Black Lives Matter Solidarity Statements at UWM

The Center for 21st Century Studies (C21) has for more than 50 years been committed to fostering innovative research at the intersection of the humanities, arts and sciences and supporting University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee faculty and graduate students. In keeping with this mission C21 is collecting statements of solidarity issued by UWM departments, centers, and schools in response to the recent Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. For posterity, we have included the full text of each statement here, as well as links. We will update this list as we learn of more. (You can also email us statements.)

UWM Chancellor’s statement

Dear UWM Faculty, Staff and Students,

Last Friday, I reaffirmed UWM’s commitment to supporting and protecting our diversity, equity and inclusivity. In the short time since then, we’ve seen our cities, region and nation erupt in protest in response to the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis Police Department officer. Voice after voice has joined together to condemn decades of institutional violence, injustice and failures in our criminal justice system. And rightly so.

Let me be clear when I express, both for myself and campus leaders, our strong and clear solidarity in support of black lives and with those who are peacefully protesting. The time for successfully transforming our society is now. We support those who are peacefully protesting and the change they will bring.

Your voices are important, and we care deeply about making positive change.

What actions are we taking now to make a difference?

• We have been connecting our students, faculty, staff and others through the multicultural success coaches of the Black Student Cultural Center to ensure that safety and a sense of belonging are addressed, particularly as it relates to our African-American males.
• We continue to provide resources on how to engage in both individual and facilitated discussions around racism and anti-racist education.
• We continue to work with MKE Fellows, a program that focuses on African-American males before and after their entry to UWM. Contact Ray Anthony Fikes for additional information.
• We continue to support our ongoing African-American Male Initiative which serves as an important recruitment and retention tool.

What action will we commit to for the near future?

• Going forward and working in partnership with governance groups, we will institute mandatory anti-bias, anti-racism training for all members of the UWM family. More details on this will follow.
• To set the tone for future discussions around race, we encourage all to visit the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. This resource is an integral part of our ongoing diversity, equity and inclusion framework.

Once again, let me stress our unequivocally strong stance against racism, violence and oppression. Every person who sets foot on one of our campuses has the right to feel safe, respected and valued.

We see you. You matter. We care.

Best regards,

Mark A. Mone
Chancellor
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

African & African Diaspora Studies

Solidarity with protestors condemning racial violence and calling for reform

The recent senseless murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Milwaukee’s Joel Acevedo highlight the ongoing racial violence Black Americans suffer daily. The scourge of state violence in the forms of police brutality and lack of justice for crimes against black bodies are only two of many manifestations of our country’s deep history of anti-black racism. The disproportionate burden of sickness and death African Americans have borne due to structural inequities during the COVID-19 pandemic adds to the body count of preventable deaths.

Current protests continue the legacy of resistance to systems perpetuating racial inequalities experienced in mass incarceration, hypersegregation, employment insecurity, disproportionate poverty, political disenfranchisement, healthcare disparities, and more. Although white supremacist groups have shamefully infiltrated protests to start fires, destroy property, and cast suspicion onto black-led demonstrations, the cry of protestors for racial justice and equality must be upheld.

The Department of African and African Diaspora Studies was founded to elevate the voices, stories, value, human dignity and beauty of people of African descent, long suppressed and negated. As we collectively grieve those we have lost, we will continue to stand with those who resist the erasure of black people and their voices.

Anthropology

The Department of Anthropology stands in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement in their protests against injustice and systemic structural racism. Anthropologists have a long-standing commitment to shed light on distorted myths and ideologies of human difference employed as strategies for division and control. We call on our community to take this time to listen, reflect, and promote positive and serious dialogue about the experiences of Black lives.

Center for International Education

A Message of Solidarity against Racism

Recent tragedies in the USA have once again highlighted the racial prejudice and inequity that exists in our society.  The UWM Center for International Education wishes to express our continued commitment to education and understanding to combat racism and our solidarity with those working toward social justice.

Chancellor Mone’s recent campus community messages have stated the value UWM places on diversity, equity, and inclusivity.  CIE affirms and celebrates these guiding principles. Our staff passionately believes that international education has the ability to bring people together and foster greater understanding among people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives. We are stronger because of the diverse perspectives represented on campus, in our classrooms and workspaces.

Now is the time for us to act and model the type of society we wish to have. We must exercise our right to vote, educate ourselves on our own biases, and support engagement in social justice. We make a promise to do our part to break down racial barriers and we invite you to do so as well.

English

Dear English Majors, Minors, and Graduate Students,

The events across the country and here in our city have spurred us, your teachers, to take a stand with you. We, the undersigned members of the Department of English, unequivocally, fully, and completely stand with the protesters, our students, and the residents of the city of Milwaukee in affirming that Black Lives Matter and that police brutality, systemic racism, and economic injustice must end now.

As those privileged to be your educators, we state that we are committed to anti-racism. We strive for total equity in the department and the university on the whole. And we pledge to make the department a model of justice.

The English Department is a proud part not only of the university but the city of Milwaukee. It is, therefore, our civic duty and our role as public teachers to demand the full elimination of the social and economic injustices that plague our city, our state, and our country. We stand with you, and we stand with the marchers.

We are humbled by the power of so many voices coming together in the city. We are honored to be your instructors. And we are always, but especially now, deeply proud to be a part of the diverse city of Milwaukee.

English Language Academy

Ethnic Studies

Statement of Solidarity and Abolition

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) stands at a liminal moment in its relationship to its students and the broader community it serves. The recent, brutal murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of Minneapolis and Louisville Police, respectively, have yet again demonstrated that Black lives do not matter in the eyes of the law enforcement and mass incarceration regimes that relentlessly harass, murder, and cage members of racialized communities in American cities. Milwaukee is no stranger to this crisis. Dontre Hamilton, Joel Acevedo, Tony McDade, Daniel Bell, Clifford McKissick, Sylville Smith, and Frank Jude are among some of the most prominent in the litany of victims of the city’s long history of police brutality. It is now up to UWM’s administration and campus community whether we will continue to play a part in these patterns of violence and oppression or find a new way. 

We, the instructors of Comparative Ethnic Studies, Cultures and Communities, and members of the advisory boards of these programs at UWM join our colleagues from institutions of higher education throughout the country in demanding an end to our campuses’ relationships with the police. The Milwaukee Police Department’s continued commitment to racialized systems of abuse and brutality present a clear and present danger to our students and cultivates an environment of fear that undermines UWM’s pursuit of student success, research excellence, and community engagement.  

Comparative Ethnic Studies introduces students to concepts of identity, power, and social justice that ultimately inform how they critically engage the communities in which they live. Comparative Ethnic Studies education helps students understand the social and historical conditions, materials, and realities that have brought us to the present moment. Therefore, it is our responsibility to recognize, for ourselves and for our students, that the murders of countless other Black, Brown, and Indigenous folks are the result of violence systematically made permissible at the deadly intersection of white supremacy and (in this moment: increasingly militarized) police rule.  

The Cultures and Communities Program is charged with connecting UWM’s College of Letters and Science to the broader Milwaukee community. This mission obliges us to stand with aggrieved communities in our city – it mandates solidarity with the peaceful protests taking place against police violence. 

Thus, we stand in solidarity with protesters worldwide and demand that those in our campus community and beyond join us in the work of identifying and uprooting the systems of oppression, including racism, that plague our police, our university, and other social institutions. We recognize that reform is simply attempting to shore up irrevocably broken and corrupt systems and therefore reserve our support for all those who work for abolition. 

We call for Chancellor Mone and members of UWM’s administration to act without haste on the following:  

By formal agreement, our campus police force is assisted by and assists the Milwaukee Police Department. To begin, we call for a democratic and transparent, campus-wide review of this relationship, with all options on the table, including its potential abolition.  We acknowledge the problem of police profiling of UWM students of color by MPD as well as police in surrounding communities. Further, we look towards investment in community health and public schools in lieu of the continual funding of policing and incarceration. 

