November 13, 2020

Dear Bryn Mawr Community,

In celebration of the successful strike organized by Black Students Refusing Further Inaction, the Women of Color House, and the Black Student League at Haverford College, and the on-going strike organized by The Core Bryn Mawr Strike Collective in collaboration with Sisterhood, Bryn Mawr's African and Caribbean Students Organization (BACaSO), Mujeres*, Zami+, and Mawrters for Immigrant Justice, the Africana Studies Program is inspired. Our multivocality coalesces into unanimous support of and solidarity with the demands brought forth, respecting the multiplicity of perspectives within the Steering Committee on achieving these goals.

We recognize that people of color, particularly those who are Black and/or Indigenous, have had to fight the same fights within the institution as they have outside, regarding anti-Black racism, equity, acknowledgment, and inclusion. The College has benefitted from the appearance of increased diversity without establishing processes and practices to ensure an inclusive environment, continuing the marginalization of students, staff, faculty, and even academic programs. The Africana Studies Program supports the students’ expression of the need to move the College forward, and we acknowledge students’ bravery in refusing to accept the status quo. We are reminded that even the foundation of the Africana Studies program was brought about by avid student advocacy, in concert with faculty participation, to motivate institutional acquiescence. Continuing longstanding actions of student leadership within the bi-college consortium, the Africana Studies Program envisions our future as: leading anti-racist thought, action, and education on campus; and holding space for criticality, challenging power structures, engaging multiple perspectives, and developing awareness and tools for liberation. Students are enacting these tenets in this very moment.

As a program, we are working diligently, in collaboration with student consultants, supported by the Teaching and Learning Institute, and student Africana Ambassadors, to strengthen the existing infrastructure of Africana Studies. The program appreciates being considered in June’s open letter to the bi-college community, and we take seriously the positive impact that our courses have had on students, and the responsibility of further growth required to develop a major. During the Fall 2020 semester, we: have structured a process for vetting courses; are proposing a tenure-track position to the Committee on Academic Priorities; are improving advising processes; are working toward building community; and are formalizing and building institutional memory. Within the College, we are arduously advocating for an increased budget for Africana Studies to support the processes described above, and more. We implore the College to cease holding up Africana Studies to imply forward movement and investment to justice, equity, and anti-racism, without the institutional resources to achieve these ends.

Africana Studies prides itself on being an interdisciplinary program, offering students the ability to explore Africana and Diasporic study through a wide range of perspectives. We encourage our core and affiliated faculty and staff colleagues to support student leadership in these times of great opportunity. We encourage students interested in Africana and Diasporic study to seek out opportunities for deep learning and strong community building, and to continue freedom dreaming, with liberation in mind.

Sincerely,

Chanelle Wilson, Chair, Africana Studies

November 2, 2020

Dear Haverford community,

Last Monday, October 26th, Walter Wallace Jr., a Black man who was a son, husband, father, and friend, was murdered by the Philadelphia Police Department. We join the community in mourning this tragic loss of another Black life, in an act of state-sponsored violence, ableism, and antiBlackness.

We recognize the leadership of Black students and students of color, particularly the Black Students Refusing Further Inaction, Women of Color House, and Black Students League, in their fair and honest critiques of the College. We wholeheartedly agree with the calls to action expressed and the urgent need for change. As Environmental Studies faculty, we will learn from the leadership that our students are demonstrating. We acknowledge that we have fallen short and commit to reflection, conversation, and—most importantly—movement from words to actions. The foundations of dominant environmental thought and disciplinary fields have historically supported, directly and indirectly, forces of racism, colonialism, dispossession, and appropriation. Environmental Studies must reckon with and upend this legacy and the resulting harms, exclusions, and erasures. We commit to further combating environmental injustice and advocating for environmental justice, antiracism, and decolonization inside and outside the classroom as well as through our departmental policies and procedures.

We will use our position within the academy toward systemic transformative change, calling on Haverford to live up to its stated commitments to racial justice and to oppose injustice, in all of its forms. As a department, we commit to dismantling these structures in our classrooms and across the Bi-Co. Environmental Studies faculty are deepening our conversations about classroom and campus climate, representation within the department, resources and support systems, and transformative justice in our region. We declare our solidarity with the strike and support for the student demands, and we extend our support for these efforts, affirm students’ right to protest injustice—of any form, on or off campus—and offer the following concrete actions that we, as a faculty body, will take immediately.

We are canceling all Environmental Studies classes for this week (November 1–November 7, 2020) and until further notice. Faculty members are available to students for conversations, questions, and answers during those scheduled class periods, but instruction will not take place.

Students in ENVS courses will not be penalized, academically or otherwise, for participating in strike or protest actions. Deadlines and syllabi will be adjusted to accommodate students enrolled in our courses.

The ENVS department will put its collective weight behind the striking students’ demands that require faculty action and can be achieved through faculty agency, and we will use our position to demand broader institutional change on other items. We will develop clear departmental procedures to support students, including, but not limited to, improving accessibility for disabled, LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, and FGLI students within our courses and establishing mechanisms of accountability.

Finally, we look forward to continued reflection and dialogue with ENVS students—whether they are majors, minors, or members of CER—through the first week of November and beyond.

In solidarity, Bi-College Department of Environmental Studies

Don Barber

Carla M. Dhillon

Elisabeth Evans

Sara J. Grossman

Carol Hager

Joshua Moses

Helen K. White

Jonathan Wilson

Talia Young

Bryn Mawr Biology Department

Statement in Response to the Bi-Co Student Strike

We want to first acknowledge the work done by the Biology Major Reps, Houda Bouchouari and Chinyere Udokporo, in helping students and faculty engage with each other on issues related to the strike.

Second, we want to state unequivocally that we applaud the anti-racist action being taken by both Haverford and Bryn Mawr students for lasting, institutional change. As we understand it, the student strike at Haverford was sparked by the unacceptable response by the Haverford College administration to student and community concerns regarding the horrific police killing of Walter Wallace Jr. Though the Haverford strike was initiated as a response to these immediate events, we understand the two strikes are rooted in long-held frustration by BIPOC students at both Haverford and Bryn Mawr who need and deserve more from their institutions.

We understand that some of you, perhaps especially those of you who are proud of and care deeply about the Biology Department, are disappointed by the Department’s response to the strike. The Department’s response has admittedly been uneven and uncoordinated. We hope this statement will be a step toward rectifying ambiguity and restoring trust.

