A Message from Dean D’Alleva
We’ve witnessed the pain of our nation’s Black community, and the violent backlash against the protesters, with sorrow, anger, and a sense of solidarity. We have struggled during this trauma to form a concrete action plan for our community, and want to acknowledge, understand, and eliminate the inequities created by systemic racism, in society at large but also within the University and the School.
With this in mind, the School of Fine Arts Diversity Task Force will continue developing a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Plan as part of our strategic planning process next semester with a renewed sense of urgency. This plan will highlight the need to actively recruit and support students, faculty, and staff of color. We need everyone to contribute to this process, and we need a new commitment to this goal and new approaches because what we are doing now is not working.
We must create an equitable, inclusive, and welcoming atmosphere for students, faculty, and staff of color across the School. In particular we need to create curricula across the arts that provide all students with a deep understanding of diversity and inclusion. Our programming equally needs to celebrate and share diverse cultural expressions.
We should be leaders in moving forward the necessary state and national conversation to address the structural inequities experienced by people of color in the arts, creating a lack of opportunities for arts education and professional success for people of color.
Resources
- It’s Time to Decolonize That Syllabus – by Yvette Chavez, Los Angeles Times
- The Faculty – A community of academics and storytellers writing and sharing thoughts about teaching, learning, research, and life.
- When Feminism is White Supremacy in Heels by Rachel Cargle
- The White Feminist Savior Complex (blog) by Anne Theirault
- The White Savior Industrial Complex by Teju Cole
- A Historical Perspective on Social Work & Race
- Anti-Racist Social Work Practice .pdf(www.racialequitytools.org)
- Defunding the Police Will Actually Make Us Safer (ACLU)
The School of Fine Arts embraces diversity through
- teaching, creative and scholarly research, and exhibitions and performances
- our inclusive and welcoming community of faculty, students, and staff
- engagement with Connecticut's schools and communities
The University of Connecticut values and supports diversity in many ways:
In order to develop an inclusive community for instruction, research and outreach, the University of Connecticut embraces diversity and cultivates leadership, integrity, and engaged citizenship among our students, faculty and staff. This collegial and vibrant environment promotes and nurtures perspectives that are enabled through differences in culture, experience and values. To achieve this goal, the university emphasizes diversity in the recruitment, retention and advancement of students, faculty and staff.
To learn more please visit UConn Diversity, its Resources page, and the Office of Institutional Equity.
