Jeremy Levitt, Biased Media, Victimization, and Racism in Canada
May 30, 2016
By Dr. Matthew C. Whitaker
Originally published at bornblack.ca
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| Dr. Matthew C. Whitaker |
Once I began conducting research
for the sketch I was deeply troubled to learn that Dr. Jeremy Levitt
voluntarily resigned and returned to Florida A&M University after one year
of service, so I decided to investigate. What I learned disturbed me. I’ve
known Jeremy Levitt for over 25 years. He is the salt of the earth who has
spent his life representing disadvantaged people and advocating for women’s
rights in Africa and the US.
Dr. Levitt has strong connections
to Canada. He lived there for several years and returned as a distinguished
legal scholar after being selected as the Fulbright Visiting
Research Chair in Human Rights and Social Justice at the University of Ottawa in
2012. When I called him to discuss his abrupt departure from UNB he was
reluctant to discuss it, but did say: “Google me and ask whether you would
allow yourself and your family to be victimized by months of highly racialized
sham journalism.” He went on to say that “for nearly three months I was
subjected to over 75 false, xenophobic and racist stories in print media, radio
and television. My daughter reads the paper!”
Disparate Treatment
I found several articles,
particularly from the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC), to be very
disconcerting. Like Dr. Jeremy Levitt and noted journalist-advocate Shaun
King, I know first-hand what it feels like to be accosted and unjustly stripped
of my humanity by members of the media. After reading Glenn Greenwald’s article
in The Intercept titled, False
Plagiarism Accusation Against Shaun King Shows Dangers of Online Mob Journalism,
I decided to write this exposition on “mob journalism” that victimized Jeremy
Levitt in Canada. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemies let alone a
distinguished American jurist at the height of his career. Don’t get me wrong,
I admire journalists and have worked with several great ones over the years,
but I question whether the old craft that mandated impartiality and due
diligence as core ingredients to good journalism is all but gone. It appears
that Dr. Levitt was subjected to a political lynching, which happens all too
often to dynamic and confident Black men.
Dr. Jeremy Levitt and his family
moved from Orlando, Florida, one of the most desirable destinations in the
world, 2000 miles north to Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, for less pay to
serve a community in need of talented and diverse leadership. Was it all for
nothing? I was mortified by the vicious and TMZ style coverage of Dr.
Levitt that was highly personalized and devoid of any balance and concern for
his humanity. As a historian and justice advocate, I am compelled to
address the horrible treatment that influenced Canada’s first Black male law
dean to escape repression in the “progressive” North for freedom in the American
south. Even the legendary civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was denied
a 1960 vacation to New Brunswick because of his race, which when taken
together, may indicate that the former slave-holding province needs to confront
its lingering inhospitable culture towards people of African descent.
Is balanced and compassionate
news coverage becoming extinct? Is objectivity and fairness out of
style? Is investigative journalism, with no axe to grind, a dying
art? Virtually everything I read about Dr. Levitt is biased, relentless,
salacious, and cruel. Jeremy Levitt is a real person with a real life and one
biased and neglectful story led to a journalistic feeding frenzy that wreaked
havoc on Dr. Levitt’s hard earned reputation and professional life. When
empathy and thoroughness wane, we all suffer.
The famed American Nobel Prize
laureate William Faulkner stated that “fiction is often the best fact.” On
February 5, 2015, Jacques
Poitras, CBC New Brunswick’s provisional affairs reporter authored, in my
opinion, a woefully biased, piecemeal and defamatory article titled, Jeremy
Levitt faces allegations of sexism, harassment by Florida colleagues that
regrettably embodies Faulkner’s catchphrase. The problem is that Faulkner
was a Pulitzer Prize winning writer of fiction, whereas Poitras is
a relatively unknown journalist whose reporting about Dr. Levitt propagates
fiction as fact, and arguably follows a sullied form of “Gonzo
journalism”where objectivity, balance and truthfulness take a back seat to
sensationalism. Poitras’ reporting and apparent inexperience writing on legal
issues, particularly in foreign jurisdictions, is apparent. He literally wrote
his stories based on two legal complaints, while profoundly ignoring thousands
of pages of case history that vividly show the claims were contrived and bogus,
not excluding the material fact that Court records reveal that Dr. Levitt was
not even a defendant or witness.