African & African Diaspora Studies; Latin American, Caribbean & US Latinx Studies; Comparative Ethnic Studies; Hmong Studies and similar programs must be supported and grown as a vital part of the campus curriculum. These programs support students of color, who find themselves cast into racialized groups in our society, by offering courses where their voices matter that critically analyze systemic racism and emphasize their respective histories and the necessity of their full inclusion in the community on campus and beyond. For many students of color courses in these programs provide their first experiences of such inclusion while, for many White students, courses in these programs provide their first exposure to such critical analyses and inclusivity. These programs are thus vital not only for supporting students of color but for working towards an anti-racist campus and society. 

Foreign Languages & Literature

The Department of Foreign Languages and Literature expresses, in solidarity with Chancellor Mone and Provost Britz, and with UWM’s guiding values, that “black lives matter”! We believe that “the time for successfully transforming our society is now. We support those who are peacefully protesting and the change they will bring.” In FLL, we “encourage faculty and other instructors to connect their courses and research to the topics that are so relevant and challenging in the times we are living through today.”

Geosciences

The Department of Geosciences at UWM stands in solidarity with our Black and underrepresented minority colleagues, students, and community members with the goal to end injustice and discrimination of all kinds.  We have signed the Call to Action for an Anti-Racist Science Community from Geoscientists of Color: Listen, Act, Lead , and will continue to strive to remove barriers within our community to be more diverse and inclusive.

Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies

As we witness, and many of us participate in, struggles for racial justice and equality, the faculty and staff of the UWM Department of Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies voice our strong support for the fundamental principle that Black lives matter. We all must stand against racism in all its forms and, in the JAMS Department, we are committed to doing so. We stand in support of the constitutional rights of protesters to peacefully protest against these injustices, while supporting the constitutional rights of journalists to safely and freely report on those efforts. As researchers and educators, we reaffirm our special responsibility for promoting fairness and equality of opportunity and we pledge to do more to create an inclusive community within our program.

Mathematical Sciences

The Department of Mathematical Sciences at UW-Milwaukee stands in solidarity with Black and underrepresented minority fellow employees,  students, and community members.

We urge all to heed the calls made by our professional societies, including (but not limited to) the following:

• to reaffirm our commitment to be an inclusive community,
• to listen to and support our Black colleagues and students,
• to stand up when we see racial injustice and understand our own implicit biases and how they affect our students and colleagues,
• and to engage in critical conversations that urge educators to create structures where each and every student can be fully engaged in our democratic society.

Message from the American Mathematical Society President about systemic racism and violence

Statement on Black Lives Matter by the Mathematical Association of America Committee on Minority Participation in Mathematics

Special Statement on Racism and Inequity from the American Meteorological Society

Statement on George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics

Philosophy

The Department of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee endorses the following statement by the American Philosophical Association condemning racist violence and supporting the Black Lives Matter movement:

“The American Philosophical Association unequivocally condemns all forms of racist violence and white supremacy. We are pained and outraged at the countless incidents of police brutality and injustice toward Black people both recently and throughout the history of the United States, and we stand against the structural and institutional racism that enables these actions. The APA board of officers reaffirms our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion in our discipline. As philosophers, scholars, teachers, and learners, we have a responsibility to work toward a better, more just society.

The APA supports the Black Lives Matter movement in its demand for an immediate end to police brutality and the murder of Black people. The APA is committed to addressing the problem of anti-Blackness in the profession.”

Original APA statement: https://www.apaonline.org/general/custom.asp?page=racist-violence-police-brutality

Spanish and Portuguese

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese stands in solidarity with Black students, staff, and faculty. The task of intentionally decolonizing our classrooms and our communities is a continuous effort infused with the process of listening, learning, understanding, rectifying, and growing. Black Lives Matter. Las vidas negras importan.

El Departamento de Español y Portugués se solidariza con el estudiantado, staff y profesorado negro. La tarea de descolonizar intencionalmente nuestros salones de clase y nuestras comunidades es un esfuerzo continuo imbuido en el proceso de escuchar, entender, rectificar y crecer. Las vidas negras importan. Black Lives Matter.

