Dear Anthropology Alumni,
Our department and our discipline are at a moment of challenge and opportunity. How can we embrace crucial challenges associated with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), while transforming important aspects of our discipline's approach to culture and evolution?
For this upcoming spring, we are excited to announce that we will be hiring a faculty member who specializes in the archaeology of the Black Atlantic. This future colleague will focus on race and the lived experiences of enslavement, resistance and freedom amongst Africans and Afro-descendants in the Americas.
We recently co-hosted a speaker series on race and technology with the Elliott School of International Affairs. We are inviting diverse scholars to discuss the ways in which science and technology are implicated in processes of racial categorization, governance, and policing. These talks took place in November and early December.
Lastly, we have organized a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force to identify issues in our research and teaching, research possible solutions and present those back to our faculty and students. The committee is composed of faculty, undergraduates, graduate students and staff, and has already done important work on mentoring, recruitment, standardized testing, training and governance. We are deeply appreciative of those who have served, and to those who are serving this year.
We have lots more work to do on DEI. While in some ways these issues have concerned us for a long time, in other important ways we are only getting started. We hope you will join us by sharing your perspectives and expertise.
We love hearing from you, so please reach out when you have a moment.
Sincerely,
Alexander Sebastian Dent, PhD
Department Chair