President Pollack
Amplification of Cornell’s existing scholarship on anti-racism, through the creation of an Anti-Racism Center that further strengthens our research and education on systems and structures that perpetuate racism and inequality, and on policies and interventions that break that cycle. Cornell already has outstanding academic units and faculty that address these critical issues, including: the Africana Studies and Research Center; the American Indian and Indigenous Studies program (AIISP); Latina/o Studies, Asian American Studies, as well as programs within American, Jewish, Near Eastern, and Feminist Gender and Sexuality studies, and centers such as the Center for the Study of Inequality, the Cornell Center for Health Equity, the Program in Ethics and Public Life and the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, as well as others that are not listed but contribute valuable scholarship. Our vision is to ensure that we are a national leader in this critical area.
The Faculty/Graduate Student/Staff Petition
The University’s expressed commitment to anti-racist research, pedagogy, and engagement in the form of the idea for the Anti-racist Center is commendable. Faculty and students in Africana and Latino/a Studies, Asian American Studies, and Indigenous and Native American Studies, as well as other Cornell BIPOC faculty with expertise in anti-racist scholarship, must play a central role in establishing the Center’s directions, and be properly compensated for this labor. Racial abolition, decolonizing, and transnational, intersectional, Indigenous, and Third World perspectives must be among the Center’s guiding intellectual frameworks. Annual faculty and student fellowships for anti-racism research and curricular innovation should be established. Funding should be created for guest speakers, workshops, conferences, and community outreach.
Student Petition 2
We demand the creation of an Anti-Racism Institute where Cornell can centralize its efforts to educate the campus and community about the horrors of white supremacy and political education. Cornell has a variety of decentralized efforts to address racial bias on campus. Programs such as the Intergroup Dialogue Program, Engaged Cornell, the Skills for Success Program, and others are important, but if Cornell is going to commit to changing campus climate they must create a centralized department or program that has the explicit purpose of fighting racism.
We envision this Institute as both an academic and student centric space, where advisors and student leaders could find employment opportunities, and where faculty and staff members could coalesce and share their work in a centralized manner, while maintaining their department and research’s own individualistic integrity. An Institute could create a University-wide streamlined approach to confronting racism and discrimination through the creation of a diversity coursework requirement [3] along with ongoing trainings for staff, faculty, and student leaders. It could provide resources for student groups, educators, Greek Life, and the administration. This Institute would be
the catalyst for change on campus inside and outside of the classroom. Working with existing programs like the Intergroup Dialogue Project, the Institute could require that all staff, faculty, and student leaders go through diversity training, which could help reduce discrimination and racism on campus. While reducing racism and discrimination amongst all members of the Cornell community is necessary, it is especially important for those who serve as gatekeepers to clubs, courses, and academic opportunities. The Institute could be an immensely powerful change agent at the University. Such an Institute could be home to a standing Presidential Task Force, helping preserve institutional knowledge amongst student groups and long-term campaigns that outlast the typical four-year student cycle.This would also limit the redundancy of a lot of administrative work in setting up committees, and would allow more effective work to be done more quickly. It is indisputably in the Administration’s best interest to set up a permanent anti-racism structure.
The Anti-Racism Institute would help the University build a more direct approach to recognizing and amplifying Black voices and Black stories of the past to better help inform the student body and greater community about how we reached our present. Upstate NY, especially in the areas near Ithaca, is home to rich amounts of Black history that is tied to the Underground Railroad. There are AME churches and Underground Railroad artifacts and important historical buildings, like Harriet Tubman’s home and final resting place, that are struggling to stay funded because of their location. If Cornell made a stronger effort to support and publicize these monuments and if more people knew that Cornell was near this rich area of Black history geographically, these irreplaceable monuments could receive the necessary support to stay afloat. Moreover, the Cornell University Library system has a fairly large collection of Black American artifacts, like an original copy of The Narrative of Fredrick Douglass, which very few students know about, but many of these artifacts of Black American history live right below our feet in the Olin Library basement [4].
DoBetterCornell
[Notes from Summer 2020]
Some faculty say their support ‘depends on who runs the institute who’s on it, what powers it has, how does it interface with other college, policies, and institutions etc.’
Still others have already begun formulating engaged-style courses and research project ideas that could serve as leverage in amplifying the need for an Anti-Racism Institute. Some faculty have expressed that an institute for research and social change is needed on campus, and that there are already components (i.e., existing campus entities) to build upon for the Institute. There’s a momentum [building towards support, faculty endorsement of an Anti-Racism Institute] that is already going on that can only improve through coordination and centralization.
They have raised the point that the University might have people who are working on race in different departments, and that was seen as bringing wealth to students [in seeing the intersection of race with various disciplines], but the other side is that it [how we study and research race as a whole community/at the intersection of those various disciplines is] splintered/silo.
Workshops some faculty are already planning and that anyone affiliated or employed by the Institute could go on to plan and other [convenings, courses, etc. could] be ways to centralize these topics. These faculty are also committed to working with their community partners [in their affiliation with the Institute]. Faculty have also mentioned that one aspect of the work of such an Institute is obviously the quality of the research and output it produces internally, but also how it is perceived by those outside of the Cornell community, and the value of this perception. The University has so much talent, but it is not packaged in a [centralized] way that is readily apparent to those on the outside looking in, and the Institute could help with that, and in that regard, could become something the University is famous for.
In terms of how an affiliation with the Institute could affect their workload, faculty have said they will be frank with how they can help, as not to overcommit, such that they would advocate for themselves and be upfront if they felt the leadership structure or activities of the Institute were interfering with their work–not too worried about an affiliation becoming a burden for this reason.
Some staff view the Institute as another source of opportunity for students to engage, develop both educationally and co-curricularly. If the Institute is poised around edifying who individuals are as marginalized people, this would speak to the mission of existing entities on campus, one of which is OADI. As long as the Institute encompasses and promotes active student voice and engagement, it would also help to mitigate an additional barrier to diverse students getting the most out of their Cornell experience.
This Institute would, to our knowledge, be the first of its kind in the Ivy League. It would present the University with another opportunity to set a precedent while serving as Cornell platform for education and research that combats racism, affecting change on campus but also throughout the entire country. Bringing in world-renowned researchers and thinkers who release reports that speak to the need for anti-racism would serve the campus community and that could also be released to stakeholders across the country and all around the globe.
One hallmark of the 2019-2020 academic year for Cornell was elevating the prestige of policy research and policy scholars at Cornell; this Institute could have policy/racial reporting convenings like the one held at American University in 2019, and bring acclaim to Cornell in that way.
A skeleton of activities and structures our Institute could pursue, based on American University’s Antiracism Center: ”The Antiracist Research & Policy Center aspires to build Research & Policy (R&P) Teams of scholars, policy experts, journalists, and advocates who will be residential fellows at American University. Fellows will teach project-based courses, and their students will work as their assistants, allowing the Antiracism Center to provide a new model for student learning through the interplay of teaching, scholarship, and impact.”
The Institute could have a web series or podcast that highlights the work or research of its affiliates and discusses topics related to antiracism, similar to other institutions’ antiracism centers, and similar in format Cornell Cooperative Extension’s “Extension Out Loud” podcast: https://soundcloud.com/extension_out_loud
Additionally, there are many initiatives within the College of Arts and Sciences that would complement the university-wide approach to anti-racism, justice, and equity that the Institute would seek to centrally coordinate.