O Departamento de Espanhol e Português está solidário com estudantes, funcionários e professores negros. A tarefa de descolonizar intencionalmente nossas salas de aula e nossas comunidades é um esforço contínuo imbuido no processo de ouvir, aprender, entender, retificar e crescer. As vidas negras importam. Black Lives Matter.

School of Architecture and Urban Planning

Letter to Students on Ending Structural Racism

Dear SARUP Students:

As Chancellor Mone expressed on Monday, I too want to express my support and solidarity with the protestors who are shining a light on the manifest injustices that our society has failed to address. As a school, I want SARUP to more explicitly recognize and address our responsibilities to achieve social justice in our own spheres. We must commit to change.

The past weeks have witnessed increasingly sad and distressing developments that together lay bare multiple injustices for all to see. The number of COVID-19 deaths passed 100,000. Tens of millions of workers have lost their jobs. And the US witnessed the wrongful and unjust murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer while other officers at the scene did nothing to intervene to stop the violence, even as Mr. Floyd and bystanders begged that he be allowed to breathe.

In these dark days, I fervently hope that positive change will come from George Floyd’s murder. I believe that we are at a turning point, but one that requires that we reinvest our pain and anguish in being different than we were just a few weeks ago. Today, I commit to work with all faculty, staff, and students to seize this moment.

Last evening, NOMAS announced a series of actions it is taking. NOMAS has shown tremendous leadership in my communications with them over the past few days. I sincerely thank them. Please follow their “NOMAS UWM” Instagram page @nomas_uwm to stay informed about upcoming developments.

Already, NOMAS UWM is planning a fund-raiser. Today, I am personally pledging to match each donation up to $1000, in addition, I will earmark an additional match from our scholarship fund for new scholarship donations up to $5000—creating a new $10,000 fund for recruiting under-represented students. This scholarship would be awarded for the 2020-21 academic year for a student who is black, indigenous or other person of color. I will seek NOMAS’s participation in making the selection of the scholarship recipient. I also will work to engage our professional community in Wisconsin to participate in the fund-raising effort.[June 11 update: I have fulfilled my matching gift to NOMAS UWM but you can still participate in their fund‐raiser. I will announce more details of my initiative to raise funds for new SARUP scholarships to advance racial equity in the coming weeks. I learned this morning that UWM is coordinating an effort across schools and colleges. Once I know the details, I will share them in an upcoming newsletter.]

I am sorely aware that our professions—architecture and urban planning— have not always stood up to injustices. Like those officers standing around as Mr. Floyd passed from this life, our professions were silent, and sometimes accomplices, while neighborhoods were segregated through zoning and redlining policies that explicitly denied “non-white” people opportunities to participate in homeownership and wealth-building. We focus on grand iconic buildings that crowd out efforts to find more humane ways to meet the housing needs of those who have suffered the greatest disadvantages. Our professions have been ineffective objectors when public investment and development subsidies go to areas enjoyed by white users with comfortable incomes. Our professions acquiesce to a system that puts our clients’ interests above the needs of those who will occupy the places and spaces we plan and design.

Yet, I am hopeful. Our professional organizations are also aware of these shortcomings and are working to address them. But I am especially hopeful when I interact you, our students. I find you eager to re-invent the systems that produce inequality so that the needs of every segment of our community can be met.

I find cause for hope in the lessons that we see before us in the very tragedies that surround us. Many white Americans are seeing more clearly than before that our systems, more than individual shortcomings, explain unequal social, economic, and health outcomes, and that these are all bound up together. This is evident in the complexion of the COVID-19 victims.

Facing largely unavoidable exposures related to their work and home situations, people of color are disproportionately represented among the COVID-19 victims. Public health experts report that social distancing is more difficult for those in low-wage occupations. Low-wage workers have also suffered the vast majority of layoffs in the current crisis and face illness with limited or no health insurance. People of color are also more likely to live in apartments with narrow halls and high occupancy levels that increase their risk of contracting the virus. We see more clearly than before that these inequalities are built into our systems of work, health delivery, and housing.

Knowledge is powerful, but hope alone is not enough. Together we must act and act together with urgency. We will find that when we advance justice, we all benefit.

