CU Boulder doctoral students allege racial discrimination

Doctoral student Adi Prakash said the simple act of heating up his ethnic food in a shared microwave provoked racist comments from staff members and led to a series of discriminatory consequences for him and his partner.

Prakash is pursuing a doctorate degree in anthropology at the University of Colorado Boulder. On Sept. 5, he microwaved his Indian food for lunch, like usual, in a shared kitchen space in the department.

Two staff members walked in as he waited for his palek paneer to heat up. Prakash said one of them made a face and said “oof, that’s pungent,” with the other echoing the same sentiment. They asked him to heat his food elsewhere, he said.

Prakash took his food back to his desk but couldn’t eat it because he was so upset by the comments, which have a history of being a top act of racism against South Asians, he said.

“There is a context for this kind of exclusion for South Asians because of the fact our food is known as curry, it’s put in a certain box,” Prakash said, adding, “To have that understanding in an anthropology department, I thought, was a given. But that wasn’t the case.”

Prakash said he communicated with the staff members why the comments were not OK and expected a quick and easy resolution, but that’s not what happened.

The situation escalated within the department, Prakash said, to the point where he was banned from heating food in that microwave, stopped attending classes in person and his partner lost her paid teaching assistant position.

A request was made for an interview with someone at CU Boulder within the anthropology department. The request was answered with a statement from an anonymous CU Boulder spokesperson on behalf of the department. The spokesperson said the department is aware of this incident and takes the allegations of discrimination and harassment seriously.

“The Department of Anthropology is working to rebuild trust among its students, staff and faculty by addressing the concerns raised by the individuals directly affected,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “Department leaders have met with a coalition of graduate students, staff and faculty to listen and discuss changes that best support its goal of fostering an inclusive environment.”

The spokesperson said privacy laws prohibit the university from commenting on specific personnel matters. CU Boulder declined to comment further on the allegations, citing privacy laws.

Urmi Bhattacheryya, Prakash’s partner and fellow anthropology doctoral student, said South Asians everywhere frequently face disparaging comments about their food. She said one of the main acts of racism against South Asians is to be called “curry munchers,” or told that their food is smelly or called unhygienic and dirty because of their food.

It’s a tactic to “other” them and exclude them from community tables and groups, she said.

“Somehow racism against South Asians is either mocked or it’s belittled or it’s believed as you’re being too sensitive,” Bhattacheryya said. “It isn’t just food, it’s a huge issue, and food is also something that’s really an intrinsic part of South Asian culture. It’s a part of who we are.”

It ‘felt like an interrogation’

Prakash visited the staff member who made the comments later that day, he said, to explain why the comments upset him and to resolve the issue. Prakash said he tried to explain three or four times why the comment was not OK and the context of it. She denied his points and called in two other staff members to the conversation, he said, which took him by surprise.

“She made the point doubly that they like to keep the office smelling nice, as if me heating up my food was an antithesis to that,” Prakash said.

At the most basic level, Prakash said, calling someone’s food pungent is rude. But with the added context of food racism against South Asians, it’s even more harmful, he said.

Prakash said he tried to explain that a pungent smell can’t be quantified because it’s subjective.

“Ham sandwiches when heated up smell like ham. So, polak paneer, which is what I was eating, heated up smells like polak paneer,” Prakash said. “There’s no scale there.”

After that day, Prakash said, he felt “diminished, irritated and sad.” On Sept. 7, he returned to the office to heat his lunch because he felt he had a right to do so just like anyone else.

He was joined by four like-minded students who heated Indian food in the microwave in an act of civil disobedience, Prakash said, and one of the office staff members started heckling them and making gestures about closing the door to the kitchen.

The office staff said his actions were “needless provocation after needless provocation,” according to Prakash, but all he was doing was heating food and it was not meant to be provocative. Calling someone’s ethnic food pungent is disrespectful and it’s not OK, he added.

On Sept. 12, Prakash was called into a meeting with three faculty who are on his PhD committee. In a meeting that lasted an hour and 20 minutes, he said, they told him he’d been reported by the staff for threatening behavior and insisted the staff were correct in prohibiting him from heating his food.

Prakash said he kept trying to tell them the issue and they kept speaking over him.

He said they told him that what he experienced was not racism. Prakash said the faculty told him the staff reported him to the Office of Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution and that he needs to take a training on how to have conversations.

CU Boulder declined to comment on the faculty meeting, citing privacy and employment laws.

Prakash said the faculty were acting like he suddenly had become a maladjusted student even though he has straight A’s, is winning grants to conduct research and was accepted into multiple doctoral programs.

“That really disturbed me,” Prakash said. “I’m kind of old, I’m 32, I’ve been in various jobs in various countries. I’ve secured an admission to this program and to other Ph.D. programs as well, and you’re telling me I’m somehow not a functioning human being and that I’m not able to have a conversation?”

Prakash said the faculty denied there was anything exclusionary about the situation. They said people heat broccoli all the time and broccoli is also smelly, and it’s not about Indian food because they all like Indian food.

Prakash said the difference is they can choose when they have Indian food, but for him it’s part of everyday life and his culture. For example, Prakash said, last year he cooked Indian food for a faculty member who heated it in the same microwave on three separate occasions, and the staff never had a problem with it then.