First, students who participate in the strike will not face retaliation. The department will also support faculty members who choose to support the strike and will support them in their interactions with the administration.

Second, as educators we have obligation to continue teaching. We are also aware of the risks taken and sacrifices made by students this semester, as well as the precarious position of international students and students with federal loans who require ongoing instruction. That said, in support of the strikes, we commit to making sure that for every course there is a path to success for students who decide to join the strike. Though the details of that path will be up to individual faculty, there will be no penalties for not attending synchronous activities, all synchronous activities will be recorded, and all faculty have or are in the process of re-evaluating their syllabi. Although the way forward in each course may differ, assignments have been dropped and assignment deadlines extended; in many cases, assignment deadlines have been made “soft”, with no penalty for work turned in after the deadline if the work is submitted on or before Dec. 10th, the last day of classes. In general, all seniors are required to complete a written thesis and presentation to satisfy the requirements for the major. Students in this semester’s senior seminar have flexibility in deadlines, including the option to take an Incomplete at the end of this semester, and complete the work for the course later. Finally, as the strike continues we will continue to reevaluate the situation as a department.

Like all of you, we hope that both administrations will respond with a plan of action sufficient to end the strike. In this department, however, we do not want to simply put these issues “behind us.” We can’t afford to. BIPOC individuals and those from low-income backgrounds continue to face structural racism and disadvantage when they attempt to take the steps needed to become scientists, scientifically informed professionals, or citizen scientists. Since receiving the Bi-Co Open Letter over the summer, Biology faculty have engaged in thinking about how we can make the Biology Department more inclusive. As biologists, we hold that equity and inclusion in science is not only a democratic necessity, but essential to promoting excellence and innovation. We aspire to create an educational environment in which BIPOC students know that they belong and that their intellectual contributions are valued. We aim to nurture and support BIPOC students who will become BIPOC Biologists and BIPOC Health Professionals or assume other positions of leadership. But we also understand that to achieve this inclusive learning community that we all desire and deserve will require sustained DEI and antiracist work within our department. In this vein, we propose the following actions:

• Continue to host town halls on a regular basis going forward.
  

• Engage in a two-day professionally facilitated workshop for biology faculty focusing on what we can do to make our department more inclusive, with actionable steps as a product and a 6-month follow-up.
  

• Host social and academic events that foster more of a community among Biology faculty and majors. Such academic events should include presentations by a diverse set of speakers at different stages of their careers.
  

• Increase access to support structures outside of Bryn Mawr such as SACNAS.
  

• Improve transparency about how majors can become involved in research, both at Bryn Mawr and beyond.
  

• Increase the number and quality of opportunities for Biology majors to present their work.
  

• Incorporate anti-racist themes into the curriculum.
  

• Make structural changes that enhance mentorship within our departmental community.
  
  We appreciate that this is just a list of ideas, which means nothing if not pursued. We also understand that such work must be transparent and that we must be held accountable for it. We look forward to engaging with each other and with those of you who would like to help us pursue these actions.
  
  We hope this moment, which is a moment of suffering for so many, is also an opportunity, an opportunity to do the hard work of devising and implementing change to make Biology better at Bryn Mawr.
  

The mission of the Career & Civic Engagement Center (the Center) is to prepare and support Bryn Mawr students and alums as they develop into effective, self-aware leaders wherever their paths take them, both during and after college. We share your deep commitment to racial equity and social justice. We join you in your desire to make Bryn Mawr College a welcoming, equitable, and inclusive space for learning, leadership, and opportunity for students of all identities. To that end, we support you in holding the institution, including the Center, accountable to a higher standard of self-reflection and action around our own practices and behaviors.

In recognition of the Bryn Mawr College student strike, the Center staff will postpone current programming wherever possible. We continue to be available for appointments, where we are happy to share content and resources on an individual basis. When possible, we will provide online resources and create new ones when needed to fill any gaps created by program postponements.

The Center staff is actively engaged in a process of self-examination with the goal of identifying barriers, expanding access, and scaffolding our programs with anti-racist ideology. We are inspired by the vision you have of how the College can be better and we are catalyzed by your energy. We look forward to collaborating with you and other stakeholders to effect change.

Sincerely,

Your Career & Civic Engagement Team

Dear Bryn Mawr Administration and Community,

The purpose of this letter is to formally state faculty support for the current student strike and its goals for transforming Bryn Mawr College, and to express our frustration with the administration’s handling of the process. Over the past decade alone, BIPOC and marginalized students have repeatedly articulated a list of racial, economic, academic, and social justice demands, including in November, 2015 and June, 2020, and November, 2020. There is overlap between the 2015 and 2020 demands, which indicates that the administration has not taken the steps necessary to fully address grievances articulated by students. Further, the administration has been slow to act in working towards changing the institutional structures and power relationships that perpetuate racism, classism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia, among other issues. We defend the students’ right to strike and share their desire to achieve further racial justice and equity at Bryn Mawr College. The College’s new anti-racism principles provide a framework for moving forward, and we see this as an important opportunity for our community to engage in sustainable transformation, if we rise to meet the occasion.

Instead of complaining about the lack of an immediate response from the student organizers, stigmatizing the strikers as threatening or intimidating, providing vague threats against faculty who stand in solidarity with the strike, or ordering us back into the classroom (as if multiple forms of teaching and learning are not occurring), we call on the administration and our campus community to take this opportunity to strengthen our institution and improve the educational experiences we are providing for our students, both inside and outside of the classroom. The College has failed our students, staff, and faculty who are Black, Indigenous and people of color. In line with student demands, the College has taken positive steps towards hiring more faculty of color, but it has not institutionalized the kinds of support, access to decision-making power, and working conditions necessary to allow said faculty to thrive at this institution. It is time to own that failure, do better, and recognize that we all stand to gain from a more racially just and equitable campus environment. Creating such an environment will require a more creative, flexible, and expansive approach that welcomes students’ viewpoints, rather than ignoring, silencing, or feeling threatened by them.

