Considering a recent article entitled “The plight of black America” [sic] published in The Chronicle, Duke University’s popular student-run newspaper, we are demanding that The Chronicle management reconsider their ill-advised decision to make the writer of this piece, rising senior Jonathan Zhao, a columnist and the Editorial Page Editor for the 2015-2016 academic year.   In case you are unfamiliar with the structure of The Chronicle, the title Editorial Page Editor places Jonathan Zhao in charge of regular opinion columns, guest columns, letters to the editor, and pieces by the Editorial Board, giving him considerable - and unchecked - discretion over the content that gets published by the site.  

While we acknowledge the importance of students’ diversity of opinion – and we recognize The Chronicle for its commitment to protecting this right – we do not believe students have a protected right to use a student publication meant to serve and represent the Duke community as a platform to proliferate racist stereotypes and misinformation about an entire group of people – a group of people to which the writer does not even belong.  Certainly, that student shouldn’t be permitted to oversee one of the most well-read sections of the paper. Not only was this particular article by Jonathan Zhao abhorrent, but this writer also has a history of publishing inflammatory and ill-conceived pieces in the newspaper.  This indicates his inability to moderate the Chronicle’s opinion section fairly and well in this upcoming school year and should immediately suggest that Jonathan Zhao is not fit to occupy a position as an opinion column writer for The Chronicle, let alone as the editor for the entire section.

We are further concerned by the apparent lack of oversight and transparency in the opinion editing and copyediting processes.  We have learned that Zhao did not follow the Chronicle’s proper and established processes for column publication; in other words, “The plight of black America” [sic] was published without the necessary accountability and supervision that the Chronicle itself demands.  We are concerned that if Zhao continues as an editor of the opinion column, he will also continue to abuse his position of power to create an unsafe educational environment for marginalized students. This is not a question of being “politically correct,” nor is it a matter of censorship.  Rather, this is a call to hold The Chronicle’s staff and the content they produce to a higher standard of journalistic ethics.

For the reasons aforementioned, we request the immediate removal of Jonathan Zhao as columnist and editor of the Chronicle’s opinion column.