Dear President Holloway and Chancellor Molloy,
The recent murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, among other similar tragic circumstances, including the racially disproportionate effects of the current pandemic and the economic crisis, have led to a resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement and to a renewed focus on the long-standing gravity of systemic racism and antiblackness. A great number of leading figures and administrators across a wide range of institutions, including colleges and universities, have released statements in support of the movement and the ideas that inform it. As we are sure that you would agree, expressions of support for Black Lives Matter are meaningless without immediate, concrete, and profound measures, as well as medium- and long-range plans. It is within this context that we offer this letter as a first step towards renewed collaboration.
We, the undersigned Black and Indigenous faculty, as well as faculty of color who specialize in the study of race at Rutgers, New Brunswick, welcome the interest in the areas that have been so central to our work and to the work of the departments, centers, and institutes that focus on the study and critique of systemic racism and antiblackness. For too long the study and critique of systemic racism and antiblackness have been rendered secondary to misguided perceptions of excellence, narrow views of disciplines and interdisciplines, liberal goals of diversity and inclusion, and the desiderata of a ranking system that has never seriously questioned its own imbrication with systemic racism. All of this needs to change.
The time has come for an unprecedented level of support to the mission and vision of Black Lives Matter and to the important contributions of similar movements that have preceded it and made this movement possible. Unprecedented support can and should take place in unprecedented times like ours. Dominant paradigms in higher education have proven themselves to be obsolete in the face of the unfinished struggle against the persistent forms of slavery and colonization, the current crises unduly affecting Black, Indigenous, and people of color, as well as the imminent shift in the composition of the demographic majority in the country.
We therefore propose the design and implementation of what we are tentatively referring to as a Black Lives Matter and a Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BLM/BIPOC) paradigm of pedagogy, knowledge, artistic creation, and engaged research in higher education. We take the exploration and implementation of this BLM/BIPOC paradigm of knowledge and artistic creation, engaged research, and higher education as a crucial and necessary initiative today and moving forward.
We see the proposed BLM/BIPOC paradigm as revolving around two main axes:
(a) Socially engaged, rigorous, transdisciplinary understandings and critiques of systemic racism and antiblackness. Systemic racism and antiblackness are not only problems to address, but also concepts that serve as prisms for understanding the modern world and scholarship. These prisms demand critical consideration of institutions, culture, gender and class dynamics, sexuality, homophobia, transphobia, settler colonialism and coloniality, among many other social, epistemic, and cultural formations.
(b) Serious attention to and collaboration with intellectual, artistic, and social movements that have advanced our understanding of and struggle against systemic racism and antiblackness. Black Lives Matter is one among multiple other efforts and mobilizations to identify and challenge systemic racism and antiblackness. They include the revolts of peoples classified as indigenous and natural slaves against the coloniality of modern colonization and nationalization processes, as well as Black, Indigenous, and women of color collectives against the coloniality of gender and racialized patriarchy; the Negritude, Pan Africanism, Black Power, and Black Consciousness movements, among many others. These movements and others like them are not merely objects to be studied; they are also significant contributors to the BLM/BIPOC paradigm. Their members are important interlocutors and collaborators with scholars and artists who advance the BLM/BIPOC paradigm in the academy and beyond.
The BLM/BIPOC paradigm of knowledge creation and education crosses through the established “liberal arts and sciences” and professional schools, but exceeds their scope, mission, and vision. This paradigm demands certain autonomy and independence for its ability to grow. On this basis, we ask for:
The creation of visionary institutional spaces, such as centers, institutes, schools, and new divisions that support and help to coordinate the mission of new and existing units, projects, and initiatives that focus on analyzing systemic racism and antiblackness. We propose that one of these spaces honors the name and legacy of our recently departed field-changing and profoundly antiracist scholar and leader, Board of Governors Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English, Cheryl Wall.
Robust doctoral programs that help us train the next generation of scholars in the various areas of BLM/BIPOC paradigm. This commitment should include support for specialized research, effective community engagement, and relevant artistic and cultural activities. Departments and units that focus on these areas have largely remained in “junior” status, in the shadow of units that have failed and continue to fail to understand and build from the ideas and actions that are associated to the BLM/BIPOC paradigm. We propose that one of the most effective ways of promoting change in traditional areas is by proactively and ambitiously supporting the units, often inter- and trans-disciplinary, that more substantially focus on the BLM/BIPOC paradigm.