The striking students, the faculty supporting this letter, and the administration have the shared goal of creating an anti-racist institution. We ask that the College establish a mutually agreed upon negotiation process which responds deftly to the students and their demands. This must begin with a written protection guarantee from the administration for striking students, and supportive staff and faculty. All community members should be guaranteed that there will be no retaliation for any strike organizing, participation, or support. We also ask that a trained transformative justice mediator be hired to facilitate the discussion and negotiation process, producing a shared and collaborative plan for transformative justice within a mutually agreed upon timeline. We educate our students exactly for this process, to lead and to create change; however, we are not allowing them to lead the way. It is time to rebuild trust within our community. We each have something to learn from each other and the student strike is a hopeful plea that our institution can live up to the ideals it has repeatedly expressed, but has yet to enact fully.

Sincerely,

Concerned Faculty

To the Bryn Mawr and Haverford community:

We are deeply saddened by the murder of Walter Wallace Jr. at the hands of members of the Philadelphia Police Department, and by the ongoing state-sanctioned murder of Black Americans. As Creative Writing faculty, we are attuned to the importance of language and the nuances of narrative, and to hear Haverford College’s president emphasize the fear of “outside agitators” over the needs of our communities to grieve and be in solidarity with Black life tells an unacceptable story about our community’s values. Philadelphia has been profoundly and uniquely shaped by anti-black police violence, and as institutions of higher education a mere twenty minutes away, Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges both must continue to be involved in the fight against this legacy.

We strongly support, and are in agreement with, the principles and demands of the student strike. To echo the Haverford Anthropology department, for students to make the sacrifices that a strike demands in order to push the Bi-Co towards becoming a more just place is “an extraordinary act of love.” We wish to affirm and celebrate the clarity, power, and innovation the leaders of the student strike have shown in telling their own story of this moment. As faculty in Creative Writing, we declare our solidarity with striking students and commit ourselves to supporting this strike in any way we’re able. We call on other departments to do the same. We are responding to the strike in the following ways:

• We are busy exploring ways to partner with student leadership around how best to support their learning initiatives as they intersect with our genres of work

* All regularly planned classes (synchronous and asynchronous) have been suspended until further notice

• Students participating in the strike will not be subjected to any grade or attendance penalties

• We remain available to meet with students who are interested in continuing work on their theses and final portfolios; we likewise support those who decide to suspend work until the end of the strike

• If the strike ends and classes resume in the coming weeks, each professor will touch base in class and consult with students about how to continue forward and finish the remainder of the semester

• We will be postponing upcoming events planned with the college that predate the end of the strike

• We will send the student demand letter and mutual aid links to our networks and continue to work within our department to respond and engage BIPOC student demands. As a start to this end, we will hold a Zoom conversation for all interested students on Monday, November 9, from 1-2pm, with an intention to listen to students, and provide support.

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88490630897

• We encourage members of the Creative Writing community to support students through the mutual aid mechanism: Venmo @hcstrikefund Learn more on Instagram @bicomutualaid

As members of the college faculty we are committed to doing the listening, reading, talking and generative work necessary, alongside our students and our colleagues, to dismantle the legacies of iniquity at our two colleges.

In solidarity,

Bryn Mawr Creative Writing Program

November 5, 2020

The Department of Literatures in English at Bryn Mawr College stands in solidarity with its striking students and joins with them in rage and mourning for the Black victims of state-sanctioned violence, most recently the murder of Walter Wallace, Jr. at the hands of the Philadelphia Police Department as well as all the far too many other Black trans, women, men, and gender non-conforming people whose futures have been foreclosed. We recognize the pain, anger, and exhaustion experienced by our BIPOC students as they contend with the constant exercise of systemic violence against Black persons.

We also recognize that the systems of harm that devalue Black life are deeply engrained in the institution of the College itself. In itemizing the Bi-Co’s administrative and pedagogical complicity with white supremacy and anti-Blackness, our BIPOC student strikers have bravely shown us how we as teachers, scholars, and administrators can reshape our campus into an equitable and anti-racist space. Their demands are not only acts of critique and disruption but also acts of care and creative visioning. We are deeply grateful for the necessary but taxing work undertaken in the Bryn Mawr and Haverford strike letters and in the Open Letter to the Bi-Co. We acknowledge and appreciate that this labor has been led by Black women, women of color, and queer, trans, and non-binary BIPOC students on both campuses.

Following the lead of our brave student scholar-activists and their demands, we commit to:

• Cancel all classes (synchronous and asynchronous) and assignments until further notice. We will also be holding space and teach-ins for students for reflection, discussion, strategizing, learning, and community-building; these will be open invitations for our students, but there will be no penalty if students do not attend.

• Guarantee that no students or faculty participating in the strike will be subject to any academic or professional penalties.

• Guarantee that when the strike ends, professors will consult with students to determine the most humane pathway forward for the remainder of the semester, including with regard to assignments and assessments.

• Guarantee the continued support of the department for its students of color, particularly BIPOC students, including but not limited to classroom spaces that engage with material beyond the white literary canon.

In addition to committing ourselves to these demands, those of us who specialize in literature have additional obligations to advance our students’ anti-racist vision. In particular, we must actively contend with the origins of our own discipline, which elevated both the English language and Anglo-centric literature for global export. Indeed, our College’s own particular histories of racism and anti-Semitism were shaped by - amongst many others - a professor of “Anglo-Saxon” philology and literature, M. Carey Thomas, whose legacy we have yet to contend with fully. Acknowledging how “English” literature is imbricated in histories of white supremacy, settler colonialism, slavery, imperialism, nativist nationalism - as well as heteropatriarchy, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism - is a necessary first step in reckoning with our own complicity in the structures of harm and injustice outlined by our students.

Reading literature and theory that raises our consciousness is vital for imagining and building the institutional and cultural changes demanded by BIPOC student strikers. We pledge to prioritize decolonial learning in our department by centering minority voices in our curricula and by engaging in the discussions about privilege and marginalization that anti-racist work requires.

As a measure of our commitment to decolonizing the canon, we recently renamed our department The Department of Literatures in English to signal that English is neither a nationality, nor singular. This change is pending approval by the College administration. As further actionable steps, we pledge:

• To evaluate all of our course content to make sure all courses align with our anti-racist and decolonial commitments

• To institute a yearly speaker series that features BIPOC scholars

• To continue to ensure that every time we run a job search in the department, BIPOC students are centrally involved in the process

• To meet with BIPOC, undocumented, and FGLI students to discuss how we as a department can best support them We stand with you in this strike for a better future and a more just Bi-Co.

Yours in solidarity and desiring the dismantling of systemic oppression,

The Department of Literatures in English

November 8, 2020

Dear President Cassidy:

The recent murder of Walter J. Wallace, Jr., in our own city of Philadelphia, following as it does upon the murder by police of so many Black people, has justifiably energized our student body. We are especially grateful for the work done by Black and Indigenous women of color in alerting the community to systemic racism against BIPOC students. We welcome the strikers' inclusion of FGLI, disabled, and LGTBQ students in their requests to redress this situation.

We support students’ activism as they practice it under their Constitutional right to peaceful protest and in line with the high standards of excellence set by the College for academic, social, and community life. We acknowledge the efforts that Bryn Mawr College has made over the summer in response to the Open letter and continues to make this semester in identifying and addressing systemic racism to the end of eradicating it in the community. It is our conviction that the ongoing social movement creates an opportunity for us to achieve those goals through a direct path. Senior majors in French and Francophone Studies have requested our support for their strike. We do that by writing you, by not penalizing students who boycott classes and by transforming the latter into spaces of open discussion/learning for those who choose to attend. Before the strike was announced, we reached out to a group of BIPOC students who take courses in our department. We asked them to propose concrete measures to improve their well-being and to promote inclusiveness across our curriculum. We are ready to listen to them; they have indicated their readiness to talk; and we are hopeful that this conversation will contribute to improving the social climate on the campus.

In the meantime, we believe that immediate dialogue between the leaders of the Strike Collective and the Administration is the only path forward and are encouraged that a first step is being undertaken today in their meeting with Dean Walters.

Respectfully, for the Faculty of French and Francophone Studies,

Penny Armstrong

Grace M. Armstrong

Eunice M. Schenck 1907 Professor of French

Acting Chair, Department of French and Francophone Studies

Major Advisor, Classes of 2021 & 2022

Advisor, A.B./M.A. program

November 3, 2020

The Department of Italian and Italian Studies at Bryn Mawr College has met today to discuss a letter that student representatives addressed to the Department’s Faculty. The letter pertained to the current strike, and was directly discussed with the students who wrote it. This message is the Department’s response to that letter.

We would like to start by acknowledging that Bryn Mawr College, the institution that hosts our Department, occupies the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary land of Lenni Lenape people in this continent. The College has also owned and managed architectural landmarks in the Italian peninsula, and benefits from artifacts and documents that were collected by figures such as M. Carey Thomas for colonial and touristic, rather than scholarly and curatorial, purposes. Some of such objects are preserved in the building where our offices and classrooms are situated. Therefore, the very land and the very building that host our Department are monuments to a history of appropriation and oppression.

Italian Studies is, in general, a racist and exclusionary field. Its pedagogical and scholarly practices have traditionally been rooted in delusions of exceptionalism, in the erection of linguistic barriers, and in the cultural justification of Native genocide and white supremacy. As an academic discipline, Italian Studies has been generally established either as a project of ethnic heritage or as a space for the cultivation of privilege through elitism, within a paradigm of supposedly sophisticated (and certainly exploitative) cultural exoticism. The history of Black humanists who have worked (and are working) in Italian and/or in Italy has been systematically ignored by our syllabi. Italian contributions to fascism and antisemitism, racist philosophies and sciences, colonialism and genocide, have been consistently minimized and relativized in our textbooks (along the lines of the trope italiani brava gente). Recent and present practices of oppression, from the deportation of Italian Jews to the violent othering of Albanian, Romanian, Asian, and North-African migrants, are often omitted from the postcard depiction of Italian culture that our courses construct.

Bryn Mawr’s program in Italian, which is at least a century old, is part of this history of exclusion. The first “Italian Club” at Bryn Mawr was founded, in 1924, by the president of the Fascist Association of Women Artists and Degree Holders (ANFAL). Mussolini’s ambassador to the United States took part in that event. Since then, academic programs have seldom deviated from traditional white, male, catholic, and heterosexual perspectives on Italy’s cultural and literary history, up until the very recent past.

While the Department acknowledges its specific history of racism and exclusion within the larger one of the College and the field of Italian Studies in general, the current faculty is committed to a path of change and reparation. To borrow a formula from Fred Moten’s thought, we are “in but not of” this discipline, this institution, and this history. Therefore, we thank and applaud the efforts of the students who invited us to support the strike. With this response, we officially come forward in support of our striking students, both at Haverford and Bryn Mawr.

As Bryn Mawr faculty who support the strike’s goals and the student’s organizing efforts, we are not going to strike ourselves. Not just because some of us, as immigrants on a work-visa, are not in a position of striking, but also and foremost because we do not want to appropriate this protest. Our support, however, is not just in spirit, nor is it limited to a badge of Departmental approval. Here is what we are going to do.

In support of the strike, our classes and scheduled events did not take place early this week. Classes resumed on Thursday, November 5th, for those who intend to take part in them, but no student will be penalized because they are striking. This means that, in this period, absences will not be counted, there will be no expectations on homework (including readings), participation will not be assessed, and tests will be canceled or postponed.

In this period, instead of covering the scheduled topics in our syllabi’s calendars, we will open advanced classes to the discussion of the strike, of anti-racist material, and of topics such as the BLM movement in Italy and the effect of students’ protests in Europe. Language classes will also offer a forum for discussion, opportunities to talk in Italian about what is happening, and simple activities related to the maintenance of familiarity with Italian. The Department is working on an ongoing archive to disseminate resources to facilitate these gatherings and discussions during class time, with material both in Italian and in English on topics such as Black visibility, homophobia in present-day Italy, the Italian concept of sciopero studentesco, historical repercussions on women on strike, etc.

Each faculty member will adjust their syllabi to avoid injustice and pressures. The topics that won’t be covered in class because of the strike will not be part of any test and will not be assigned in later weeks. We believe that learning was not disrupted by the strike, and therefore we won’t expect students to return to an increased and concentrated workload when the strike ends. What our students are learning during the strike replaces a few of the topics that we planned to teach in the same period. While this will change part of the content of our courses, our learning goals remain the same, and we are still committed to accompany each and every student to their full academic success this semester.

In addition, all scheduled events (including Italian table) and invited lectures in this period are postponed indefinitely. All students working for the Department (as TAs, RAs, tutors, graders, and representatives) will not be penalized for striking, financially or otherwise. Our office hours will remain available, and so will extra-hours in Italian for courses taught in English.

In conclusion, we would like to say that we are planning a series of long-term initiatives aimed at building an anti-racist environment in the Department and at the College. We are starting an archival research project aimed at surveying the history of Italian at Bryn Mawr. We are starting a scholarship for FGLI students in honor of Prof. Nick Patruno, and this Patruno Fund will privilege applications from BIPOC candidates with an immigrant background. Thanks to a Mellon Seed Grant, and in collaboration with Haverford’s Classics Department, we are launching a Bi-Co project, called Zombie Philologies, which will question the Eurocentric whiteness of text-based disciplines from a scholarly and pedagogical point of view. We are planning to cement our relationship with Africana Studies by continuing to offer cross-listed courses, and we are revising the textbook material used in language classes to make it more inclusive and accessible. We are planning to change the name of the Department to de-center and defuse its national(istic) connotations, and we are re-designing core courses so that topics related to otherness (in terms of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, language, dialect, religion, and geography) are not relegated only to specific and advanced syllabi.

To quote Antonio Gramsci: Tutto ciò che è represso si scatena. Occorre invece violentemente attirare l’attenzione nel presente così come è, se si vuole trasformarlo. Pessimismo della ragione, ottimismo della volontà.

The Department of Italian and Italian Studies at Bryn Mawr College.

The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program at Bryn Mawr College stands in full support of and solidarity with striking students at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges. We join our students and our community in their mourning, their anger, and their exhaustion regarding the constant onslaught of state-sanctioned violence against Black bodies, including the recent murder of Walter Wallace Jr. at the hands of the Philadelphia Police Department. We recognize how these recent events are part of a larger pattern of state violence against Black people, Black families, and Black communities all across the United States and worldwide. We recognize not only the validity of but also the need for anger and disruption in the face of this systematic violence.

Institutional violence against BIPOC does not just happen “out there:” it has been an integral part of the College -- and of higher education in the United States more broadly -- since its inception. Our mission, as part of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program, is to address the structural and institutional factors that burden BIPOC and FGLI students: the systemic barriers that require our Fellows and other BIPOC students in our community to expend additional labor, to carve space for themselves in Predominantly White Institutions like the Bi-Co, and to contend with institutionally-sanctioned forms of harm and inequality throughout higher education. The MMUF Program is committed to dismantling these barriers and to increasing the number of BIPOC faculty across the humanities and social sciences and in fields where BIPOC scholars are underrepresented, imagining a future academia wherein BIPOC scholars and their work are centrally represented, supported, and celebrated.

We are deeply grateful for the work undertaken in the Bryn Mawr and Haverford strike letters and demands and in the Open Letter to the Bi-Co to list and lay bare the many ways that the College remains complicit with these barriers. We want to acknowledge and honor that this work has been led -- like so many of the great fights for social and political justice in this country -- by Black women, women of color, and queer, trans, and non-binary BIPOC individuals and communities. We also want to acknowledge and honor the labor and commitment of all the strikers. Organizing, articulating demands, and maintaining the solidarity required for this action are taxing forms of labor, and we share your belief that this labor will help transform our campus into an equitable and anti-racist space.

Following the lead of our student scholar-activists and their demands, we commit to:

● Cancel all Program-related meetings until further notice. We will continue to hold space for Fellows to process, discuss, strategize, learn, and build community; these will be open invitations for our students and will not be required.

● Guarantee that no Fellows participating in the strike will be subject to any penalties or loss of standing with the Program.

● Guarantee that when the strike ends, we will work closely with our Fellows to determine pathways forward, including with regard to programmatic requirements.

More broadly, we remain committed to the transformative potential of education and the power of anti-racist and decolonial scholarship.

We believe firmly that reshaping academia will play a role in creating a more just world. Towards these goals, we pledge to take these additional actionable steps:

● To leverage our program’s resources in ways that benefit BIPOC and FGLI students beyond our small community of Fellows, including:

○ hosting more events that are open to the community, including our BIPOC graduate student and faculty speaker series.

○ sharing our information and materials related to graduate school applications.

○ sharing information about academic programs and opportunities that are available to BIPOC and FGLI students outside of Mellon Mays.

● To increase our recruitment efforts even more widely across campus through more sustained outreach to departments and programs that have not historically nominated Fellows, further engagement with AMOs and Posse, and targeted recruiting in introductory classes across departments to engage students across class years.

● To work with faculty mentors to be certain that they are providing adequate, appropriate, and informed support to our Fellows.

● To continue our practice of recognizing and celebrating our Fellows’ work of all kinds (including both their scholarly labor and their labor that is not strictly academic) in order to help foster a broader campus culture that values the work of BIPOC students.

● To continue to offer a cohort community model that is rooted in mutual support and that provides a space to address the harms that current academic structures inflict.

● To continue to seek out and be responsive to the feedback and needs of our Fellows.

We are immensely grateful to the work of students across the Bi-Co -- including the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellows -- in their efforts to dismantle systemic oppression. We recognize that these forms of labor are not only acts of critique, but also acts of creation and community-building that imagine what a more equitable and just campus and society must look like.

We stand with the strikers and will labor beside you to transform the College.

November 4, 2020

The program in Peace, Justice, and Human Rights supports the Student Strike. As a field of study aimed at understanding what is just and unjust, what we as human beings owe to each other, and why people and institutions sometimes fail to be just, we applaud the students of WOC house, BSRFI, BSL, and other organizers and strikers who have insisted that Haverford face its institutional racism and live up to its higher ideals in the aftermath of the killing of Walter Wallace Jr. at the hands of the Philadelphia police, and the College administration’s response. PJHR is committed to the flourishing of all of our students. This entails making Haverford a place where the voices of those BIPOC, queer, trans, disabled, first generation, and minoritized students whose voices have not historically been heard are heard, and their demands for justice met. We aim to offer concrete support for student demands in the following ways:

• We will continue to develop PJHR courses that address real-world problems and work to solve them.

• We will invite and compensate experts (in academic and non-academic knowledge production) from the local community in Philadelphia into our classrooms.

• We will support students involved in activism and direct action through curricular and extra-curricular course themes, events, guest speakers, resource sharing, and active resistance to criminalizing narratives about protest.