Journalistic Vigilantism
While I understand that
Fredericton, New Brunswick may not be a hot bed of exciting news, I take issue
with the highly racialized obsession with Dr. Jeremy Levitt. Dozens of
stories about him in print, on television, and in radio broadcasts, by one
journalist, seem to be more fixed on aiding and abetting clandestine political
agendas and racial stereotypes about Black men than fairness and truth. Poitras
correctly believed that sensationalized stories about a Black male law dean
from America, who looks more like an NFL defensive end than Indiana Jones,
would capture the local imagination. His reporting on the discredited law suits
in Florida were entirely unrelated to Dr. Levitt’s role as Dean of Law at UNB
and seem to amounted to an unjust form of character assassination.
Diligent journalist interested in
fairness and truth would have reviewed the case histories of the law suits
rather than spin off articles based solely on bogus legal claims for which
Jeremy Levitt was unaware and not even a defendant or deposed witness. So
why falsely allege that Dr. Levitt was “facing allegations” as if the civil
suits against Florida A&M University (FAMU) were criminal complaints
against Levitt? The case history reveals something even more troubling.
The law suits were gender pay equity claims that had nothing to do with Dr.
Levitt. In fact, Jeremy Levitt was and is an outspoken advocate for gender pay
equity. Besides, “all two claims” that reference Dr. Levitt and five
former law school administrators were dismissed by FAMU and the Equal
Opportunity Office five years earlier, something that Jacques Poitras and all
media outlets mysteriously ignored.
In my opinion, Court records
reveal that the two complainants intended to use their law suits to unjustly
tarnish Dr. Levitt’s good name as well as that of several other former
administrators because he was the highest paid and the only distinguished
professor at FAMU College of Law; no racial group has a monopoly on jealousy,
envy or prejudice. Jeremy Levitt’s persecution reflects one of his
adages, “if it is true that White folk are jealous—a debatable claim, Black
folk must be envious—an unfortunate truism. The former admires and wants what
you have but the latter not only wants what you have but is willing to destroy
you and it if they can’t have it.” I will spare you the legalese but it is
important to note that Court records clearly reveal that not only were the
accusations made against Dr. Levitt determined to be suspect and dismissed by
FAMU years earlier, the U.S. federal district court in the northern district of
Florida ruled that they were prejudicial and baseless and dismissed them with
prejudice.
Unjust Attacks
At a time when African-American
men are being mercilessly gunned down by police across the United States,
Canadian reporters took aim at Jeremy Levitt despite the fact that as Dean of
Law he generously served as an expert for CBC radio and television news and was
invited by CBC to be a regular contributor to morning radio:http://www.cbc.ca/informationmorningfredericton/2014/12/11/human-rights/.
No good deed goes unpunished. Apparently the low hanging fruit of a supposed
scandal merited trashing Dr. Levitt’s reputation, deanship and budding
relationship with the crown corporation, CBC.
How did the Canadian media learn
about law suits in Florida and why did some of them choose to write about them?
I wonder if they were sent north by the disreputable professors in the Florida
cases? Moreover, why would journalists based in New Brunswick, Canada, be
interested in spurious lawsuits in Florida? In my opinion, the reporting
intentionally and maliciously caricatures Jeremy Levitt as a misogynist and an
abusive administrator. Dr. Levitt, an expert in change-management, is
portrayed as solely responsible for the Florida law suits and faculty conflict
at UNB despite the fact that its faculty have had five deans in five years in
what UNB’s most senior leadership referred to as a “turnstile situation.” Media
bias caused Janet Austin, Levitt’s former white female associate dean, to
publicly declare that she resigned “in support” of him, something that Poitras seems to
have begrudgingly reported.
The term of a Dean in Canada is
typically five years. Too many stories openly and actively invite readers to
freely dismissed allegations made against FAMU that reference Jeremy Levitt
with unrelated events at the University of New Brunswick without any basis for
such connections to be made. On a related note, Wendy Robbins, UNB’s leading
feminist scholar weighed in on the issue in a what may be deemed a pro-Levitt
editorial asserting that “what is authoritative in a racialized minority person
may be challenged by non-racialized majority as uppity,” something that Dr.
Levitt and even President Barack Obama know all too well. She further stated
that over two decades ago a survey on gender-related policy at UNB illuminated
the fact that “legal education in New Brunswick has reflected a white, male tradition”
and that “Members of Canada’s First Nations and other visible minorities still
remain under-represented in the student body and the professoriate.” Dr. Jeremy
Levitt joined UNB and was mandated to address this alarming gap 25 years later
just months after UNB’s first ever campus-wide faculty strike that was followed
by motions of no-confidence against the administration from every faculty
department at the university including the law school.
Dr. Jeremy Levitt’s appointment
as Dean of Law provided a wonderful bridging opportunity to what Robbins
believes is a “long overdue” need “for self-study and public conversation to
carve out a path forward.” Despite these challenges, during his first three
months as Dean, among other accomplishments, Dr. Levitt diversified the
professoriate and student body at the Faculty of Law by taking the job and
hiring the “first African-Canadian,
Latino, Aboriginal and only the second person of Indian descent” since its
founding in 1892. Not surprising, the New Brunswick media didn’t report on any
of these historic accomplishments. Will UNB Law retain these diverse hires or
become an exclusively White institution again?
Any responsible and credible
journalist writing about law suits—let alone those in a foreign country—knows
that it is essential to review the case history before publishing a story. It
appears that Jacques Poitras and others did not do this raising speculation
about whether they were doing someone else’s bidding. In fact, the
majority of journalists seemingly based their reports on Poitras’ jaundiced CBC
articles. New Brunswick is a small, modest and insular province in eastern
Canada. It was one of the few places in Canada that legalized slavery. Its
capital, Fredericton, has a population of about 60,000. It’s a small town where
everyone knows everyone and outsiders are referred to as people “From
Away.” Far too many members of the Canadian media failed to empathize with
Dr. Levitt, they did not even attempt to consider what it was like to be one of
only a handful of immigrant Black families in the remote town.
To his credit Poitras did
begrudgingly write two articles indicating that Dr. Levitt was “cleared” in the law suits but nonetheless reinforced the
false impression that Dr. Levitt was the subject of criminality when again, he
was not even a party to the law suits.
Reinforcing Racism
Beyond Jacques Poitras’ apparent
obsession with Jeremy Levitt is the sad reality that the coverage of his
persecution plays on stereotypical portrayals of Black men pervasive in North
American news media. Too many journalists struggle to move away from biases
that predispose them to writing about Black men as hypersexual, dishonest,
violent and inclined to criminal behavior. Such racial biases block Black
males’ prospects for success no matter how educated or advanced in their career
they may be, not even a Black male law dean is exempt from such behavior. In
his widely acclaimed book, The
Assassination of the Black Male Image, E. O. Hutchinson, states that
“the caricature of black masculinity has long been both the thing that excuses
White oppression and stimulates the fear that motivates it.”
The reporting of Jeremy Levitt’s
mob-like undoing surgically exploited this unfortunate dichotomy. Too many
unfairly, irresponsibly and unjustifiably linked Dr. Levitt to violence and
sexual misconduct. This is particularly problematic given that he is a staunch women’s rights scholar and advocate and was not the
subject of the law suits, and against the backdrop of UNB’s lack of racial
diversity among its faculty and administrators and the long and well-documented
history violence against aboriginals, slavery, segregation and apparent
tradition of racist
attitudes towards Blacks in Atlantic Canada. It’s interesting to note
that the law building where Dr. Levitt worked was named after George Duncan
Ludlow, the slave owning Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New Brunswick
whose ruling legalized slavery in the province. Perhaps, reporters should have
written about the irony behind the first Black male law dean in Canada
literally working in the shadow of Ludlow.