Unprecedented support to new and existing units and to projects that focus on analyzing systemic racism and antiblackness in holistic ways, that is, not solely as objects of investigation, but in ways that advance what we have identified as two of the core components of the BLM/BIPOC paradigm.
A thoughtful transformation of the process of deliberating and making decisions about the impact of systemic racism and antiblackness on campus. There must be a full realization that systemic racism includes the reproduction of decision-making processes that dispense with the substantial participation of experts on crucial areas of the BLM/BIPOC paradigm and leaders from the units that specialize on these topics. Strategies to ignore, silence, and/or contain the BLM/BIPOC paradigm include top down approaches that assign one or a few administrators to address matters of racism and who are only accountable to one or more senior administrators. This is often coupled with the creation of large committees that dispense with a substantial participation of experts and leaders in BLM/BIPOC areas and that are meant to address issues solely on the basis of the preestablished liberal and managerial grammars of diversity and inclusion.
A change in how we approach accountability: we need leaders with bi-directional accountability, to more senior administrators, certainly, but principally to those who are most affected by systemic racism and antiblackness on campus. We also ask leaders from multiple levels, including senior administrators, department chairs, and student advisors to commit to advancing the paradigm and engaging in the process of learning, unlearning, and relearning that is necessary to make a real difference in a stagnant environment in higher education that has failed to overcome what it often interprets solely as a “crisis of diversity.”
An immediate and thoughtful reallocation of resources that addresses the long-standing precarity of Black, Indigenous, and people of color lives, knowledges, and creations. This includes designing and planning specific initiatives that provide resources to identify and critically assess white privilege, color-blind racism, racial liberalism, racial capitalism, racial neoliberalism, the colonial and racial dimensions of the hegemonic liberal arts and sciences, and existing measures of “diversity and inclusion” inside and outside of the academy.
Support for specific initiatives that advance the BLM/BIPOC paradigm and that provide resources to address various forms of reparation, desegregation, and decolonization. These initiatives should emerge from direct conversations with and among scholars and members of other academic and non-academic sectors who specialize in these areas.
Sufficient support for the substantial and effective involvement of faculty, staff, and students who have a strong record of contributions to central elements of the BLM/BIPOC paradigm in discussions that are meant to address systemic racism and antiblackness. The university cannot reproduce a trend of having Black, Indigenous, and people of color doing unpaid, low paid, unrecognized, or little recognized work for the university. Participants in these efforts need to be given the time and support--this can consist of but is not limited to: research funding, course releases, and additional adequately compensated staff--to engage in this work, as well as the proper professional recognition. Activities that contribute to the BLM/BIPOC paradigm, including various forms of engaged research, should also count towards merit and promotion.
There are certainly multiple other points that could also be included here. We are starting with those that we believe are important to create the conditions for a more robust engagement with the BLM/BIPOC paradigm among senior members of the administration and members of our academic community.
We are aware that some of these areas intersect with the portfolio of offices and initiatives for diversity and inclusion on campus, but we do not find the grammars of diversity and inclusion adequate to address crucial components and dimensions of the BLM/BIPOC paradigm. We nonetheless are open to working with officers who address matters of diversity and inclusion, both, to facilitate a connection with the spaces that specialize on studying systemic racism and antiblackness, and to consider needed transformations in the diversity and inclusion grammars.
In the spirit of generating a structure of communication and accountability that will strengthen and refine our collective efforts to address systemic racism and antiblackness, we would like to discuss the various points in this letter with you in further detail at your earliest convenience. We look forward to joining you in responding to the challenges of systemic racism and antiblackness on campus and throughout the country.