• We will remain committed to including BIPOC, queer, Trans, and disabled authors throughout program syllabi.

• We will contribute to telling a richer and more honest history of Haverford College.

• And we will help to build an institution that is responsive to marginalized voices by advocating at the administrative level.

We recognize that institutions don’t get the job of social justice done on their own. It thus matters what choices each of us make as part of the Haverford community, and our communities more broadly, as we shape the world in which we live alongside each other. PJHR is committed to creating and sustaining a space for critical reflection around these choices. We commend the strike organizers for their steadfast resolve and sacrifice as we all work towards a more just and equitable Haverford College.

Jill Stauffer

Sarah-Jane Koulen

Shannan Hayes

Shannon Mudd

Supporting Change in a Time of Action

This month, The Core Bryn Mawr Strike Collective, in collaboration with Sisterhood, Bryn Mawr's African and Caribbean Students Organization (BACaSO), Mujeres*, Zami+, and Mawrters for Immigrant Justice, called attention to the needs for on-going institutional change at Bryn Mawr College through protest and direct action. The Pensby Center for Community Development and Inclusion acknowledges and honors the labor and leadership fundamental to this important time in the history of the College. We appreciate that through the efforts of student leaders, the broader Bryn Mawr community has had new opportunities to listen, learn, and contribute in creative ways to the ever-evolving transformation of this institution.

The programs, activities, and resources of the Pensby Center focus on equity, inclusion, and the building of a meaningful life together at Bryn Mawr. Our very work is rooted in the principles and goals of equity and social justice. By providing resources to address issues of power and privilege, Pensby will continue to work to improve the climate of our campus and enhance community life for students, faculty, and staff.

We stand in solidarity with and continue to commit ourselves to the critical work of dismantling systemic oppression and fostering racial justice and equity. We understand continuous transformation is necessary and affirm our mission of enhancing the Bryn Mawr community for the betterment of all.

Sincerely,

The Pensby Center

November 2020

November 8, 2020

We, the Political Science department faculty, applaud students' standing in solidarity with protesters in Philadelphia against extra-judicial killings of Black men, and to promote change in the Academy, further to erase racialist legacies. Active protest is necessary to confront systematic structural anti-Black racism in the modern US. The latter is an on-going struggle that must run parallel to liberal education and not in opposition to it.

We support the strike and its goals, but believe that it is possible to do so while returning to teaching our classes. We worry that continuing to cancel classes goes against the long-term aims of the anti-racist struggle, and, moreover, that it prevents us from lending our specific skills to the cause. In teaching our classes, our goal is to help students lead more reflective and critical (including self-critical) lives, including questioning forms of power that are too often taken as natural. Our aim is to empower students through our pedagogy. For us, teaching is a commitment, not simply a job or business as usual. We firmly believe that the student protesters share our view of liberal education.

We also need to consider that while it is good to make a short-term point in a long struggle, the techniques of struggle must not be contradictory of its long-term aims. If the powerful class is seen as Administration and Board, and the hegemonic culture the paradigm to be disrupted, any devaluation of course quality and the meaning of final grades for this semester as a result of long-term non-attendance at classes may do more damage to students than to hegemons. Gandhi fasted so that a free India could feed itself, but he did so strategically only when his fast would effectively starve the system. We are not wholly convinced that the demands of the student strikers can best be met by a protracted strike, at least in time to salvage the assessment value of this semester's courses. The danger is that we may “starve” ourselves in vain.

Part of liberal education at Bryn Mawr needs to be, as the student organizers say, a much clearer and stronger recognition of the role that anti-Black racism has played and continues to play at Bryn Mawr. For example, as the strikers insist, the College needs to do a much better job of teaching the truth about our history, not only by formulaically acknowledging the decades long effect of anti-Black racism here, but also by stressing and specifying it in what we say to everyone at Bryn Mawr, both positively and negatively (for example, by removing M. Carey Thomas’ name from the Old Library), and encouraging everyone to read and talk about our past in the ways mentioned in the students’ statement. Thomas provides us all with a cautionary tale of the way a devotion to liberal education (and to modern science, and to women’s rights, and to free speech) can be and has been used as ideological cover for embracing anti-Black racism. We seek both recognition of the need to combat such racism and recognition of the need to pursue such education. Such dual commitment animates the written work on MCT done by Linda Susan Beard and Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, in addition to those mentioned in the strikers’ document. Everyone at BMC should read them. What can be done to promote this? One immediate action the College could take would be to establish (and fund) a number of Esems on this topic, staffed by members of the continuing faculty, subject to approval by the heads of the ESem program. The Pols Dept should commit to providing tenure ladder faculty for several such seminars every year.

What else can be done now? There are no easy answers, but we should consider possibilities. Once the capacity for striking has been demonstrated, bargaining power can come as much from the strategic withholding of further disruption as from its exercise. A pause in the strike leaves open the possibility for resumption while the issues at hand endure; it need not be seen as a concession, but as the initiation of a transition from one stage of action to another. There is power to be built and exercised in the management of such transitional moments, and we hope students will see and pursue opportunities that present themselves.

International students should have the option to continue classes if they so choose: while the anti-racist struggle is global, it is not fair to corner international students into subsidizing an American internal struggle. Moreover, in recognition of the burdens that the strike may impose on students of color as well as other students (especially if the strike were to be extended to include a longer period of remote learning), the strike organizers have proposed more flexibility for BIPOC students to decide whether to attend class.

Finally, when classes are resumed this semester, the faculty must recognize the need for flexibility in assigning and evaluating student work—possibly by cutting down on required reading and writing, and by supporting a return to the C/NC option adopted by the College in Spring 2020.

In support, and with all best wishes,

Bryn Mawr Political Science department faculty

This month, The Core Bryn Mawr Strike Collective, in collaboration with Sisterhood*, Bryn Mawr's African and Caribbean Students Organization (BACaSO), Mujeres*, Zami+, and Mawrters for Immigrant Justice, called attention to the needs for on-going institutional change at Bryn Mawr College through protest and direct action. The Pensby Center for Community Development and Inclusion acknowledges and honors the labor and leadership fundamental to this important time in the history of the College. We appreciate that through the efforts of student leaders, the broader Bryn Mawr community has had new opportunities to listen, learn, and contribute in creative ways to the ever-evolving transformation of this institution.

