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Although he is bringing up a valid issue that should be talked about, Western Washington University President Bruce Shepard has been employing tone-deaf rhetoric that only obfuscates the discussion about race and education.

In a convocation speech, referring to the racial makeup of the 15,000-student university in Bellingham, Shepard said, “If in decades ahead, we are as white as we are today, we will have failed as a university.” On the university’s website, he posed the question, “How do we make sure that in future years we are not as white as we are today?” Shepard, who is white, later explained, “I needed to provoke some attention. It’s really important to understand the issue facing all of American higher education and that is, our country is changing.”