Peyi Soyinka-Airewele, the first black woman to be promoted to full professor at Ithaca College, a university in New York, has recounted her nightmarish experiences that unfolded in the spring of 2024, ultimately culminating in death threats against her.
Mrs Soyinka-Airewele is the Chair of the Tompkins County Human Rights Commission and the daughter of the first Nobel Laureate in Literature from Africa, Wọle Soyinka. She said she had been subjected to a “barrage” of racist and violent messages, including threats of sexual assault and assassination.
Death threats were also directed against her family and home, she said in a statement obtained by PREMIUM TIMES.
This newspaper couldn’t immediately confirm when Mrs Soyinka-Airewele started facing these threats. But in a statement, the professor said it all began when a student started “exhibiting erratic, harassing and threatening behaviour towards her.”
These direct threats, Mrs Soyinka-Airewele said, were very severe to the point that faculty members expressed concern for her safety. The professor alongside some of her colleagues and campus police officers made efforts to activate protocols required to ensure her safety.
Sadly, she said, these complaints were met with “bureaucratic roadblocks, lack of empathy and a denial of simple requests to change the methodology of delivery of lectures in order to enhance her safety and security.”
“The response of some of the top management of the University has been slow, negligent, dismissive and patronising, resulting in a prioritisation of institutional convenience over and above the well-being of faculty,” she note
The American university failed to address the concerns raised by Mrs Soyinka-Airewele when PREMIUM TIMES sent a correspondence to it. Instead, the university said, the safety and well-being of our college community—students, faculty, and staff—is always its top priority.
“We generally do not comment on specific personnel issues, so I cannot provide any additional information on this situation. However, I can tell you that the College takes threats against members of our community very seriously,” Dave Maley, the University’s Director of Public Relations told PREMIUM TIMES on Monday.
“When a member of our community brings a safety concern to our attention, the College works with that community member to provide support as appropriate based on the circumstances,” Mr Maley said.
Concerned persons within the university, in the US and in Nigeria, are calling for greater accountability and proactive measures to address safety concerns within academic settings, especially for minorities and immigrants. They emphasise the urgent need for institutions to move beyond perfunctory acts of diversity.
In her statement, Mrs Soyinka-Airewele said despite the odds, she has continued to work to protect other marginalised and vulnerable individuals in the United States as well as in Nigeria and to provide material support for those suffering from poverty and abuse.
The professor said she has spoken out this time to ensure that other minorities, especially black students and faculty from Africa are aware they can reach out for support if they face harassment, threats and other forms of discriminatory treatment.
Mrs Soyinka-Airewele is the first black woman to be tenured at Ithaca College, New York, and later, the first black woman to be promoted to full professor in the university’s 140-year history.
A recipient of the university’s prestigious Faculty Excellence Award for Teaching, Scholarship and Service, Mrs Soyinka-Airewele initiated the Classrooms Beyond Borders programme with a network of participating universities that included Ithaca College, Covenant University and the Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria, An-Najah University, Palestine (with Beth Harris), and the University of South Africa.
At one time, she was a fellow of the Global Security and Cooperation Programme of the Social Science Research Council, the Oxford Round Table, United Kingdom and the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship that took her as a visiting professor to support faculty and students at universities in Nigeria and Kenya.
Much of her work is dedicated to making rights and protections accessible and attainable to vulnerable individuals and groups through advocacy, emergency support, and other strategies that are sensitive to issues of culture, socioeconomic class, nationality status, gender, faith, and the many factors that affect whether people are treated with justice and equity.
Similarly, Mrs Soyinka-Airewele served as the first female president of the Association of Third World Studies Inc. (ATWS), and president of the African Studies and Research Forum, and currently serves as Co-President of the African Women’s Initiative of Ithaca (AWI). These platforms provide support and solidarity for participants in the United States and internationally.
Every two months, she hosts Verity women’s gatherings, where women of faith from across the world meet virtually to discuss subjects that affect them and share their experience, expertise, and mutual support in a lively, safe, transgenerational, and diverse space.
She served for many years as an ambassador for Stephen’s Children’s Home, a centre for over 400 children orphaned by the Boko Haram terrorist assaults in Nigeria. Sadly, after decades of providing protection for extremely vulnerable children, the home was forced to shut down amidst the severe staffing losses of the devastating COVID crisis as the children’s welfare could no longer be guaranteed.
