Colleagues,
Jason Podrabsky, Interim Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies and I want to bring an event to your attention and encourage you to consider participating.
Shutdown Academia/Shutdown STEM is a national event intended to give Black professionals and academics time to prioritize themselves and take a needed break. For those who are not Black, it is a day to educate ourselves and reflect on our own complicity in anti-Black racism in academia and to define a detailed plan of action to work towards dismantling systemic racism in academia and the broader community. As organizers put it, white and other non-Black colleagues "have to step up and do the work to eradicate anti-Black racism."
Along with members of Particles for Justice, the organizers created a Shutdown Academia/Shutdown STEM website with helpful resources to honor this day.
Because PSU's spring term is still in session and many of you may have finals scheduled for June 10, we encourage you to consider the following:
- If you hold your regularly scheduled exam, you could take a moment at the beginning of class to honor the movement, recognizing its aims to "transition to a lifelong commitment of actions to eradicate anti-Black racism in academia and STEM."
- You could reschedule the exam for Friday, which has open exam slots due to holding it for make-up exams. Please accommodate the needs of any students for whom rescheduling creates a hardship.
- Identify an alternate person to monitor your exam
- Those of you engaged in time-sensitive research on COVID-19 should not feel obligated to participate in the shutdown; rather the movement asks you to "Take a moment when possible to reflect on how their work can contribute to these urgent calls for justice."
I hope to engage with all of you in the coming weeks to think intentionally about how we can move forward on the important decolonizing and anti-racist work that needs to be done at PSU.
In solidarity,
Susan Jeffords, Ph.D.
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs
Jason Podrabsky
Interim Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies
