English Department Statement on Antiracism

The English Department at the University of Indianapolis wishes to assert its belief that Black lives matter and affirm its support for the movement. We know that Black, Indigenous, and other people of color—faculty, staff, students, and many beyond the University—have long experienced the effects of systemic racism, and to help fight against that, we commit ourselves to creating a department more consciously and deliberately rooted in equity and antiracism. We know we can only educate and serve our students properly if we are adamantly and intentionally antiracist in our pedagogy, curricula, syllabi, extracurricular activities, and everyday actions. To that end, we are committed to assessing ourselves and our practices in all of these areas and instituting changes.

As a faculty, we are taking the following steps:

  • Initiate and support sustained antiracist training and discussions for our faculty;

  • Maintain a (digital and physical) library accessible to faculty and students for resources about racism and antiracism, with particular attention to our disciplines;

  • Educate ourselves about the resources needed to emotionally support and affirm our Black, Indigenous, and other students of color inside and outside of the classroom;

  • Solicit and respond to feedback from Black, Indigenous, and other people of color about how we can best support them;

  • Educate all our students about racism and antiracism (in and out of the classroom);

  • Assess and revise our mission statement and curricula as a faculty in order to reflect our belief in antiracist, anti-bias, and inclusive practices;

  • Continue to use our syllabi and our pedagogy to amplify the voices of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color and push toward making this a more systematic practice;

  • Support and encourage faculty scholarship (broadly defined) and pedagogy that explicitly engages with antiracism.

  • Work with Admissions to recruit a more diverse student population within the major;
  • Ensure hiring practices proactively employ equitable practices to increase faculty diversity.

 

We consider these steps as part of a process that must be sustained, as well as responsive to student feedback and our own reflections.
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