Statement on Racism

February 18, 2020

We issue the following statement in response to our students who have told us of their pain, anger, and concern, and as faculty members committed to making GW a place where all students can thrive:

Students, faculty, and staff have a right to a learning and working environment, here and now, that is free of racism and violence. Each and every one of us, including and especially the President, has an ethical responsibility to our community in this regard. Our President must exemplify dignity, wisdom, and ethical regard in speech, thought, and action, for ALL members of the GW community, and especially for those of marginalized and minoritized identities.

In 2011, GW hosted Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Toni Morrison. Her visit included GW’s participation in the Toni Morrison Society’s “Bench by the Road” project, an initiative spurred by Morrison’s observation in 1989 that there existed no monuments or memorials commemorating enslaved peoples and their experiences. The bench at GW honors Morrison, and marks the year that Lisner Auditorium was integrated—1954. Recent events make clear that the memorialization of Morrison’s work, even right here at GW, is not enough to undo past and present systemic racism that threatens the mission of higher education. Morrison’s own words are vitally important in this regard. In her 1993 Nobel Prize Lecture, Morrison said, “The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, midwifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge…Sexist language, racist language, theistic language – all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.”

We commend our students for expressing their voice at this difficult time, and for working with us as we identify the next steps GW’s leadership will need to take to redress and repair the trust of our community.

Signed,

The WGSS Program