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Dear political science faculty,
We hope this email finds you safe and sound. We wanted to reach out to you regarding the
current moment on campus and our next steps forward. As you may have heard by now, students
at Haverford are responding en masse to both the murder of Walter Wallace Jr. and the
unacceptable response put forth by college administrators. Last night, Black students organized a
campus-wide sit-in and march which challenged the administrative response and demanded
justice for Mr. Wallace. The call was also for white allies to finally get involved, use their
privilege, and to start showing up for Black lives. Students marched until about 2AM, and then a
campus-wide job/club/class strike was announced.
In solidarity with Black Lives Matter movements around the world and BIPOC students on our
campus, we will not be attending class, turning in assignments, or participating in any campus
extracurriculars (including jobs) until the strike ends. Today, we ask you to join us in calling for
these concrete actions:
1) Put the safety and wellbeing of Black students first, at all times.
2) Pursue transparent and decisive action regarding the diversity of current syllabi and the
hiring of professors who will fill in the glaring blind spots of Haverford’s Political
Science department, in terms of representation, classroom dynamics (including but not
limited to supporting BIPOC students in class discussions), and curricula.
3) Support strike efforts on campus and off-, re-evaluate class right now to align with the
anti-racist goals of this movement.
4) Pressure the college to commit concrete resources and immediate action towards Black
students and Black lives, particularly in our surrounding community of Philly
5) Please see this document, written by students, on what this strike means for us and how
professors and administrators specifically can be involved.
We also ask that you read and reflect on the demands of the strike, linked here.
Thank you so much for your commitment to these issues and for the care that you show us as
your students. Please know that we value your classes and our education, but ultimately our
education can only truly matter to us to the extent that every student is able to access it equitably.
The administration continues to release statements and undertake actions that inflict violence on
BIPOC students. This is antithetical to our demands for an antiracist education that will enable us
to change the world we live in. Political science, as a discipline, has a long history of racism,
anti-Blackness, and of upholding white supremacist regimes and institutions. We hope that,
through conversations across the department and subsequent action, we can do the vital work of
making political science a more inclusive discipline.
We seek to improve the quality of this college for every student, especially the BIPOC/FGLI
students who have continually been harmed by its actions. As such, we hope you will join us in
solidarity.
Wishing you safety, health, and peace always,
Brooks Richon ‘21
Dex Coen Gilbert ‘21
Elena Marcovici ‘21
Chloe Liu ‘21
Althea Sellers ‘21
Jacob Epstein ‘21
Makoto Manheim ’21
Clover Spriggs ‘21
Evan Moon ‘21
Sophie Chochaeva ‘22
Julia Coletti ‘21
Isabel Schwam ‘22
Wyatt Feinberg ‘22
Golda Glasser ‘22
Jacob Gorenburg '22
Mateo Zules '22
George Doehne ‘22
Steven Puac ‘22
Soha Saghir ‘21
Brian Hu ‘21
Sadie Pileggi-Proud ‘21
Sally Pearson ‘21
Isabel Canning ‘21
Erica Belfi ‘21
Kara D’Ascenzo ‘22
Matthew Pollock ‘22
Ellie Kimmelman ‘21
Sil Lai Abrams ‘21
Sarah Cahn ‘22
Elle Ferreira ‘22
Chris Conrad ‘21
Joseph Stein ’21
Hannah Yeakey ‘21
Natalia Cordón ‘22
Allison Mackenzie ‘21
Johnluca Fenton ‘21
Jia-Ming Tuan ‘21
Lulu Obaditch ‘22
Ben Deichman-Caswell ‘21
Gabrielle Cipriano ‘22
Hayley Tubbs ‘21
David Edelman ’22
Arshiya Bhayana ‘22
Noelle Mahr ‘21
Bilge Nur Yilmaz ‘21
Caroline Channell ‘22
Nate Buchanan ‘22
Jackson Trevor ‘22
Daniel Bruce ‘22
Poli Sci letter re: strike
Open letter originally sent as an email from Haverford political science students to faculty in the Department of Political Science. The letter asks for faculty to engage in concrete actions to support the strike. The letter concludes with the signatures of 49 students.
2020-10-29
3 pages
born digital
2020_10_29_poli sci letter re_ strike - Google Docs