These memories prevented me from strictly applying a lens of 21st-century standards to the complexities that surely embattled Mr. Kizzie’s world. He had made a heartbreaking mistake, but he had done so at a time when our university — in fact most universities, especially in the South — had few or no programs to build inclusive communities for the few students of color on campus. Disoriented, he did his best to fit in.

With all this in mind, I called Mr. Kizzie. Unlike the students hiding in K.K.K. robes, he acknowledged responsibility and told me he agreed that we must use the resurfacing of that ugly moment he was involved in as a learning opportunity. And he graciously offered to come back to campus to participate in an oral history interview with our students this fall.

A black student participating in a racist joke is on its surface a regrettable decision, but it also carries a deeper lesson about the intensity of racism on college campuses and how difficult it can be for black students to gain respect and recognition.

I know this not only from my own hurdles as a student years ago, but also from a recent survey showing that black students feel less supported at predominantly white universities than at historically black ones. What I initially saw as a disturbing photo from the past, I now see as a call to action about the work that remains for college presidents in the present. I’m grateful Mr. Kizzie is working with us to make this campus one where no students feel they have to tolerate racism to fit in.

Richmond is hardly the only institution in higher education faced with confronting racism on campus. In the wake of the coverage of Governor Northam’s own Klan-stained yearbook, universities from every part of the country have been grappling with disturbing moments in their own histories, often documented in yearbook photos. In February, USA Today underscored the scope of the problem, finding “more than 200 examples of offensive or racist material at colleges in 25 states, from large public universities in the South, to Ivy League schools in the Northeast, liberal arts boutiques and Division I powerhouses.”

This mass unearthing of past racism on campus is, in fact, essential. As a nation, we have never emotionally dealt with the aftermath of slavery, segregation, lynching and more recent systemic disparities. (The Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Ala., is a notable and instructive exception, among a few others.)

To be a part of ensuring we better probe the depths of our history and achieve deeper racial understanding on our campus, our university established a commission on history and identity. We’re enlisting a public historian to coordinate with faculty and students to help us tell a fuller, more inclusive story of who we were, are, and aspire to be. Work that includes memorializing figures such as the enslaved people who are believed to be buried on our campus and the first black alumni of Richmond’s undergraduate program.

As I’ve hosted discussions on race and education, I’ve seen participants squirm a bit in their chairs. I’m sure there will be a few moments like that as Mr. Kizzie shares his story with students from this newest generation. These racial conversations are deeply uncomfortable at times. But they are just as necessary as they are difficult, if colleges are to match the aspiration of our mission statements: to be a welcoming place for young people of every background. Those of us who lead in higher education have no higher calling than to embrace this challenge head on. Our students — past, present and future — deserve no less.

Ronald Crutcher is the president of the University of Richmond and a board member of the American Council on Education.

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