Editor’s Note: This article discusses past instances of discriminatory and harmful language published in The Eagle, including anti-LGBTQ+, anti-Black and anti-Asian slurs, as well as the publication of hate symbols.
For 100 years, The Eagle has been American University’s student voice, reporting on campus life and holding those in power accountable. However, we cannot celebrate this milestone without also acknowledging and taking responsibility for the harm The Eagle has caused through its reporting and editorial decisions.
Throughout our history, The Eagle has published language and content that has hurt members of our community. This harm has taken many forms, from the publication of slurs targeting LGBTQ+, disabled, Black and Asian individuals, to the erasure of Indigenous communities, unfiltered dissemination of hate symbols and op-eds that attacked marginalized communities.
These choices caused real harm and contributed to an environment where our newsroom failed to protect those we reported on. As we continue to evolve, so do our reporting practices.
We are sorry.
Today, we must hold ourselves and the power of our platform accountable, and we must apologize for the many ways in which The Eagle, as an institution, has made AU less safe for community members with marginalized identities.
At a time when there is growing pressure in higher education and across the country to downplay or ignore harmful histories, we believe that understanding our own is more important than ever. Accountability is not optional in journalism; it is fundamental to the practice.
As we’ve grown as a newspaper and learned from our mistakes, The Eagle’s approach to reporting has evolved. Today, and every day, The Eagle holds true to the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics: to minimize harm and seek truth and to report it (two values that often conflict in journalism). The Eagle began a series of columns called “On the Record” in January 2020 to be more transparent about our reporting processes.
The Eagle’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion team, composed of staffers and editors who meet biweekly, began an internal review of past reporting practices over the last few years. Over the past several months, with our 100th anniversary in sight, we renewed this internal project and dedicated ourselves to publishing a public report. Starting in 2022, we began researching, examining and discussing our paper’s history, drawing inspiration from similar reflections at major news outlets.
We’ve chosen not to republish explicit details of our harmful coverage, but rather a summary of what we found, to not re-harm and re-traumatize community members. To remain transparent, The Eagle has chosen to hyperlink to our complete archive so that those who wish to view it can do so at their own discretion. Print editions from 2009 to present are available here and all other content is available on our current website. We are continuing efforts to make our past work publicly available.
We recognize that our work to acknowledge and address these failures is ongoing, and this letter is a first step in that continued effort.
Harmful coverage in The Eagle’s history
Publishing anti-LGBTQ+ slurs
The Eagle has used anti-LGBTQ+ slurs in articles in derogatory ways, including in columns from November 1958 and November 1983. Other times, the slurs were spelled out in direct quotes, like in February 2007. Other instances included spelling out anti-LGBTQ+ slurs in song lyrics and signs depicted in published photos without content warnings. In other instances, the slurs were used in a reclamatory way. While anti-LGBTQ+ slurs have been published in both discriminatory and reclamatory ways, we now recognize that publishing these words fully spelled out under any circumstances can cause harm.
To minimize harm, The Eagle does and will continue to evaluate the inclusion of anti-LGBTQ+ slurs, such as in a reclamatory way, and, when deemed necessary to include, will not spell out the entire word and will include a content warning. The Eagle continues to consult the NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists’ and other affinity journalism groups’ style guides.
Publishing anti-Black slurs
On multiple occasions, The Eagle has explicitly published the N-word and other variations of the slur in its papers. The Eagle re-published the slur over multiple years, including columns in June and October 2012, book reviews in March 2003 and November 1967, and articles written by staffers in September 1968. In each case, The Eagle chose to print a slur directly tied to the dehumanization and institutionalized enslavement of Black people.
While the intention in some of these pieces may have been to preserve the original language of sources or honor free expression, that intent does not excuse the harm done. Reprinting this language without critical care ignored our responsibilities as student journalists to minimize harm and failed to consider how The Eagle participates in the systemic oppression of Black students and community members.
