. That’s one thing we can do.”

He talked about recruiting students, including making personal calls during enrollment season to personally encourage minority students to choose Purdue.

“Everybody’s chasing the same small pool,” Daniels told the students. “You are exceptional students, or you wouldn’t be here. And you all had other choices.”

And, in the part that wound up bringing headlines on campus, Daniels talked about recruiting minority faculty.

“At the end of this week, I’ll be recruiting one of the rarest creatures in America – a leading, I mean a really leading, African-American scholar,” Daniels said that night.

PROTEST: Purdue students demand Mitch Daniels denounce CVS incident; diversity VP calls that 'unlikely'

The moment was met with murmurs. D’Yan Berry, president of the Black Student Union, can be heard on the recording: “Creatures? Come on.”

“It’s a figure of speech. You must have taken some, you know, literature,” Daniels responded. “Let me say, rarest birds. Rarest phenomenon.”

The backlash came quickly, including an extended post from Berry that was still picking up steam on Twitter heading into the weekend. Part of Berry’s post: “I am disappointed but not at all surprised by his reference – in front of a group of mostly black, minority students – to black students as creatures. It afflicts me that this is how he speaks even when ‘boasting’ on students.”

If you:

a. go to Purdue

b. are a Black student anywhere

c. have basic human decency

d. all of the above



PLEASE READ THIS. ‼️ @LifeAtPurdue @purduemitch #IAmNOTACreature #EnoughIsEnough pic.twitter.com/iRBQ4ByAxG — dy🌻 (@cuuzindee) November 21, 2019

On Friday, Daniels said he believed he was being judged on “one word out of an hour” as he spoke about the recruiting minority faculty. He pointed to articles in national press that outlined the competition for minority professors.

One, published in The Atlantic in April 2019, outlined statistics that fewer than 6 percent of full-time faculty in U.S. universities are black. (The article also rounds up a slew of reasons why, including research about broken pipelines to universities – particularly to Ph.D. degree programs – and other ways minorities are discouraged from pursuing faculty positions.)

At Purdue, 161 of 1,931 – or 8.3 percent – tenured or tenure track professors were categorized as underrepresented minorities in 2018, according to data published online by the university. That compares to 117 or 1,849 – or 6.3 percent – in the same category in 2013, the year Daniels arrived on campus.

“I’m saying what hundreds of people have said,” Daniels said. “It’s a bit ironic, given all this, that this week, I was in the process of working on (a professor) that’s just stellar, quite apart from ethnicity. I mean, that was my point. They’re all long shots, because everyone wants them on their campuses. I feel very passionate about that.”

Could Daniels have avoided Wednesday night’s fallout by speaking up about the CVS incident from the start?

“I accept that some folks think that was a misjudgment,” Daniels said.

CVS apologized to José Guzman Payano, a Purdue junior studying engineering, in a case that wound up getting national coverage. CVS officials, who said they were reviewing ID policies with all of its stores, also came to campus to talk with students about what happened. But John Gates, Purdue’s vice provost for diversity and inclusion, told students during a meeting at the Latino Cultural Center a week after that “the university is unlikely to make a statement, in any way.”

Jorge Pérez de Jesús, a Ph.D. student in Latin American literature at Purdue, helped organize a protest that called on Daniels stand with students, including on off-campus matters.

“One has to wonder why the university refuses to restate its stance on racial discrimination,” Perez de Jesus said. “My message to our president is simple, silence on this issue gives hate a voice.”

Daniels stood by his approach.

“The question was, should the university have issued a statement condemning the clerk and CVS?” Daniels said. “Judgment call. I think we should be careful about those precedents and reserve such a thing for truly serious patterns of behavior and things like that. … I didn’t think this particular situation, as it was responded to, called for that.”

Ruple said the University Senate’s Equity and Diversity Committee will have more to say about the CVS matter later.

As for the “rare creature” moment, Ruple said the faculty committee plans to come with “specific recommendations for continuing education requirements related to diversity and inclusion topics for all faculty and staff at Purdue.”

As #IAmNotACreature and #EnoughisEnough posts circulated, Daniels said he stood by his administration’s efforts to boost recruitment of minority students and faculty.

“I also think it’s not accurate and not really fair to the vast majority of our students and faculty,” Daniels said, “to suggest that overall ours is not a place that’s trying hard to be welcoming to all.”

Reach Dave Bangert at 765-420-5258 or at dbangert@jconline.com. Follow on Twitter: @davebangert.