GO HERE FOR THE REVISION
Whereas, on May 29, 2020, President Martha Pollack issued a statement to the Cornell community expressing her sorrow about the deaths of “George Floyd, and before him, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and others whose deaths are less well publicized.”
Whereas, the president’s recent statements, including the action items listed in her statement on June 3, are consistent with Cornell’s core values of being a “welcoming, caring and equitable community” built on mutual respect and empowerment; therefore,
Be it Resolved, that the Faculty Senate endorses President Pollack’s statements on May 29, June 3, 2020, and
Be it Further Resolved that the Faculty Senate stands in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, our Black community members, and those who are protesting racist injustice.
Be it Further Resolved that the Faculty Senate charges all members of the Cornell community to consider how best to heal the harms committed by racial injustice and accord all members of our community equal dignity and respect.
Any reference to “Black Lives Matter” would be entirely inappropriate. BLM’s platform is incompatible with Cornell’s core beliefs, as others have pointed out.
Let’s not go down the “mandatory training” road. It is expensive (a thing these days), somewhat time consuming, and most importantly there is little if any evidence of it being effective. If it was, policing wouldn’t have the problems it does in many places, as just one example. It will take a different kind of long term commitment to address racial injustice. Mandatory training seminars give the impression of action while not accomplishing much of anything significant.
I agree with Chris Shaeffer, although rather than diversity training, there should be anti-racist training. for all faculty and staff. There is already a mandatory video on diversity and there are required diversity training workshops for hiring committees. These pay insufficient attention to race. This is a good time to change that.
How about “we join with the community…”
My sense as a woman is that misogynist attitudes ‘survive’ mandatory training. Thus, I suspect mandatory training is likely also not a useful path forward in this case (witness the fact that the police officer involved in the most recent death had been subject to mandatory training on excessive use of force). Instead let’s use tools to enable and celebrate success of our non-caucasian colleagues and students.
I know that this is a difficult time, that it’s easy to get irate these days, but reading this resolution, I’m feeling irate. Why issue a resolution just to support Martha Pollack’s statement? Do any think we disagree with it? Yet now that this resolution is here, it will be stupid if it’s voted down (newspaper headline: “Cornell faculty senate votes down ending racial injustice”).
The major problem is the final clause. I see commenters have been working to try to fix it, which is understandable. But it can’t be fixed by adding or subtracting phrases, because what that clause is doing is just wrong. “We charge the community to” means “we’re telling other people to” in this case fix the problem of racism. Telling other people to fix the problem of racism is a big part of the problem of racism.
People are trying to reckon with and stop an expanding tragedy– that “peace officers” throughout the country habitually harass, terrorize, and murder black people, and have been doing so with impunity for years. This resolution, calling on people to treat each other with dignity and respect, minimizes what’s going on and exemplifies the privilege of not having to deal with the actual terror and loss.
If we can’t scrap this entire resolution, I’d suggest deleting the last clause– but I find the whole thing offensive because of its meagerness in respect to the events to which it purports to respond.
Comment by Risa Lieberwitz, ILR, Faculty Senator
I suggest amending the final paragraph as follows:
Be it Further Resolved that the Faculty Senate charges all members of the Cornell community to consider how best to dismantle systemic racism, heal the harms committed by racial injustice, and accord all members of our community equal dignity and respect.
I think this resolution would be improved with some action steps rather than just “consider” in the final statement.
I’m with you all the way up to “solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.” Their platform is full of completely unacceptable ideas well beyond the question of how to protect black lives.
Written this way what we have is just a stealth effort to get the faculty to go along with a radical program covering a broad range of political propaganda only some of which is reasonable.
Be it further resolved that the Cornell Police Department be defunded and those monies be redirected toward the educational mission of the institution.
Proposed amendment:
“Be it Further Resolved that the Faculty Senate supports mandatory training in diversity and inclusion for all Cornell faculty and staff.”
Chris Schaffer
on behalf of Biomedical Engineering Dept.
Studies show that mandatory training does not increase diversity, and may have the opposite of the intended effect.
https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail