An Important Message from our Department Head

Dear Friends of WGSS,

I hope that Week 10 of the semester ended better than it began. If you haven’t had a chance to read President Bendapudi’s response to October 24th’s events, you can find that here: Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi releases message following Uncensored America event cancellation | University Park Campus News | collegian.psu.edu.

Given the recent announcement that Penn State is no longer moving ahead on the promised Center for Racial Justice (see Penn State Scraps Plans for a Racial-Justice Center (chronicle.com) and Penn State Breaks Promise to Open Center for Racial Justice (insidehighered.com), it’s difficult to feel good about where things stand. The following op-ed from October 28th’s CDT I think it is also worth a read: State College community must rally against white nationalism | Centre Daily Times.

I hope that as a community we can find ways to discuss and process the violence that has become more firmly embedded in our community. As we all know, racism and white supremacy never operate in “isolation.” They are always inextricably linked to other systems of power, such as sexism, heterosexism, and classism, just to name a few. As a community, we have a lot of work to do.

In solidarity,

Alicia Decker

Department Head