In the coming weeks, please join with SARUP faculty and staff as we re-double our efforts. We have good models and a more than a good start: Professor Sen’s Field School; visiting lecturers in architecture and planning that point us to ways that architects and planners can build a more just world; and exhibits like “Evicted” at the Mobile Design Box last year and the upcoming “Now What?!” exhibit for the SARUP gallery, alumni support for scholarships that help us attract more students of color, to name just a few. Now, we need to get beyond “start”.

Students: please hold us accountable. Seek authentic engagement. Be our partners in enacting some new values that support the best of what we have been while eliminating the hidden injuries of racial and class inequality.

Sociology

The faculty of the UWM Department of Sociology voice our strong support for the fundamental principle that Black Lives Matter, and for the powerful expression of this fact in public protest. We are adamantly against racism in all its forms. We mourn the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and far too many other Black and brown people killed by police. We know that actions matter more than words, and many of us have been actively protesting and supporting additional efforts to combat inequity, injustice, and violence, in Milwaukee and beyond. We pledge to continue to do so, to learn and listen, to expect even more of ourselves and those around us in combatting the layers of inequality that Sociology is in a unique position to understand, analyze, and critique.

Collective Statement of Solidarity

In response to police violence against Black and Brown people in our city and nationwide and the recent murders of George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Joel Acevedo, Ahmaud Arbery, and a painfully long list of others, we write in strong solidarity and support for our Black students, staff and faculty; our students, staff, and faculty of color; and the communities we serve.

The loss of these human lives is a continuation of longstanding white supremacist violence against Black people and other racialized groups in our country. In the last few years, we have also seen an increase in anti-immigrant, antisemitic, Islamophobic and anti-Asian racism. These different forms of racism and discrimination are interconnected. If we are to challenge and dismantle them in the service of creating a just and equal society, we have to treat them as part of a larger complex field of systemic racism.

We condemn and speak out against white supremacy. We are committed to anti-racist feminisms and against all forms of oppressions and injustices. In the classroom and in our work, we study the history of racism, state-sanctioned violence and oppression, anti-racist and feminist activism, and intersecting oppressions of race, gender, sexuality and religion, as well as other forms of difference. We encourage diverse classrooms and recognize the importance of the plurality of experiences and perspectives. But, as part of embracing diversity and diverse classrooms we also must recognize that institutionalized racism has influenced all societal institutions—and higher education is no exception; UWM is no exception. Racism and police violence against Black lives and other marginalized people exist here at UWM. We urge our campus leadership to address substantively both the systemic racism and the deep outrage and pain on our campus.

We have reached yet another critical moment when individuals as well as institutions need to take a clear and vocal stance on racial and social justice and insist, again, that Black Lives Matter. Our programs join the protest against anti-Black racist violence and police brutality. As educators, community members, and scholars in the spaces of public education, we commit to the critical work of further fostering inclusive learning and working spaces that support the very contributions and voices of Black, Indigenous and racialized people.

By formal agreement, our campus police force is assisted by and assists the Milwaukee Police Department.  We call for an end to this relationship, which historically has resulted in the profiling of UWM students of color.  Further, we call on the State of Wisconsin and the federal government to invest in community health and public schools in lieu of the continual funding of policing and incarceration.

We also acknowledge that, as is so often the case, universities may advocate for change and push for it within our institutions and beyond; and we may make space for ongoing learning and discussions of these vital issues; but we are not the leaders of this movement. Within Milwaukee, the Milwaukee Freedom Fund has compiled a list of organizations that are working for change and also both offering support for those who need it and accepting donations from those who can provide them. Please support change and embrace our community as best you can: https://uwm.edu/womens-gender-studies/milwaukee-freedom-fund-links/

