Since President-Elect Trump nominated Jeff Sessions for Attorney General, serious fears have risen about Sessions’ stated policies and history of questionable judgment.
These concerns led to direct non-violent action by protestors at Sessions’ Alabama office, which resulted in six arrests, including the arrest of the National President of the NAACP, Cornell William Brooks.
In a statement posted on the NAACP website, Brooks summed up the reasons his organization is opposing Sessions: “A record on voting rights that is unreliable at best and hostile at worst; a failing record on other civil rights; a record of racially offensive remarks and behavior; and dismal record on criminal justice reform issues.”
During the ongoing confirmation hearings for Sessions, congressmen, including civil rights leader John Lewis and Senator Cory Booker, have spoken up against the Alabama senator.
Both acknowledged working with Sessions before, but questioned his judgment and commitment to serving all the people of our country.
In an impassioned speech, during which he appeared to be on the brink of tears, Booker said, “Senator Sessions has not demonstrated the commitment to a central requisite of the job: to aggressively pursue the congressional mandate of civil rights, equal rights and justice for all of our citizens.”
During Lewis’ testimony, the civil rights icon said, “We need someone as Attorney General who will stand up for all of us and not just some of us.”
Despite damning testimony and a previous rejection of Sessions for a federal judgeship in 1986 over claims of racism, Sessions and his colleagues have consistently maintained that he is not a racist and has been a champion of civil rights.
Over 1,400 law faculty nationwide, including 14 UO Law faculty members, have sided with Lewis, Booker and the other civil rights groups to call on the U.S. Senate to reject his nomination.
In the petition, which appeared in the Washington Post, legal faculty nationwide called on the Senate to reject Sessions because of his history of racist statements, hardline stances on immigration, misleading statements on voter fraud, history of supporting voter suppression, unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud, support for prosecuting minor drug offenders and connections with fossil fuel industry interests.
The petition “primarily used social media, and the word spread very rapidly. More than 1000 law professors signed on within the first 72 hours,” according to petition organizer and UC Berkeley Law faculty Ty Alper.
The law professors’ petition concluded with this statement, “As law faculty who work every day to better understand the law and teach it to our students, we are convinced that Jeff Sessions will not fairly enforce our nation’s laws and promote justice and equality in the United States. We urge you to reject his nomination.”
Despite the widespread outcry over Sessions’ questionable record and the signing of the petition by some UO Law faculty, the outrage over Sessions has paled in comparison to the fervor and passion with which Nancy Shurtz was met for her tasteless and offensive Halloween use of blackface.
While I am in no way condoning her behavior, which she claims was actually part of an awfully executed anti-racism message, it is troubling that her misguided Halloween costume was cause for such campus wide outrage while the nomination of Sessions has been met with a handful of signatures and not much else.
Defending our campus community and ultimately our country from the spread of racism, anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric, hateful proposals targeted at Muslims and immigrants, and policies that negatively affect women needs to move beyond flashpoint issues like Shurtz.
Fighting these messages of hate and division should be a priority of all community members who value inclusion and diversity, but so far we have fallen flat on the issue of the Sessions nomination.
How can we square our commitment to these principles with our reluctance to speak out publicly when these civil rights issues arise?
Why does a professor’s offensive costume warrant a campus wide response and a public call for resignation from 23 law faculty members and the appointment of Sessions to the highest law enforcement position in the land only gain 14 signatures?
These questions do not have easy answers but they must become part of our dialogue. I was surprised in the development of this article that none of the law professors I spoke to or emailed with were willing to comment for this story.
With the ascendancy of Trump, who has sailed a rising tide of white nationalism in social media and popular culture, the time is now to go beyond addressing local problems and engage with these larger institutional manifestations of racism and intolerance.
We can’t only get excited about the headline grabbing stories like the Shurtz story. The time is now to stand our ground and continue the fight for equality for all people and push back the waves of injustice, even when it doesn’t mean grabbing headlines and supporting popular causes.
As Booker said in his Senate testimony, “The arc of the moral universe does not just naturally curve toward justice; we must bend it.”