Prominent anti-racist author Tim Wise visited Quinnipiac University’s Mt. Carmel Auditorium as part of the Office of Inclusive Excellence’s “Critical Conversations” series on Thursday, Sept. 26.

“The objective of the Critical Conversations series is to foster an inclusive and intellectually stimulating environment at Quinnipiac, promoting inclusivity of thought, respectful dialog, empathetic engagement and open mindedness among students, faculty and staff,” said Claude Mayo, director of inclusive excellence, prior to Wise’s speech.

Wise’s message to Quinnipiac students was that they should be open to discussing systemic racism and their role in preventing it.

“Number one, just being open to hearing someone talk about how the system is marginalizing them, rather than getting defensive about that,” Wise said, in an interview with The Chronicle. “(Be) open to having it pointed out.”

During his speech, Wise discussed many points regarding critical race theory and its recognition.

“It’s the kind of conversations that about half the states in this country are not allowing schools to have at least not in the way that they would like to have them, or been having them over the years, about half the states in this country that have essentially prohibited discussions on systemic racism at the K-12 level,” Wise said.

He claimed some schools and institutions are intimidated by state governments into not discussing critical race theory in their classrooms.

One of Wise’s main points was that people should be open to accepting that systemic racism still exists.

“There’s a lot of things we don’t know and that we don’t understand because we’ve never had to look at them,” Wise said.

According to Wise, critical race theory was developed to explain how racism still exists today, even after the Civil Rights movement.

“So they developed this body of thought to sort of explain that maybe this problem of racism is much more deeply ingrained than we thought,” Wise said. “…you still need to engage it in order to know if you can revise a theory,” Wise said.

He emphasized that critical race theory can be “revised,” and to be revised it has to be exercised.

“You still need to engage it in order to know if you can revise a theory,” Wise said. He emphasized that critical race theory can be “revised,” and to be revised it has to be exercised.

Wise described critical race theory as an attempt to explain something that we see and don’t understand. “I think the most important thing to know is that, just like any theory, it tries to explain a phenomenon, right?”

He used a metaphor of “whack-a-mole” to describe how racism is hard to defeat because it is removed from one place and “pops up” somewhere else.

Wise has spent over 30 years visiting and speaking with various audiences and institutions about dealing with racial inequity in their organizations.

He is also the author of nine books and his memoir, “White Like Me.”

The Office of Inclusive Excellence plans to invite additional speakers, including one within the next few weeks.

“The events are designed to empower participants to be better prepared to embrace inclusivity of thought by actively listening to and engaging with concepts and ideas that may challenge their personal values without dismissing or silencing different viewpoints,” Mayo said.