Campus police order Black professor to prove she works at university

What happened

It all started Saturday when Morgan's brother, 32-year-old Carlos Fuentes, was visiting her for the first time in eight months due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to reports.

He spent Saturday morning on campus, reading and working on his laptop, when campus security approached and asked him to leave. Four campus police cruisers followed closely behind as he walked away, reports said. At least one of the officers trailed him all the way back to Morgan's home, where Fuentes knocked on the door.

Morgan was in the bedroom of her white bungalow dancing, unaware of the escalating ordeal that her brother faced just outside.

Opening the front door, she saw him standing there beside one of the officers.

"I'm so sorry about this," he said. "They're demanding you come out and vouch for me."

Morgan recalled the encounter later on Twitter saying, “I asked what the issue was and he said my brother was ‘in the bushes’ and it was ‘suspicious’ and they thought he may have been homeless,” Morgan wrote, according to CNN.

That’s when the officer asked to see Morgan’s campus identification and prove that the house was actually hers.

“I asked why I needed to show ID at my own home,” Morgan said about the encounter with the officers. “He said ‘Well, it’s not your home. The university owns it.’”

Morgan, who has worked at the university for the last four years, said she stayed calm and cited facts to defuse the situation.

"I told them that I was one of seven Black faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences and that our student body population is 2% Black. I told them that the anti-Blackness they espouse and practice is part of the reason why."

University president apologizes

Santa Clara University President Kevin F. O'Brien immediately issued a public written apology.

"To Professor Danielle Morgan and her family: I am deeply sorry for the hurtful incident that happened today at Santa Clara University," O'Brien wrote in a letter. "No work is more important than our efforts to realize a more inclusive, welcoming and safe campus where all are respected and valued."

In the letter, O'Brien also vowed to immediately implement training on racial profiling and said the university was prepared to bring in an independent investigator if necessary.

Several administrators also called Morgan to express their sympathies after the incident, including O’Brien, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and the director of the university’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

Even before the weekend incident, Morgan said she carried her campus ID everywhere because she felt uneasy that someone would eventually ask her to prove who she was, like the officer did Saturday.

“No one ever wakes up in the morning thinking that these things will happen,” Morgan said, but “being Black in America means there is an expectation that you have to show your papers, that you have to prove you are who you say you are and you belong where you say you belong.”

The ‘Beer Summit'

The case recalls the 2009 incident in which police officers in Cambridge, Massachusetts, arrested Henry Louis Gates Jr. after the renowned Black Harvard literature professor tried to enter his home. The fallout sparked a heated national debate on racial profiling that led to an impromptu “beer summit” at the White House between Gates and the arresting officer, and mediated by President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.

“We know from history and present day, that Black people are not safe in their homes. We’re not safe in church, we’re not safe on the streets, we’re not safe in our classrooms,” Morgan said. “So where do we find sanctuary?”