Signatories below (in alphabetical order by last name; signatures to be updated regularly)
Akinbiyi Akinlabi, Professor, Department of Linguistics, School of Arts and Sciences
Ousseina Alidou, Professor, Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures, School of Arts and Sciences
Radhika Balakrishnan, Director, Center for Global Women's Leadership, and Professor, Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, School of Arts and Sciences
Yessenia Barragan, Assistant Professor, Department of History, School of Arts and Sciences
Ethel Brooks, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Department of Sociology, School of Arts and Sciences
Abena P. A. Busia, Professor, Departments of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and English, School of Arts and Sciences
Carolyn Brown, Professor, Department of History, School of Arts and Sciences; Vice President, African Studies Association
Kim Butler, Associate Professor, Departments of Africana Studies and History, School of Arts and Sciences
Sylvia Chan-Malik, Associate Professor, Departments of American Studies & Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, School of Arts and Sciences
Carlos Decena, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies; Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, School of Arts and Sciences
Erica Edwards, Presidential Term Chair in African American Literature, Associate Professor, Department of English, School of Arts and Sciences
Noura Erakat, Assistant Professor, Department of Africana Studies, and Program in Criminal Justice, School of Arts and Sciences
Nicole Fleetwood, Professor, Departments of American Studies and Art History, School of Arts and Sciences
Tatiana Flores, Professor, Departments of Latino and Caribbean Studies and Art History, School of Arts and Sciences; Director of Visual and Performing Arts, Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities
Marisa Fuentes, Presidential Term Chair in African American History, Associate Professor, Department of History, School of Arts and Sciences
Tiffany Gill, Associate Professor, Department of History, School of Arts and Sciences
Eduardo Herrera, Associate Professor, Music Department, Mason Gross School of the Arts
Lori Hoggard, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, School of Arts and Sciences
Chie Ikeya, Associate Professor, Department of History, School of Arts and Sciences
Allan Isaac, Associate Professor, Department of American Studies, School of Arts and Sciences
Walton Johnson, Professor, Department of Africana Studies, School of Arts and Sciences
Marshall Jones, III, Associate Professor, Department of Theatre, Mason Gross School of the Arts
Ryan Kernan, Assistant Professor, Department of English, School of Arts and Sciences
Naa Oyo Kwate, Associate Professor, Human Ecology & Africana Studies, School of Environmental & Biological Sciences and School of Arts and Sciences
Renée Larrier, Professor Emerita, Department of French, School of Arts and Sciences
Kenneth Sebastián León, Assistant Professor, Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies; Faculty Affiliate, Program in Criminal Justice, School of Arts and Sciences
Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Professor of Latino and Caribbean Studies; Chair, Comparative Literature Program; Director, Rutgers Advanced Institute for Critical Caribbean Studies, School of Arts and Sciences
Carter Mathes, Associate Professor and Associate Chair, Department of English, School of Arts and Sciences
Preetha Mani, Assistant Professor, Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures, School of Arts and Sciences
Yalidy Matos, Assistant Professor, Departments of Political Science and Latino and Caribbean Studies, School of Arts and Sciences
Alamin Mazrui, Professor, Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures, School of Arts and Sciences
Donna Murch, Associate Professor, Department of History, School of Arts and Sciences
Anjali Nerlekar, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures, School of Arts and Sciences
Imani Owens, Assistant Professor, Department of English, School of Arts and Sciences
Edward Ramsamy, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Africana Studies, and Member of the Graduate Faculty of the Department of Geography, School of Arts and Sciences; Associated Faculty, Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy
Kevon Rhiney, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, School of Arts and Sciences
Raymond Sanchez Mayers, Associate Professor and Director, Latino/a Initiatives for Service, Training, and Assessment (LISTA), School of Social Work
Meheli Sen, Associate Professor, Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures, School of Arts and Sciences
Evie Shockley, Professor, Department of English, School of Arts and Sciences
Ben Sifuentes-Jáuregui, Professor, Department of American Studies and Program in Comparative Literature, School of Arts and Sciences
Jameson R. Sweet, Assistant Professor, Department of American Studies, School of Arts and Sciences
Christien Tompkins, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, School of Arts and Sciences
Deborah Vargas, Henry Rutgers Term Chair in Comparative Sexuality, Gender, and Race, and Associate Professor, Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, School of Arts and Sciences
Maurice Wallace, Associate Professor, Department of English, School of Arts and Sciences
Deborah Gray White, Board of Governors Professor of History, Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, School of Arts and Sciences
Amber Wiley, Assistant Professor, Department of Art History, School of Arts and Sciences
Brandon Williams, Assistant Professor, Music Department, Mason Gross School of the Arts