This consideration should always be at the forefront of our minds, including refraining from spelling hateful words in their entirety and including a content warning.
Publishing anti-Asian slurs and stereotypes
The Eagle has published slurs and derogatory stereotypes about Asian communities. A 1942 article referred to Japanese students using a derogatory term while reporting on their admission to Midwest colleges during Japanese American internment. A 1958 satirical article mocked Chinese accents and perpetuated racist tropes, where made-up characters with racist names mimicked stereotypical Chinese accents. As recently as 1992, the paper used a derogatory term in reference to traditional hats.
Additionally, a 1972 article about a campus event used derogatory terms for Vietnamese people while detailing a dinner where students dressed in Viet Cong attire and ate racialized menu items. These instances of racism contributed to a culture of exclusion and dehumanization.
El Águlia and publishing harmful content about Latino people
The Eagle has a documented history of publishing language that dehumanized Latine communities. Articles published in 2005 and 2006 used the term “illegal aliens,” a term rooted in xenophobia, to frame ongoing immigration debates. A 1971 article depicted Latine neighborhoods in D.C. as impoverished and unsafe, reinforcing harmful stereotypes about Latine people and contributing to a longstanding pattern of marginalization within The Eagle.
In 2021, The Eagle sought to expand our coverage by launching El Águila, a Spanish-language section, to better serve Latine students and communities. However, we recognize that our support for this section has not always met the standard it deserved. A former editor changed the section’s terminology from “Latine” to “Latinx” without consulting El Águila, whose staff had developed their own style conventions based on cultural and linguistic considerations. This lack of communication, combined with longstanding concerns about uneven staffing support, undermined trust between El Águila and The Eagle, which led El Águila’s entire staff to step away for a full semester in fall 2023.
The Eagle acknowledges these failures. Since then, we have strengthened staffing support for El Águila to ensure that editorial decisions are made more collaboratively and with respect to the communities we serve.
Publishing slurs relating to people with disabilities
For decades, The Eagle’s coverage reflected ableist norms that were commonplace in popular discourse, and the prevalence of such language in our pages perpetuated real harm. Articles routinely infantilized people with disabilities or used disability-related slurs to describe both people with disabilities and those without, treating disability as something wrong or inferior.
Throughout our archives, disability is often portrayed through generalizations that strip people with disabilities of their agency. Articles throughout the 1940s and well into the 1960s used dehumanizing and ableist slurs towards individuals with and without disabilities.
This harmful language extended into opinion pieces as well. A 2010 op-ed used disability-related slurs to attack LGBTQ+ students while promoting misogynistic and violent rhetoric. That piece remains one of the most egregious editorial failures in The Eagle’s history, not only in its treatment of disability, but in the broader harm it inflicted across multiple marginalized communities.
Even when discussing accessibility, The Eagle has relied on outdated and harmful terminology.
The Eagle acknowledges this harm. We recognize that disability is not a metaphor or insult. Our current standards reflect a commitment to reporting that does not perpetuate stereotypes. Moving forward, we are committed to ensuring that our coverage reflects a deeper understanding of disabilities and recognizing that people with disabilities are valued members of the community we serve.
Erasure of Indigenous communities
In the 1970s, 1990s and 2000s, articles in The Eagle referred to Native Americans as “Indians” and published writing that perpetuated both harmful stereotypes and misleading narratives about colonial America that obscured the reality of genocide inflicted on Indigenous people. Systemic oppression of Indigenous people in the United States is often accomplished through erasure and The Eagle has contributed to that erasure through our failure to adequately provide coverage of Indigenous communities.
With limited exceptions, such as a guest column and feature article in 2022, The Eagle has next to no recent coverage of Indigenous communities in D.C. or Indigenous students part of our campus community.
