The Throwback Nobody Asked For: David Kane and the Need for Better DEI Commitments

A lot has changed since 2020 — we have cautiously put Covid-19 past us, yet another Harvard shop has tragically replaced the Harvard Square Starbucks, and so on and so forth. But this fall, just like the Starbucks that is set to return to the Square in November, some fixtures from the past have resurfaced — and unlike the holiday-flavored drinks we’re sure to enjoy come wintertime, they leave us with a decidedly sour taste in our mouths.

The figure in question: former Government preceptor David D. Kane, whose employment at Simmons University recently made headlines. In fall 2020, Kane came under fire for moderating the website “EphBlog” and allegedly authoring racist posts under the pseudonym “David Dudley Field ’25” — posts which, among many other horrific claims, disputed the worthiness of Black students at elite institutions and complained about the criticisms against a literal neo-Nazi organization on Williams’ campus.

This fall, two years after the scandal that led to the end of his contract at Harvard, Kane was hired as a section instructor for the course Statistics 118: “Introductory Statistics” at Simmons University. What happened next was eerily similar to the situation that unfolded at Harvard: Simmons students, having discovered the allegations against their new instructor, protested Kane’s hiring by confronting Kane about the EphBlog posts and dropping out of his section. Less than two weeks into the semester, Simmons University canceled Kane’s class after its enrollment numbers dipped below the minimum threshold and subsequently announced that his contract with Simmons would not be renewed.

In a statement, Simmons Interim Provost Russell Pinizzotto wrote that Kane’s blog posts “did not surface” during the hiring process. We are not quite sure why that was the case: Information on controversies surrounding David Kane’s moderation of EphBlog and alleged authorship of its highly discriminatory content can be easily found with a quick Google search. At best, this indicates porous hiring protocols in need of review; at worst, this signals willful negligence of an institutional commitment to inclusivity.

Given this oversight, we are glad that Kane is no longer teaching for the foreseeable future — a measure which is rightfully owed to the Simmons students who spoke out to protect their campus community and to deny someone with allegedly racist views a platform and authority as an instructor on campus. To the students who tipped the Simmons Voice, protested, and confronted Kane during class: We commend and applaud you for your hard work and courage.

Historically, student activism has propelled meaningful action on campuses across the country and around the world. Just as students have entered institutions and inherited some of their legacies, students have also stepped up to create new chapters in university (and even global!) narratives. Student journalists have, in many instances, played a crucial role in such student activist initiatives by keeping the student body informed of major campus issues and by holding university administrations accountable. Our colleagues at The Crimson certainly have done so, but more broadly, we commend every student journalist (yes, even our colleagues at the Yale Daily News) committed to truth-seeking and accountability. In this case, it was reporting by student journalists at the Simmons Voice that brought accusations against Kane and his capacity as an instructor to question.

As we praise Simmons students for their valiance, we sympathize with them for having to go out of their way to make the Simmons campus a safe, welcoming, and inclusive space — a responsibility that lies in great part with the university administration, and one which was evidently neglected in the hiring of Kane. Placing the burden on students to opt out of courses taught by faculty who allegedly hold discriminatory views reflects not only questionable professional standards for what constitutes ethical and responsible pedagogy but also a degree of institutional apathy that has tangible, damaging effects on students.

Many universities, Harvard and Simmons included, have pledged an institutional commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. We wish to remind universities writ large that such commitments require proactive and continuous action in order for such words to function as more than disingenuous PR stunts. DEI is not some abstract, unattainable ideal that universities can only strive toward but never achieve. As we have opined before, initiatives such as multicultural centers, more consistent and thorough Title IX policies, better accessibility accommodations, and financial aid programs that cultivate socioeconomic diversity are all steps universities can pursue to actualize their DEI statements. At the same time, we encourage university administrators to demonstrate their institutional commitments to DEI through a review of preexisting policies and protocols — including, as this case makes painfully clear, the hiring process for new instructors.

Students' concerns about diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus point to a fundamental concern about their sense of belonging. This issue is directly connected to academic excellence: Rigorous and earnest intellectual engagements that further university missions to educate the next generations of citizens and produce worthwhile knowledge cannot happen when students feel unwelcome and unsafe. But as students who have felt the same pain, hurt, and confusion as those blindsided by this instance of institutional neglect at Simmons, we believe the most important argument here is moral: Time and time again, a lack of attention to DEI — at Harvard and elsewhere — has inflicted mental, physical, and emotional harms upon students that are, quite plainly, wrong.

Separated by two years and approximately 2.8 miles, the harm of Kane’s scandal-inducing presence at Harvard and Simmons has transgressed the space-time continuum in a rerun of the past that the physics of proper attention to DEI would have prevented. Some unexpected visitors from 2020 are more than welcome; we’ll keep the Peppermint Mochas and holiday-themed cups. But out of concern for the well-being of all our fellow students, we hope we never wake up to another student newspaper headline about Kane again.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

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