AFSC and DEI: A Monday Update With Some Answers — and More Questions

For those following the unrest in AFSC headquarters about the identity & status of its DEI Director Raquel Saraswati (previously blogged about here ), a clarifying email came in late Friday from AFSC staffer Layne Mullett. In it, Mullett answered the two big questions:

One: was Saraswati still in her position at AFSC?

Answer: Yes.

Two: Then, why did she seem to have vanished from their website?

Answer: Blame it on an unfinished, glitchy website overhaul.

The responses were helpful; Mullett supplied a link to Saraswati’s staff profile page, which worked.

Embarrassing web glitches — haven’t many of us been there? (And is any website overhaul ever really “finished”?)

But there was more. Mullett included a statement which, the email said, “can be attributed to the AFSC leadership team.” Another copy came in from a Friend. Here it is, in full:

Our initial post noted that the charges surfaced in an unsigned, widely-circulated “Open Letter,” referred to as the OL, accusing Saraswati of being an impostor and a fake.

I also commented that “AFSC officials should be used to mere trolling, including partisan political attacks. Most such can be shrugged off or ignored; AFSC has long been good at that.”

Ignoring didn’t seem to work in this case, though. And as news spread, shrugging it off was deemed  insufficient. Thus the Leadership Team (LT) memo constitutes a sharp and open rejection and rebuke.

In the OL there was a concluding list of questions, which amounted to throwing down the gauntlet. Here are the important ones with parsed-out, rephrased LT responses:

OL: Are there external entities with whom Saraswati is collaborating?

LT summary response: No Comment & None of Your Business.

OL: Given Quaker testimonies, and the commitment to integrity, will Saraswati continue to represent AFSC?

LT summary response: Given all that, Yes.

OL: Should this position, with tremendous power to lead DEI initiatives with the organization, instead be assigned to a desiring and qualified person of color?

LT summary response: As far as we’re concerned, it already is.

OL: How long will it take before Saraswati steps down from her current role?

LT summary response: None of your business. If any “stepping down” occurs, it will be on your end.

The OL’s authors said they wrote anonymously in fear of retaliation. Following on this rebuke, my sense is that they have good reason for concern. They went public with a classic cancel culture mob effort to push out a top staffer playing the race card, the ethnicity card, a whole deck of innuendo cards, even the bronzer card. The ploy has now been smacked down; at this point, the OL is Out of Luck. If I was an author-staff member, I’d be sending out resumés apace.

Yet if I was Saraswati/Seidel, I’m not sure how much comfort there would be in this current outcome, beyond the continued paychecks. The constituency of a DEI program is those inside  an organization. She will now walk AFSC’s halls knowing that a vocal, organized but clandestine faction is still on record as dedicated to her defenestration. If I were in her shoes, while grateful for the LT’s backing, I might be sending out resumés too.