Statement of Solidarity

We must act. The faculty of the Art History Department at the University of Delaware support the aims of activists protesting in the streets following the death of George Floyd. We stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and against the oppression of Black people, Indigenous people and people of color. Racism is unjust at the most fundamental, human level. In our work as teachers, mentors, scholars, and administrators we must strive against the perpetuation of systemic racism and the culture of white supremacy. Therefore, we, the faculty:

• Commit to engage in an ongoing process of listening, learning, and active engagement with our students, staff, and colleagues and other university partners to better understand how and what we can do to decolonize our pedagogy and research and to actively practice anti-racism in all of its forms. This process includes working with UD's Office of Equity and Inclusion and other organizations to assure our community is trained in issues such as anti-racism, microaggressions, unintentional bias, and white privilege.
  
• Commit to anti-racism in our recruiting and mentoring of undergraduate majors and minors and graduate students.
  
• Commit to recruiting, hiring, supporting, and retaining a more diverse faculty.
  
• Commit to review our curriculum to redress existing structural inequities that systematically privilege particular histories of art and, in so doing, favor particular social groups, and to make anti-racism an explicit component across our teaching.
  
• Commit to collaborate with UD and community partners to develop courses and other programs that promote racial and socio-economic equity and that aim to increase awareness of the histories of racism at UD and in Delaware.
  
• Commit to public engagement activities regionally that reach secondary school students, adult learners, and communities historically underrepresented at UD and in the discipline of art history.
  
• Commit to provide regular updates to our community on our progress toward these goals.