“They’ve made it seem very clear that Indian food, or any other type ethnic food, is okay if they choose to eat it, if they choose to bring it,” Prakash said. “Whereas for us, whose food it actually is, for us we have to think twice about where we eat things and where we don’t, and I’m not willing to accept that.”

Prakash went home that day really upset, he said, because the meeting with his faculty team “felt like an interrogation.”

Consequences

On Sept. 13, the entire anthropology department received an email from one of the faculty members from Prakash’s meeting that said foods with “strong and lingering smells” are banned in the kitchen and that the three office staff will help determine what can be heated there. Additionally, the email said, no students are allowed to heat anything in that kitchen moving forward.

Bhattacheryya and Prakash replied to everyone in the email to protest the new rules, saying it’s discriminatory. They said they immediately lost online access and were “blocked” from the courses that they teach as teacher assistants. Prakash said his access was restored the next day, but Bhattacheryya’s was never restored.

Bhattacheryya became involved when she was one of the four students who heated Indian food in the microwave during the act of civil disobedience on Sept. 7.

Additionally, Bhattacheryya invited Prakash come to the class she is a teacher assistant for to speak about his experience heating his food. Because anthropology is about studying and learning from other cultures, his story was relevant to the course material and valuable for her students, she said.

The two were not told their access was blocked or given a reason why, they said.

After days of uncertainty and financial instability, Bhattacheryya said, she was offered a graduate assistantship in another office. Bhattacheryya lost access to her TA course on Sept. 14 and started the new position on Monday.

CU Boulder did not comment on the matter, citing privacy and employment laws that don’t allow them to discuss the allegations.

“We can confirm that Urmi Bhattacheryya is currently employed as a graduate assistant in the Division of Social Sciences,” the CU Boulder spokesperson said in a statement.

Bhattacheryya said she was worried about losing pay during the job change but was compensated fully on her next paycheck.

Prakash and Bhattacheryya started taking their classes online soon after the faculty meeting and email announcement because they didn’t feel comfortable entering the building after the hostility surrounding the situation, they said. They took all their classes online until Sept. 28 when Prakash said one of their professors, who was also in the Sept. 12 faculty meeting with him, removed online access and asked them to return to class in person.

But, they said, they haven’t received an apology or acknowledgement by the department for the racism they experienced. Without an apology or any sort of resolution, they said, they refuse to return to class.

They complete all the assignments online, but their choice not to attend the class in-person is hurting their grade because participation counts for 30%, Prakash said.

Support from peers

In addition to sharing emails with anthropology department, Bhattacheryya and Prakash shared their story on social media.

“We are shouting from the rooftop because we don’t want this to remain behind closed doors,” Prakash said.

The two have received support, including a letter signed by a group of 29 graduate students who felt “compelled to express (their) concerns about the department’s harmful response” to the situation. The letter was sent to the entire department.

The letter said that the Sept. 13 email communicating that foods with “strong or lingering smells” are not welcome in the main office goes against the department’s mission to support an inclusive environment.

“Of all places, as an anthropology department, this should be one where diversity of all kinds should be not just tolerated, but celebrated, and, moreover, where experiences of systemic racism are taken seriously and addressed,” the letter said. “The decision to double down on this particular policy in light of this particular situation involving Indian food — for which there is a layered history of marginalization and racism, as detailed by our colleagues in their emails — comes into direct conflict with CU’s diversity, equity and inclusion goals.”

The letter calls on the department to “take concrete measures to change policies that reproduce systemic racism” and “repair this rift” in the department.

The CU Boulder spokesperson said there are dedicated resources available for anyone who is experiencing discrimination, harassment or bias.

“We encourage anyone impacted to contact the Office of Victim Assistance, which provides free, confidential trauma-focused counseling, advocacy and support. You can also learn more about resources, support and what to report through ‘Don’t Ignore It‘.”

Moving forward, Prakash and Bhattacheryya aren’t sure whether they’ll continue their education at CU Boulder.

“At this point, I feel like my presence as a person of color and specifically as a man of color is very unwelcome,” Prakash said. “How do I recover from this?”

Prakash said they can’t immediately move elsewhere because it’s a big financial commitment. The two saved up money for years, with Bhattacheryya working overtime, so they could afford to move to the United States from India. Prakash said they’d like to stay and be advocates for change but they have to balance that with preserving their mental health and what’s best for them.

Prakash said he’s working with the OVA, which is offering him support and advocacy. He said they’re talking with him to explore options on what to do next.

Bhattacheryya said she has a chronic pain disorder that flared up due to the stress from the situation and said her mental health “has been in turmoil.”

“It shows this glaring light on what they think of us as people, what they think of our food, our culture and our identity,” she said, adding, “We just feel like we’re put in a position where we have to keep shouting ourselves hoarse and telling people what you’re doing to us is wrong.”

Prakash said they’re planning to see how the situation is resolved and then will decide what to do from there. He said he wants to see some sort of apology or acknowledgement of the racism and discrimination that occurred.

When Prakash went into that staff member’s office the first day of the incident, he said he thought it would be a simple resolution. He didn’t expect it to escalate to the extent it did.

“For me, the biggest shock is the hubris of the fact that anthropology is supposed to learn from others … you’re supposed to learn from people who you study,” Prakash said. “I don’t see that.”