American University resides on the traditional territory of the
Nacotchtank/Anacostan/Piscataway people. Our paper has failed to represent the stories and voices of those whose land our University resides on, as well as the experiences of community members who descend from other Native peoples. In naming the Nacotchtank/Anacostan/Piscataway people, we acknowledge our failure and commit to combating the erasure that we have helped reproduce.
The Eagle’s DEI staff aim to take public accountability and to highlight that to date, not enough has been done to combat this harm.
Publishing photos of hate symbols
In November 2016, The Eagle published photos of a swastika found in an on-campus classroom. While the writers intended to raise awareness of the incident and provide the community with information about how the University would respond, publishing the image subjected community members to a traumatizing experience. The article also lacked any content warnings or image blurring.
To minimize harm, The Eagle continues to evaluate the news value of a photo against the potential impact of publishing it. While we understand The Eagle has a responsibility to report on-campus hate crimes, efforts must be made to protect vulnerable groups, whether that means adding a content warning or providing an option for readers to avoid viewing the photo.
Publishing op-eds attacking marginalized communities
The Eagle has historically provided a platform for opinion pieces. However, some columns, op-eds and letters to the editor have attacked members of the LGBTQ+ community, women, people of color and other campus communities. While the intent was to foster open discourse, many of these columns reinforced harmful stereotypes and perpetuated inequality.
The Eagle published guest columns in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center that perpetuated Islamophobic correlations between Islamic faith and violence. Several of these columns levied allegations of support for terrorism against Muslim people, including a column from October 2001 about a Muslim religious leader who was invited to speak on campus about peace. The Eagle’s platforming of these narratives contributed to harmful stereotypes about people who practice Islam and created a dangerous environment on campus for community members with Muslim and Middle Eastern identities.
In the early 2000s, The Eagle published columns that justified racial profiling and downplayed the seriousness of sexual violence, leading to campus protests. In 2023 and 2024, The Eagle also published multiple guest columns that included false or misleading information about the Israel-Hamas war.
Recognizing the harm these pieces caused, The Eagle has since reformed its guest column guidelines to prioritize community value and ethical journalism. The Eagle’s opinion and copy editing teams have developed more rigorous fact-checking that holds guest writers to the same standards as our columnists. In doing so, we acknowledge the role our publication plays in community dialogue and the responsibility we hold to prevent the circulation of harmful misinformation.
The problematic history of Eagle rants
From 2009 to 2013, The Eagle hosted “Eagle Rants,” an anonymous section where students submitted unfiltered opinions. While many posts were benign, others contained slurs and problematic rhetoric. There were several instances in which a slur was used but not directed at anyone in particular. However, the anonymity and lack of moderation created a space where bigotry could be expressed without warning to readers, which violates The Eagle’s commitment to truth, transparency and minimizing harm. This forum, while intended to foster free speech, ultimately contributed to an environment in which such problematic speech was published and platformed by The Eagle without accountability.
Recent missteps
The Eagle is a learning newspaper, which means that many members of our staff are learning the tenets of journalism ethics by doing and making mistakes. It is a part of our code of ethics that when those mistakes are made, we must correct them in a timely manner and take accountability.
In 2023, The Eagle covered a collaboration between the Asian American Student Union and the Terrace Dining Hall in honor of Lunar New Year. The article referred to the holiday as Chinese New Year, which failed to acknowledge the many cultures that celebrate Lunar New Year and contributed to the homogenization of Asian identities. The article was updated and a correction was issued to acknowledge the misstep.
Also in 2023, Eagle photographers attended a vigil held on campus to mourn Tyre Nichols, who died as a result of police violence in Memphis, Tennessee. The Eagle received criticism of our photographers’ behavior, saying that their presence interrupted the event and made a spectacle of students’ pain. We acknowledge the harm that this caused and apologize for inflicting further pain, especially to Black students and community members.
In response to this failure, The Eagle’s multimedia section developed guidelines for covering both vigils and protests in a respectful and unobstructive manner. We know the harm caused can not be undone, but we aim to institute practices that prevent similar missteps in the future.
Ongoing efforts by The Eagle
The Eagle takes steps and continues to re-evaluate its reporting practices and standards each year. However, we understand that the work to align with our commitment to ethical journalism and minimizing harm is never done.
In 2025, in response to a media alert issued by the Student Press Law Center, The Eagle revised its internal policy for evaluating article take-down requests. For all articles published before March 2025, additional consideration will be given to subjects or authors whose attribution to an article’s content puts them at risk of deportation or visa revocation.
In 2024, we refined the guest column submission process. Under the direction of then-editor-in-chief Abigail Pritchard, The Eagle revamped its op-ed columns. Pritchard said not having clear guidelines for what is a publishable op-ed means that it “has historically made the most sense for editors to publish any piece that expresses an opinion on something relevant to the community, because there were no guidelines in place providing a standard by which to judge those pieces.”
Now, our submissions must be an opinion of community value, a unique perspective on a common topic or highly newsworthy. The Eagle stands by its commitment not to publish rant-type pieces. The Eagle, first and foremost, prioritizes minimizing harm in all of its work, and continues to examine its guest column practices. In 2024, we made further changes to our guest column guide, requiring there be a public representative for group columns to ensure accountability.
The Eagle does not publish fully-spelled out slurs. We recognize that such hateful speech may be important to a story, such as holding someone to account for speech that was made publicly. However, we understand that covering such hateful speech for news purposes can be done without fully spelling out slurs and including content warnings at the top of articles for readers.
The Eagle will not publish photos of hate symbols unless absolutely necessary and with appropriate warnings, so readers of an article that holds people accountable and informs the community about hate on campus are not unduly subjected to seeing such symbols if they don’t want to.
The Eagle established a Community Engagement editor in 2020 and evolved into the Diversity, Inclusion and Equity & Community Engagement Editor in 2023. The DEI editor edits articles for The Eagle with a DEI focus, looking for any language or phrasing that could directly harm or be interpreted as harmful to marginalized communities on campus. The DEI editor is also responsible for maintaining constant contact with campus organizations to enhance transparency and receive feedback on past coverage.
The Eagle’s advisory board, a collection of Eagle alumni, American University professors, local journalists and current Eagle staffers who oversee larger operations of The Eagle, also established its own DEI committee in fall 2024. The committee meets three times per year to evaluate the culture of The Eagle and the Eagle Advisory Board regarding DEI efforts. The committee also serves as a resource for students and can address and evaluate the culture of The Eagle.
The Eagle has established a centralized feedback email for readers to submit feedback and ask questions about our reporting at feedback@theeagleonline.com. This contact will be permanently available on our contact page.
We recognize that accountability is an ongoing process. As a student newspaper, we are constantly learning, evolving and striving to do better. That said, we must understand that we’ll inevitably make mistakes.
The Eagle remains committed to re-examining our past and present practices to ensure that we uphold the highest standards of journalism. We will continue to evaluate our policies through our DEI group, engage in honest conversations with our staff and readers and prioritize transparency in our editorial decisions.
Our mission is to seek truth and minimize harm. While we have made significant changes, there is still work to be done. This letter is not the conclusion of our efforts, and we have just scratched the surface of researching, examining and discussing The Eagle’s over 2,400 print editions and thousands more online articles. Rather, this letter is a commitment to The Eagle’s continuous reflection on our goal for improvement, commitment to minimizing harm and desire to accurately cover historically marginalized communities.
The Eagle’s DEI Committee is a group of Eagle staffers and editors who meet biweekly during the academic year, and monthly during the summer. Eagle managing editors and section editors are required to attend DEI meetings, and other staff are highly encouraged to attend.
This letter was written by Maya Cederlund, Abby Turner, Neil Lazurus and Walker Whalen based on research conducted and notes written by members of the DEI committee. Copy editing was done by Sabine Kanter-Huchting.
