Our department's commitment to you about how we aim to combat anti-Blackness and promote anti-racism in the classroom and beyond.
We, your department faculty members, condemn the murders and police killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and Tony McDade among untold numbers of Black lives. We recognize these, not as aberrations or as the actions of a “few bad apples,” but as part of a long history of anti-Black racism and systemic violence toward African Americans in the United States. As students of history, we recognize and call out structures of white supremacy as a foundation upon which this country was built (see the statement of the American Historical Association and of the Organization of American Historians) and that continue to inform every aspect of contemporary American society . . .
(Read the full statement from the department here.)