Saturday, March 20, 2021
Statement of Solidarity Against Anti-Asian Violence
We are stunned by the anti-Asian mass shootings in Atlanta and Acworth on March 16, 2021. Our hearts go out to the victims and their families who have suffered from this senseless act. Eight innocent lives were brutally taken away by a gunman, six of them women of Asian descent. The names of the victims have been removed until we have full consent from families to add them. This is not an isolated incident and comes out of the current-day repetition of long-standing racist sentiments targeting various minority communities fueled by political rhetoric. Since March 2020, the former U.S. president and his allies have relentlessly scapegoated people of Asian descent especially Chinese and Chinese Americans under the pandemic, triggering a staggering spike in reported incidents. This current trend shows how racism and xenophobia have been used to justify racist sentiments and actions against people of Asian descent. Such aggressions are not new and are embedded in a long history of racial violence targeting Asians, Asian-Americans and other vulnerable minorities in the United States.
We issue this statement in solidarity with the firm belief that any form of racial discrimination, hatred, bigotry, and violence against any community is an attack on all of us. We stand together to call for solidarity and support across our various communities. We urge everyone to call out racism and violence when you see it in any community, reach out to one another in support and care. In our divided climate, communities are often pitted against one another. We urge everyone to reject any calculus that assumes a hierarchy of human value by race.
We strongly condemn racism and hate toward all people, and we stand in solidarity with those who are being viciously targeted today. We advocate for a critical understanding of how ideas about race and racial difference take shape over time with the larger goal of exposing and dismantling such racist beliefs and attacks against various minoritized groups. As a community of educators, we pledge to continue to teach the histories and legacies of race and racism and speak out against them.
Duke’s Office for Institutional Equity is one local resource for assistance and reporting for those who have experienced discrimination or harassment based upon race, national origin or other protected categories of identity, at 919-684-8222, or oie-help@duke.edu. STOP AAPI HATE and Asian Americans Advancing Justice are national reporting sites. Other resources are available at our partner organization NCAAT. AADS will continue to update our program site with local and national resources for addressing these concerns. Please share these and other available resources to help those who have been the target of inflammatory racist rhetoric and violence.
In Solidarity,
Nayoung Aimee Kwon (Director, Asian American & Diaspora Studies, Duke)
Mona Hassan (Convener, Islamic Studies Doctoral Program, Duke)
Laura S. Lieber (Director, Center for Jewish Studies, Duke)
Robin Kirk, co-director, Duke Human Rights Center @ the Franklin Humanities Institute
Erika Weinthal, co-director, Duke Human Rights Center @ the Franklin Humanities Institute
Aarthi Vadde, Associate Professor of English, Duke
Joshua Salaam (Director, Center for Muslim Life, Duke)
Prasenjit Duara (Director, Global Asia Initiative)
Ellen McLarney (Director, Duke Middle East Studies Center; Interim Director, Duke Islamic Studies Center)
Ryan Ku (Postdoctoral Associate, Program in Asian American and Diaspora Studies and Department of English, Duke)
Charmaine DM Royal (Director, Duke Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation)
Giovanni Zanalda (Director, Duke Center for International and Global Studies)
Claudia Milian (Director, Program in Latino/a Studies in the Global South)
Naomi Nelson (Director, Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library)
Ji-Yeon Jo, Director, Carolina Asia Center, UNC-Chapel Hill
Quinton Smith (Interim Director, Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture)
Linda Capers (Director, Center for Multicultural Affairs)
Caroline Robinson (Assistant Teaching Professor of Arabic, UNC Chapel Hill.)
Esther Kim Lee (Professor, Theater Studies, Duke University)
Li-Chen Chin (Assistant Vice President, Intercultural Programs)
Shruti Desai (Associate Vice President of Student Affairs for Campus Life)
J’nai Adams (Associate Director, Center for Multicultural Affairs)
Dwayne Dixon (Teaching Assistant Professor, Dept. of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, UNC-CH)
Elmer Orellana (Assistant Director, Center for Multicultural Affairs)
Pamela Lothspeich (Associate Professor, Dept. of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, UNC-CH)
Joyce Gordon (Director, Jewish Life at Duke)
Morgan Pitelka (Chair, Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, UNC-Chapel Hill)
Luoyi Cai (Teaching Assistant Professor, Dept. of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, UNC-CH)
Lisa Giragosian
Lena Wegner (Assistant Director for External Relations, Jewish Life at Duke)
Paige Vinson (Assistant Director, International House, Duke)
Nick Antonicci (Director, Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity)
Angel Collie (Assistant Director, Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity)
Christina Chia (Associate Director, John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke University)
Elana Friedman (Campus Rabbi, Jewish Life at Duke)
I Jonathan Kief (Assistant Professor, Dept. of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, UNC-CH)
Ana Vinea (Assistant Professor, Dept. of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, UNC-CH)
Krystal George (Interim Director, Women’s Center)
Tuania Wright (Women’s Center)
Sheila Broderick, (Duke University Women’s Center Office of Gender Violence Intervention)
Anne-Maria Makhulu (Associate Professor, Dept of Cultural Anthropology and African & African American Studies, Duke University)
Frances S. Hasso (Associate Professor, Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies, History, and Sociology, Duke University)
Christine Folch (Assistant Professor, Dept of Cultural Anthropology, Duke University)
Ralph Litzinger (Associate Professor, Dept of Cultural Anthropology, Duke University)
Orin Starn (Professor, Department of Cultural Anthropology)
Louise Meintjes (Chair, Department of Cultural Anthropology, Professor of Music and Cultural Anthropology)
Anne Allison (Professor, Department of Cultural Anthropology, Duke University)
Charlie Piot (Professor, Departments of Cultural Anthropology and AAAS, Duke University)
Mengqi Wang (Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Social Science Division, Duke Kunshan University)
Diane Nelson (Professor, Department of Cultural Anthropology, Duke University)
Stephen Jaffe (Professor & Director of Graduate Studies, Dept. of Music, Duke University)
Jonathan Bagg (Chair, Department of Music, Professor of the Practice)
Nellie Chu (Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Division of Social Sciences, Duke Kunshan University)
Charlie D. Thompson, Jr (Professor of the Practice of Cultural Anthropology and Documentary Studies)
Daniel Yi Xu (Professor, Department of Economics, Duke University)
Yan Liu (Assistant Professor of the Practice, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Duke University)
Omid Safi (Professor, Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Duke University)
Zairong Xiang (Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, Associate Director of Art, DUke Kunshan University)
Eli Sperling (Postdoctoral Associate, Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Center for Jewish Studies, Duke University)
Edmund J. Malesky (Director of Duke Center for International Development, Professor of Political Science, Duke University)
Harris Solomon (Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Global Health, Duke University)
Don Taylor (Director, Social Science Research Institute, Duke University)
Shai Ginsburg (Chair, Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, Duke University)
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