We, the undersigned faculty and staff in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, welcome Chancellor Folt’s recently published statements on inclusion and diversity. Likewise, we emphatically reaffirm University policy on discrimination, academic freedom, and social justice.
We are deeply concerned that recent statements and actions by national and international political leaders targeting historically less powerful ethno-racial identities threaten inclusion, diversity, and academic freedom in addition to everyone’s safety and security. We condemn the recent racist incidents—hate speech, physical violence, vandalism, etc.—that have taken place right here on our campus. We encourage administrators at all levels of the University to also publicly condemn such incidents as one important step towards eradicating them.
In response, we pledge to continue to uphold justice and multicultural literacy by insisting that our classes and community include everyone and do not discriminate against anyone.
Dongsoo Bang
Fadi Bardawil
Jan Bardsley
Ash Barnes
Uffe Bergeton
Luoyi Cai
Mark Driscoll
Lini Ge
Zeina Halabi
Lori Harris
Didem Havlioglu
Li-ling Hsiao
Fumi Iwashita
Ji-Yeon Jo
SooJin Lee
Wendan Li
Jia Lin
Pamela Lothspeich
Khalid Shahu
Jing Stimpson
Robin Visser
Claudia Yaghoobi
Nadia Yaqub
Yi Zhou