Dan Jackson on Vanderbilt football reinstatement after defending Kayne West on Facebook: 'Humbled to be back'

Aria Gerson
Nashville Tennessean

Vanderbilt football defensive backs coach Dan Jackson spoke Wednesday about his reinstatement to the program following a university investigation for Facebook comments defending Kanye West amid antisemitism from the rap artist.

Jackson stepped away from the program after the Nov. 5 South Carolina game while the review was completed but was reinstated after the end of the season. While he did not violate the university's anti-harassment policy, he was found to have violated the social media policy and committed to undergoing anti-discrimination, unconscious bias and social media training while meeting with leaders of student groups.

"I'm humbled to be back with the program," Jackson said. "I'm thankful for the support of the school and sincerely apologetic for the entire situation and anybody that was hurt by it. And so I have used it to be a transformative event; I feel like I've personally grown and I actually look forward to taking what I've learned and how I've grown to be able to impact people on an even higher level."

Asked specifically what he had learned, Jackson said, "Humility, I've learned understanding, I've learned a ton about social media, understanding what's going on with current events before commenting, and, and also, words matter. And this is a powerful, powerful platform. And I've also just learned a lot of lot of things from people on this campus, that opportunity to meet with some really unique and cool people on this campus and be able to hear their perspective, and there's some people with some great knowledge that we can all learn from. And so I'm obviously disappointed in the reason for these meetings. ... (But) it's something that I think everybody needs to be able to continue to be more aware of."

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