Signed,

• Department of French, Italian, and Comparative Literature
• Global Studies
• International Studies
• Jewish Studies
• Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
• Latin American, Caribbean, U.S. Latinx Studies
• MA in Language, Literature & Translation (MALLT)
• Public History
• Religious Studies
• Translation & Interpreting Studies
• Women’s and Gender Studies Faculty and TA Mentor
• Anne Dressel, Center for Global Health Equity
• Timothy Ehlinger, Wm. Collins Kohler Chair in Systems Change & Peacebuilding
• Laura Hermanns, Assistant Director-Center for Global Health Equity; Partnerships Coordinator-Peacebuilding programs
• Joanne Lipo Zovic, Faculty Associate in the Masters of Sustainable Peacebuilding Program.
• Lynne M. Woehrle, Program Director, Master of Sustainable Peacebuilding and Certificate in Peace and Conflict Studies

Zilber School of Public Health

Dear Friends, Colleagues and Community Partners,

The UW-Milwaukee Joseph J. Zilber School of Public Health has been horrified by the undeniable racial injustices that exist in this country, once again culminating in the murder of a Black person, George Floyd in Minneapolis, at the hands of the police. This injustice was further followed by violence inflicted on Americans across this country who are exercising their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

We offer some reflection below on the events of the past several months. We recognize that we experience these events from a place of privilege not available or accessible to all Americans. First and foremost, we believe Black Lives Matter. We want to say to our faculty, staff, students, alumni, friends and community partners who identify as Black, indigenous, and people of color: We see you, we stand with you, and we pledge to walk the road of anti-racism in new and better ways. We don’t have the right words or the right answers, but we are here, and we are committed.

The last six months have been a whirlwind for our nation, the planet, and public health. As news of a global pandemic spread across the globe, what became evident was that Covid-19 does not treat all Americans the same. Societal factors such as socioeconomic status, education, neighborhood and physical environment, employment, and social support networks, as well as access to health care and chronic structural racism have interacted in ways that have resulted in both higher infection and death rates to Covid-19 among communities of color across the United States.

As if all of that was not enough, we were reminded that the phrase “Equal Justice Under the Law” is not applied equally to all citizens. The humiliation and fear felt by Black Americans during interactions with police officers due to the color of their skin is an experience White Americans will never endure. For Black Americans, it is a fear that can be suffocating. And deadly.

We have watched in shock as another murder of a Black person at the hands of police played out on our televisions and social media sites. We have also been inspired by the courage, dreams and resolve of so many Americans, from every race, creed, religion, gender and sexual identity, who have come out of their homes during a deadly pandemic to protest this pattern of racial injustice and police brutality.   We must be part of the demand for change. Although we have failed to live up to our ideal as a nation for far too long, we strive for equality and justice for all.

We agree with colleagues in Milwaukee and across the country that systemic racism is a public health crisis. Our mission reminds us that there has never been a greater need to come together in action to advance population health, health equity, and social and environmental justice, and advocate for health-promoting policies and strategies throughout Milwaukee, Wisconsin and beyond.

As a first step and to set the tone for future discussions around race, we encourage all to visit the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture site on anti-racism. This resource is an integral part of our ongoing diversity, equity and inclusion framework. We propose working in partnership with governance groups to institute mandatory anti-bias, anti-racism training for all members of the school.

Peace,

Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes

C21 is a member of CHCI.

Black lives matter. The recent murders, in the United States, of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many others expose exploitations and inequities rooted in more than four centuries of colonialism, enslavement, and the violation of civil and human rights.

The international advisory board of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) stands in solidarity with those protesting racist forms of injustice and police violence. We commit to creating and promoting anti-racist environments for scholars, students, and staff in the humanities, in the United States, and around the world.

We also recognize that we are witness to a phenomenon that is not unique to the United States: forms of institutional racism and repressive violence are present on every continent. While the United States’ foundational affirmation of equality highlights the violence and demands our attention, we nevertheless reaffirm our international approach to the elimination of institutional racism and to the difficult work of building more equitable institutions, curricula, concepts, and archives.

Scholars in the humanities have deep commitments to concepts such as freedom, humanity, personhood, dignity, and democracy, and yet we recognize that these same concepts often reproduce paradoxes, exclusions, and systems of injustice. By analyzing these concepts, excavating their histories and examining our own habits and institutions, we commit ourselves to imagining a better future and inventing the world in which we want to live.