To make matters worse, Jacques
Poitras failed to report that a year before the law suits were filed Florida
A&M University investigators substantiated serious allegations against the
same discredited Florida professors that made false allegations against Jeremy
Levitt. Investigators determined that the FAMU professors had initiated “…unauthorized processes to obtain salary increases purporting
to come from and/or represent official actions of the College of Law.”
Essentially, they tried to unilaterally give themselves unauthorized pay
increases by submitting documents “as if the Dean was submitting a salary
increase for approval by the Provost.” This vital information was
apparently ignored by Poitras, a troubling oversight because it provides the
real motives behind why the Florida professors made false claims about Dr.
Levitt: professional jealousy and envy. Again, Jeremy Levitt is the
highest paid and among the most accomplished professors at FAMU. With this
information at hand, any good journalist would tread carefully and question
his/her sources as well the integrity of the law suits. Yet, Poitras’ unsavory
narrative about Dr. Levitt advanced the aims of persons that were envious and
uncomfortable with the change that he represented at FAMU and UNB,
respectively.
Why did Poitras believe that his
salacious stories served a public good worthy of publication, especially after
Dr. Jeremy Levitt informed him that “the Florida lawsuits are largely pay
equity claims against Florida A&M University (FAMU) not me…The unproven and
malicious allegations were filed by disgruntled former and current employees
and contain entirely false, regurgitated, distorted and defamatory claims that
were, to my knowledge, dismissed by the university years ago…Plaintiffs in an
action, in America as here, can allege anything they want in pleadings, true or
not.” It appears that “low-hanging fruit,” racial stereotypes, and
sensationalism was far more interesting. The truth of the matter is that
the Courts and jury ultimately agreed with FAMU and Dr. Levitt’s position, yet
CBC did not make one retraction or reparative statement. This lack of empathy
and “mob reporting” in New Brunswick appears to be indicative of a broader
cultural problem in Atlantic Canada, or the “Maritimes,” as illustrated in a
2012 government report that concludes that “barriers
stemming from negative attitudes and even racism when it comes to welcoming new
people into our communities and hiring people from ‘from away,’” still
exist in Canada. This point became painfully clear when Tony Secco, UNB’s
controversial Vice-President, was forced to resign soon after Jeremy Levitt
voluntarily resigned, but Poitras nor any media reported on Secco’s ouster. Why
was Levitt’s voluntary resignation worthy of three months of constant media
bombardment, yet Secco’s forced resignation not news worthy? Unlike Dr. Levitt,
Secco is a White Atlantic Canadian not “From Away.”
It seems that too many who covered
Jeremy Levitt’s cold reception in New Brunswick, pursued an unsavory narrative
about him that advanced the aims of the discredited Florida claimants and the
UNB professors that were resistant
with thecolor and context of change that he represented. As Dr.
Levitt has said, “Deaning while Black can be risky.” I have long viewed
Canadians as being generally calm and inclusive, and most of them certainly
are, but clearly the U.S. does not have a monopoly on “Negrophobes” and
xenophobes masquerading as credible journalists and progressive
academics. Jeremy Levitt deserved much better and should not be judged on
the desperate reporting of racial axe grinders. He is a very good person,
a good husband, a good father, a dedicated public servant, a gifted scholar,
and leader. He will move on and do great things, but the unjust and
racialized nature of his tenure in New Brunswick says more about race relations in Atlantic Canada than anything else. The Court and jury’s resolute dismissal of
the Florida lawsuits vindicate Dr. Levitt and validate my resolute position
that those who misrepresented him and his character owe him an apology.
Dr. Matthew C. Whitaker is the
Founder and CEO of the Diamond Strategies, LLC (DSC). He is also an
award-winning educator, author, community engagement specialist, motivational
speaker, and founder the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, winner of
the 2014 Arizona Diversity Leadership Alliance Inclusive Workplace Award, at
Arizona State University. He can be followed on Twitter at @Dr Whitaker and DSC
can be followed on Twitter at @dstategiesllc.
