Culture

Protesters Boo James Comey At A Historically Black University Over His Views On ‘The Ferguson Effect’

by: Uproxx authors

When Howard University appointed former FBI Director James Comey as its 2017-2018 Gwendolyn S. and Colbert I. King endowed chair in public policy, they did so because “his expertise and understanding of the challenges we continue to face today will go a long way in sparking rich discussion and advancing meaningful debates across campus.” That might have been a little more on the nose than administrators anticipated, as the above CNN clip of a booing audience reveals.

Comey received a heated reception at today’s convocation ceremony welcoming the Class of 2021 to campus. He didn’t progress very far before protesters drowned out his speech by breaking into the classic Civil Rights spiritual “We Shall Not Be Moved.”

Student protesters essentially shut down Comey’s speech over the controversial “Ferguson Effect,” a phenomenon Comey has championed despite a lack of statistical evidence. Comey has been bringing up the theory, rooted largely in limited anecdotal evidence from some law enforcement officers, since 2015. The gist of the Ferguson Effect is that violent crime rates are up in some major cities, including Chicago and LA, because police are reluctant to engage with the public for fear of ending up in a viral video.

The protesters drowned out Comey’s remarks from the back of the auditorium. After singing, murmurs from the crowd erupted in response, and students started up an echo chant, “I said I love being black. I said I love the texture of my hair. I rock it everywhere. I said I love the color of my skin. It’s the skin I’m in.” They also shouted “No justice, no peace” and named a list of black Americans killed by the FBI. Comey attempted to start again, telling students, “I hope you’ll listen to what I have to say. I listened to you for five minutes.” After that Howard’s live stream of the event abruptly cut out.

Handouts circulating on campus that day outlined a number of grievances with Comey, including his 2015 remarks at Georgetown University, during which he stated his belief that “racial bias isn’t epidemic in law enforcement any more than it is epidemic in academia or the arts. Law enforcement is not the root cause of problems in our hardest hit neighborhoods.” Another handout featured some highlights from the FBI’s fraught history with black leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., Malcom X, Huey Newton, Angela Davis, and Assata Shakur.

(Via CNN, NBC News & The Root)