St Paul Minnesota’s St Catherine University cancels leadership events because all of the speakers are white
Racism continues to take new and bizarre roads and this time St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota makes headlines for canceling their one-day conference designed to equip and empower women for leadership roles due to the fact that every speaker scheduled to appear was white.
“The Leadership Imperative: Rise to Your Purpose” was intended to “equip both emerging and seasoned female professionals with the tools they need to become impactful, respected leaders,” according to the conference website.
The College Fix reported on the unexpected move, quoting university officials from an email to speakers, that the decision was made because the lineup did “not reflect the diverse St. Kate’s community of today nor the world of tomorrow we are committed to creating.”
According to the author of the email, the cancellation was not due to “the quality of [the speaker’s] presentation material or credentials” but this event insisted on “modeling the ideal state today in everything we do.”
Last August, the “Loft Literary Center’s conference on writing for children and young adults” was also canceled after complaints that 21 of 22 speakers were white.
The Fix notes that “A rundown of the speakers on the university’s website shows a speaker lineup consisting of 100 percent white woman. Of the 29 white female speakers listed on the site, 28 of them have pictures; Margaret Smith, the only speaker without a photograph, is also white.”
The Star Tribune reported that 21 out of 22 speakers who would appear at the conference were white, and the university says this was a “mistake.”
“We have set a goal for ourselves to be inclusive and to work toward equity, and we didn’t think the conference would live up to that mission,” Britt Udesen, executive director of the Loft Literary Center, told The Tribune at the time.