As current and future Chairs of this Department we have received many expressions of dismay and concern over recent events on campus. These have come from students and faculty alike. Sociological research has repeatedly shown that indignities are commonly experienced in everyday life by visible minorities, especially when they enter what our colleague Elijah Anderson has called the ‘white space’*. Such encounters play a role in the maintenance of a hierarchical racial order. Informed by this scholarship and motivated by your concern, in moving forward we will do all we can to help build a university and a Department that is responsive to the experiences of students of color, that understands the value of diversity, and that enacts policies consistent with such aims.
Philip Smith
Grace Kao
*Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 1: 10-21. 2015.