On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was murdered by a law enforcement officer in Minneapolis, less than an hour away from Carleton’s campus. The recording of his death quickly disseminated, and triggered one of the largest protest mobilizations in the U.S. since the Civil Rights Movement as Floyd’s last words, “I can’t breathe,” became a rallying cry for the movement.
“There was a deep sense of sadness and disbelief regarding George Floyd’s murder,” said Vice President and Dean of Students Carolyn Livingston. “The community was struggling to comprehend not only what happened but also how to respond.”
In the midst of this grief, anger and protest, George Floyd’s murder led to international momentum, where many communities demanded that their institutions take concrete action and commit to racial justice.
Carleton was no exception. For many Black students and faculty, George Floyd’s death was a moment where long-standing issues were finally able to be voiced.
“It was a tense time on campus,” said Thabiti Willis, associate professor of African History and Africana Studies. “There was a way in which it was like a breath of fresh air. Like, finally we’re having conversations that are now public conversations that prior to that moment have been relegated to very private conversations or just unacknowledged.”
Jorge Banuelos ’20 was a fifth year Educational associate in May 2020. He said that in combination with the past student movements such as CarlsTalkBack in 2017 “ being fresh on our minds,” the proximity of Carleton to such a “polarizing event” and the Trump administration at the time, “it seemed as if it was a moment where it was hot for us to go ahead and strike the iron.”
In May of 2020, the Ujamaa Collective, a group of 15 Black student leaders, began circulating a nine-page list of demands asking the college to take responsibility for institutional racism at Carleton and for “mechanisms [to] be implemented to promote our safety, our intellectual and social viability and our overall well-being on campus.”
In August of 2020, an open letter for Carleton College signed by over 2000 alumni condemned Carleton for its lack of action, articulated further grievances, and challenged Carleton to build a “fundamentally transformative” 10-year plan for racial equity and equality.
The demands of these two groups began a long process of negotiations and conversations with the Carleton administration. In response to the Ujamaa Collective, Carleton released a July 2020 “Action Report in Addressing Institutional Racism,” which listed the demands, the administrative reaction, and initial actions taken. Five more action reports were released, the last one published in April of 2021. Carleton then established an Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity (IDE) Steering Committee, charged with the task of creating a 10-year strategic plan “with a special focus on racial identity and Black experiences.”
“As I understand it, the working group for the IDE plan started out with the demands of these two different groups, and then they did surveys of the community, and they held open meetings,” said College President Alison Byerly.
Byerly became President in 2022, as conversations about race at Carleton were especially present. While the Community Plan for Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity was mostly drafted when she came into her leadership, she was involved with the final stages and implementation. “It was a very thorough and long process, and at times a contentious one within the community, at times disagreement about the right direction … but those sets of demands were some of the specific impetus for saying there’s enough here that we need to put a group together to decide how we, as an institution, respond,” said Byerly.
In 2022, the Board of Trustees approved the completed 10-year Community Plan for Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity. One year later, in perhaps the most significant structural change since George Floyd’s murder, the Division of Inclusion, Equity, and Community (IEC) was created.
But were the demands followed through?
Every year, a progress report for the IDE Plan is published. Some notable institutional changes that meet the demands of the Ujamaa Collective have been made.
For example, the first point in the Ujamaa Collective letter demanded “the immediate establishment of a Black Center on Campus.” This was implemented into the IDE Plan, and in Winter Term of this year, the Black Student Center and the Multicultural Center were opened.
Another point on the list demanded “mandatory anti-racist training for all incoming and current faculty, staff and administrators.” In the IDE plan, this was incorporated in Strategy 1.2.3, which states that Carleton will “develop and provide ongoing antibias racial education for all campus groups and stakeholders.” This goal is addressed in the 2024 IDE progress report, which describes several Human Resource trainings and “a plan to implement ongoing anti-bias racial education for all students, starting with student leaders.” Student training was implemented with Peer Leaders in January 2025 as an online module.
The Ujamaa Collective also demanded that Carleton security undergo anti-racist training “contracted with an independent black anti-racism educator.” The Fall 2023 progress report describes how Security Services received IDE training from the Tazel Institute, an organization that works to expose young African American men to various professions.
President Byerly noted that for faculty, anti-bias training was in a different format. “It’s not like one of these programs where there’s a training module that everybody has to do online. Every year, the IEC division offers a series of maybe eight to ten different lecture programs,” she said, referring to the IDE Educational programs. Past programs have been “Decolonizing Pedagogy” and “Best Practices for Staff Hiring: Minimizing Bias and Designing our Searches for Inclusion.”
“Many of them are co-sponsored with different [departments] of the college,” said Byerly. “We ask all faculty and staff to attend at least one of those over the course of the year.”
Another point demanded “to see an institutional commitment to Africana Studies and black student life on campus.”
At the time, Africana Studies was in what Banuelos called “a moment of transition and redefinition of what the mission of Black Studies would be at Carleton.” In 2016, the African and African-American Studies programs were rebranded as the Africana Studies program, and were given avenues for tenure-track positions. Before this, any faculty who worked in the Africana Studies program had no contractual commitments to the program.
According to Willis, this led to frustrating dynamics where junior faculty who often had higher levels of expertise in the field and a contractual commitment to the program — as opposed to the senior faculty — were constrained in their capacity to meet the “needs and desires that students [had] for more robust curriculum,” as instead they had to focus on earning tenure. In this context, bolstering the Africana Studies program became a central goal for the Ujamaa Collective.
On the current state of Africana Studies, Byerly said “I think that’s one of the first things we did, and we felt pretty good about doing some senior hires there and adding some significant programming funds.”
In the past few years, Africana Studies has gained several tenured faculty, a new director and a lounge on fourth Leighton. Willis appreciated this, but asked for evaluation of success to be more wide-ranging.
“What enables [Africana Studies] to be in a position to thrive is departmental status, right?,” asked Willis. “Its ability to hire its own faculty, to develop them and promote them. It’s the ability to be able to attract majors by having all the resources that a department has.”
Since George Floyd’s murder, some institutional changes have undoubtedly been made at Carleton, but some people voiced doubts on the long-term effectiveness of those changes. Willis emphasized the importance of continuously reevaluating the actual progress made.
“I think it’s important to really go back to that moment, and use that moment as the way of calibrating where we are now. And to really take seriously all the details of what was asked for,” said Willis.
“Remembering George Floyd is about more than memorializing a tragic event; it is about keeping alive the urgency that his death sparked,” said Vice President for Inclusion, Equity, and Community Dina Zavala.
One complication in efforts to make Carleton an anti-racist institution is the current political climate. The January executive order from the Trump administration, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” directly restricts some of the stated goals of the IDE plan.
“The landscape has shifted very significantly,” said President Byerly. “I mean, it’s really quite astonishing, if you think about what the national mood felt like at the time, and then what the dominant perspective is now. It’s a significant shift in a way that speaks to the importance of having values and principles that you then want to embody in your structures and approaches.”
Byerly said that “at this moment in time, we’ve made very few concrete changes. We haven’t canceled programs or eliminated major approaches.” However, she noted that the admissions processes must respect the Supreme Court decision overturning affirmative action, which makes it “harder to create diversity in the student body.” In order to continue to recruit a diverse pool of students, Byerly said that the admissions office is focused on “offering as much opportunity as possible with financial aid, which tends to have an effect statistically of diversifying the pool.”
“While the national environment presents challenges, it also underscores the importance of this work,” said Dina Zavala. “In times of pushback, our responsibility is not to retreat, but to sharpen our focus and deepen our commitment.”