The programs, activities, and resources of the Pensby Center focus on equity, inclusion, and the building of a meaningful life together at Bryn Mawr. Our very work is rooted in the principles and goals of equity and social justice. By providing resources to address issues of power and privilege, Pensby will continue to work to improve the climate of our campus and enhance community life for students, faculty, and staff.

We stand in solidarity with and continue to commit ourselves to the critical work of dismantling systemic oppression and fostering racial justice and equity. We understand continuous transformation is necessary and affirm our mission of enhancing the Bryn Mawr community for the betterment of all.

Sincerely,

The Pensby Center

Morning Dear Loves,

Action feels like the most essential place to re-locate my course communities at such a pivotal time. I tend to look at moments like these as opportunities for exponential growth and radical imaginings. I thank the strike organizers/leaders for opening a portal to this type of labor. Ya'll/we been doing this work. It is ancestral and we all want a new past to remember. It is emergent and trying to be made yet again. Revival is action. I completely and fully support extensive, laser focus across our Bi-Co communities on meeting the demands presented.

I know there are deep and complex feelings moving through all of us, particularly Bi-Co BIPOC of all kinds and life ways (1st gen, LGBTQIA+, immigrant, cis). I have the capacity to hold multiple communities so know I am thinking about each and every one of you and how I can be a part of the change we need and dedicate much of my time to making healthy spaces for the rest of the semester. I have been a witness to the racist and oppressive harm caused on Bryn Mawr College's campus since my time began here as a Consortium for Faculty Diversity Fellow in 2017. I am not often surprised by the presence of individual and institutional racism. From my lived experiences as a student in the U.S. educational system, since childhood, I learned that this is a sustained, intentional, and unintentional effort.

I am also navigating and trying to implement how we can make change in the Arts Program as a collective. I am the only black womxn full-time faculty member in the Arts Program this academic year, and I have to be clear that I will do all I can to not cause harm to myself, our students, and our BIPOC communities. I have also requested that the Arts Program and our college leadership put measures in place to protect and retain BIPOC faculty as we work through racism, privilege, and oppression in our departments.

All of my courses have intentional through lines of focus on blackness, POC communities, privilege, oppression, revival, healing, restoration, and the sacred practices of black and African diasporic peoples. This has been and is my labor for this time. It is also my work to get better at this work. My class times will be spaces held for listening and collaborative co-planning how our teaching and learning will move forward. For those of you concerned about grades and assignments we can discuss during class time as well. You may also contact me individually to develop a plan. Class time is now dedicated to listening, questions, planning, and action. No one is required to come, or stay, and you will not be penalized for not attending. All perspectives are welcome.

A few more actions to consider...

• Read the Bi-Co demands from HC and BMC and discuss them. Keep a record of your revelations and shifts in your processing or thinking. You never know when this labor might become useful.

• Attend Bi-Co teach ins being provided, even ones during our normal class time. They are teaching and learning spaces. Keep a record. You never know when it might become useful. I will also try to post what I can on @drlelaaisha.

-Lela Aisha Jones

Dear students,

As the strike at Bryn Mawr continues, I am writing to update you on the structure of classes for the duration of this time. I will also use this opportunity to reiterate what I wrote in my previous email to all of you.

First, let us recognize and acknowledge that what we are currently experiencing on Bryn Mawr's campus is neither new to Bryn Mawr, nor is it new to our society at large. Second, let us recognize and acknowledge that the decision to participate or not participate, while a binary decision, does not reflect a binary set of ideals. Third, let us recognize and acknowledge that the presence of a strike within our community creates a learning opportunity for us both as witnesses and as participants.

This last point brings me to a discussion of how we define what learning and education are within our current context. As many of you have experienced through the various teach-ins being offered across the Bi-Co and discussions with your peers, education comes in various forms. Whether you have taken the time to understand the motives behind students who have chosen to or not to strike, I would argue that you have learned something through this process.

To continue this form of education in this context, I would like to use our class time to learn and discuss the ways in which the entire field of mathematics and "traditional" mathematics education contribute to the overarching paradigm that disproportionately benefits a subset of our campus population and disadvantages others. It is only through this lens that we can understand our role as individuals in the larger context and work toward a truly anti-racist society.

Attendance to these discussions is completely optional, and as stated previously, I will not assign any new graded assignments for the duration of the strike. There will be no TA sessions either. Should the strike continue for the remainder of the semester, I will send a follow-up email about an adjusted grading policy for the semester. However, no student, regardless of level of strike participation will be penalized for their convictions. Further, I will not consciously and actively contribute to an already inequitable set of circumstances by continuing class "as normal." We are currently living in extraordinary times, which requires creative and similarly extraordinary solutions.

If you are participating asynchronously in the course and would like to contribute to the ongoing discussion, please let me know. I encourage all of you to keep an informal, personal blog to gather your thoughts and possibly share them with others.

Please do not limit yourself to a single modality of learning. Attend the teach-ins, engage with your peers, keep a journal, express yourself through art. Embrace the discomfort of the moment and discover your strengths in the process.

If you have additional ideas about moving forward with this course, please let me know. Should you have questions or concerns about this shift in learning goals, please feel free to email me directly.

Sincerely,

Erica Graham

November 5, 2020

Dear Sociology Students,

We are writing from our hearts and our own experiences balancing our privilege alongside our identities of being minoritized and marginalized within academia, the discipline of sociology, and the world at large. Like you, we are sad and angry, hurt and afraid in reaction to the murders of Walter Wallace Jr., Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Layleen Xtravaganza Cubilette-Polanco, Preston Bell, the unnamed missing and murdered Indigneous women, and the multitudes of BIPOC women, men, queer, trans, and gender non-conforming people impacted by racialized violence.

We write to you because we believe, fundamentally, that this historical moment requires us to stand up and speak out against violent institutional and global structures. We are inspired by all of the work you have done to fight for and imagine institutions in which our whole selves are valued, represented, and supported. Staying silent would disrespect the relationships we have built together with students, the trust inherent in those relationships, and our shared commitments to building a more just world. This moment has the potential to be divisive, but it also is an opportunity to build stronger relationships and community within our department and the larger Bi-Co community.

