Williams Hires Vice President of Diversity and Equity

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Williams College has appointed Leticia Smith-Evans to the position of vice president for institutional diversity and equity. She will assume the position on July 1.

Smith-Evans brings considerable experience in working to expand diversity and equity in educational settings, including from her current position as interim director of the Education Practice of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. At the LDF, where she ha’s served since 2008, she has worked both on the ground level with communities around the country that want or need to change and on managing the education practice of an organization that has played a historic role in the advancement of equity.

She also teaches on race, education, and the law at Penn Law School; speaks on these issues to audiences across the country; and is often quoted in national media.

Smith-Evans earned her Ph.D. in educational leadership and policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where her dissertation was titled "No More Profiling in the Classroom: A Midsize Urban School District’s Efforts to Close the Achievement Gap." She also obtained her J.D. at Wisconsin. Many within the Williams community know her as a member of the Class of 1999 and an active member of the Williams Black Alumni Network.

After law school she clerked for the Honorable Dickinson Debevoise ’46 in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey and then was an associate at O’Melveny & Myers LLP in New York City and Washington, D.C.

Hancock Town Meeting Votes to Strike Meme Some Found 'Divisive'

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
10:40PM / Monday, May 06, 2024

Hancock town meeting members Monday vote on a routine item early in the meeting.

HANCOCK, Mass. — By the narrowest of margins Monday, the annual town meeting voted to strike from the town report messaging that some residents described as, "inflammatory," "divisive" and unwelcoming to new residents.

 

On a vote of 50-48, the meeting voted to remove the inside cover of the report as it appeared on the town website and in printed versions distributed prior to the meeting and at the elementary school on Monday night.

 

The text, which appeared to be a reprinted version of an Internet meme, read, "You came here from there because you didn't like it there, and now you want to change here to be like there. You are welcome here, only don't try to make here like there. If you want to make here like there, you shouldn't have left there in the first place."

 

After the meeting breezed through the first 18 articles on the town meeting warrant agenda with hardly a dissenting vote, a member rose to ask if it would be unreasonable for the meeting to vote to remove the meme under Article 19, the "other business" article.

 

"No, you cannot remove it," Board of Selectmen Chair Sherman Derby answered immediately.

 

After it became clear that Moderator Brian Fairbank would entertain discussion about the meme, Derby took the floor to address the issue that has been discussed in town circles since the report was printed earlier this spring.

 

"Let me tell you about something that happened this year," Derby said. "The School Department got rid of Christmas. And they got rid of Columbus Day. Now it's Indigenous People's Day.