We are hopeful and encouraged by the strike organized by Black Students Refusing Further Inaction, the Women of Color House, and the Black Student League at Haverford College, and also the strike organized by The Core Bryn Mawr Strike Collective in collaboration with Sisterhood, BACaSO, Mujeres*, Zami+, and Mawrters for Immigrant Justice. This is an incredible moment for our sociological imaginations. The strike signifies not only a list of demands but also an opportunity for reflection and embracing the possibility of change. The way our discipline has engaged with the world has not been good enough. Across our campuses and the discipline as a whole, people are uniting to recognize the settler colonial legacy of our discipline and to refuse this legacy as a foundation for our future. We stand with you in solidarity and support.

Sociology is a discipline where not only can we identify and understand systems of oppression, but we can also seek to dismantle them. This process may best be enacted through relationships strengthened by our sociological imaginations; that is, the ability to imagine a different and more just future. This change can occur in ourselves, in our classrooms, in our department, in our institution, and in the many communities to which we belong.

We believe in the power of community and of relationships. We have each taken actions and will continue to act based on our convictions. While we cannot speak for the department, here are some of the actions we have each taken and some ideas of what actions we might use to engage a transformative process. We also believe that the most sustainable and impactful changes occur through relationship building and community. We hope that this letter serves as an invitation to engage and imagine together.

What we’ve done so far/ will be doing in our individual classes:

• Cancelled classes and will consider extending these cancellations

• Held additional open spaces to reflect, to communicate, to be in relation, and to think together about how to enact needed changes • Shaped our syllabi with respect to inclusion and decolonization

• Offered resources to think through the current moment

• Waived or extended due dates

• Create alternative assignments

Starting points for brainstorming:

• Create open and transparent spaces for thinking about how our major could serve students more effectively

• Create a speaker or colloquia series centering BIPOC scholars, activists, and social thinkers

• Rethink the possible form and content of the thesis

We recognize the need for change and hope that this is a step toward opening space for conversation, relationship building, shared imagining, and transparent action.

In Solidarity, Amanda, Piper, and Veronica

Hi everyone,

The AI module of this course is designed around issues of inequity, violence against those who differ from us, and the values pertaining to unequal treatment that we as a society create and sustain, often without conscious awareness. You have opportunities to consider these issues within the present context, both in discussion and through the remaining assignments.

Essay 2

Developing a clear definition of what knowledge is vital to creating and sustaining the society in which you wish to live, and how you would guide your community to access that knowledge, is central to the issues surrounding the strike. Essay 2 was designed to help you to begin to think about what shared knowledge means to you. This essay is still due. Rather than focusing on your hometown, you may choose to shift your focus to Bryn Mawr, or Haverford, or Philadelphia, so that you may more directly address the context of the strike. In any event, extensions will be granted, upon request, through November 30^th. Further extensions will not be granted unless requested by your dean.

Group Project

Your efforts on Essay 2 will prove vital to the successful completion of your group project. Again, those who wish to do so should consider shifting the focus of their contribution to the group project to issues pertaining to the strike. The module on virtual reality has been eliminated so that the virtual class meetings after Thanksgiving can be dedicated to the completion of the group project, which will absorb the weight of the final, which has been cancelled. It will also absorb the weight of the structured creative project, which has also been eliminated. It will now be worth 30% of your grade and must be submitted by December 10^th. Extensions will not be granted unless requested by your dean.

Supplemental Readings:

Jaeger, P.T., Taylor, N.G. and Gorham, U., 2015. Libraries, human rights, and social justice: Enabling access and promoting inclusion. Rowman & Littlefield.

Scott, R., 2011. The role of public libraries in community building. Public Library Quarterly, 30(3), pp.191-227.

Those who still wish to learn about virtual reality in the context of the ancient world should email me so that I can establish a reading group.

Unstructured Creative Project

Having the freedom to create meaning is vital to the development of autonomy, intellectual courage, and self-esteem. Exercising creative freedom empowers individuals to go beyond the obvious and find ways to understand the unseen, unheard, and unfelt. Each creative assignment forms a foundation for future problem-solving and improves the ability of students to engage with the unfamiliar or otherwise daunting issues that life presents. Many of you have submitted a project already. If you wish to change it to something related to the strike, you may do so. In any case, you must have a project proposal submitted by November 20^th. If you do not submit a project proposal by that date, you will forfeit your grade for the project as a whole. You will have until December 18^th to submit your final product. Extensions will not be granted unless requested by your dean.

Essay 3

Exploring how non-human entities contribute to our notions about what it is to be human, who or what is treated as human, and how rights are granted or stripped from individuals as a result of societal thinking around these issues helps students to think critically about how to solve social inequities. The development of such critical thought in turn prepares students to defend and refute positions pertaining to these issues in the world in which they live. The paper prompt will ask for your reflection on these issues, which you may do by focusing on the context and goals of the strike. You will have until December 16^th to submit this assignment. Extensions will not be granted unless requested by your dean.

For the remainder of the semester, participation grades can go up, but they cannot go down.

The Haverford Classics Department is offering a virtual workshop on race at 2:30pm on Tuesday. You may wish to attend this class via Zoom as well, so as to most easily be able to join the workshop after class.

You are strongly encouraged to look at the 8min Panopto of the slides from the last class meeting which have been posted on Moodle. They are perhaps the most significant of the semester. I do not narrate the Panopto, because this is the discussion portion of the course, and your thoughts on these issues, including how they relate to the strike, are what matter. The questions you are encouraged to think about as you look toward the rest of the semester are presented for you. The remaining discussion materials will also be posted. I am always here if you want or need to discuss the material.

I have been active in social justice causes for over 20 years. I have advocated on behalf of human trafficking victims. I have donated my time to teaching English to migrants and refugees. I have fought for civil rights, women’s rights, and economic justice. Informed by these experiences, I have strong convictions about my duties as an educator, which is why I am teaching two classes this semester which focus on issues of inequity and marginalization. These experiences also inform my decision to maintain the above-listed learning outcomes for this course. You might also be interested to know: I am neurodivergent; I am a first-generation American; I am a first-generation college graduate. These aspects of my identity inform my deeply held conviction that the right thing to do is to treat all students equally and without exception. This, combined with the guidelines to which I am obligated to adhere, means that all students will be issued a grade based on the same criteria.

Let me know if you have any questions, and please take care of yourselves and each other,

Jennifer Devereaux