Guest Column | Professors and staff leaders pledge to continue working to increase diversity

We stand in solidarity with the senior faculty of the Center for Africana Studies who wrote the guest column, “Guess Who’s (Not) Coming to Dinner,” in the Jan. 30 issue of The Daily Pennsylvanian. As faculty and staff, we share many of the concerns articulated in this letter by our colleagues, Camille Charles, Barbara Savage, Mary Frances Berry, Vivian Gadsden, Kenneth Shropshire and Tukufu Zuberi. We support all efforts to increase the racial diversity of Penn’s faculty, especially among high-ranking administrators, including school deans and associate deans, where such diversity has been sorely lacking. This is why we applaud the recent appointment of Eve Troutt Powell, professor of history and Africana studies and affiliated faculty member in the Religious Studies Department and the Modern Middle East Studies Program, to the position of associate dean of graduate studies in the School of Arts and Sciences. We must continue to spotlight such strides toward improving diversity and inclusion at Penn while acknowledging that there is still more work to be done.

We know that increasing the diversity and excellence of faculty and administrators at Penn also requires the development and implementation of policies that work to dismantle biases in hiring, retention and promotion practices where such biases serve to encourage the conflation of social privilege with job qualification. We pledge to work in our departments, centers and schools to develop substantive plans, procedures and practices that will enable Penn to continue to fulfill the goals articulated in Penn’s Action Plan for Faculty Diversity and Excellence.

Regina Austin, Law School
Eiichiro Azuma, Asian American Studies, History
Karen Beckman, History of Art, Cinema Studies
Nancy Bentley, English
Kathy Brown, History, Africana Studies
David Brownlee, History of Art
Timothy Corrigan, English, Cinema Studies, History of Art
Erin Cross
Patricia D’Antonio, School of Nursing
André Dombrowski, History of Art
David Eng, English, Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, Asian American Studies
Julie Fairman, School of Nursing, Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing
Tulia G. Falleti, Political Science, Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics
Ann Farnsworth-Alvear, History, Latin American and Latino Studies
Marie Gottschalk, Political Science
Kathy Hall, Graduate School of Education
Nina Harris, SAS ‘01
Kathryn Hellerstein, Germanic Languages and Literatures
Nancy Hirschmann, Political Science
Tsitsi Jaji, English
Sarah Kagan, School of Nursing
Grace Kao, Asian American Studies, Sociology
Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, History, Middle East Center, Modern Middle East Studies
Fariha Khan, Asian American Studies
Demie Kurz, Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, Alice Paul Center
Ann Kuttner, History of Art
Andrew Lamas, Urban Studies
Robin Leidner, Sociology
Heather Love, English, Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies
Shannon Lundeen, Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, Alice Paul Center
Luz Marin, Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies
E. Ann Matter, Religious Studies
Robert Maxwell, History of Art
Jessica Mertz
Lisa Mitchell, South Asia Studies
Lydie Moudileno, French and Francophone Studies, Comparative Literature, Africana Studies
Anne Norton, Political Science, Comparative Literature
Josephine Park, Asian American Studies, English
Felicity Paxton
Sharrona Pearl, Annenberg School for Communication
Brian Peterson
Kevin M.F. Platt, Slavic Languages and Literatures, Comparative Literature
Christine Poggi, Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, Alice Paul Center, Art History, Comparative Literature, Romance Languages: Italian
Simon Richter, Germanic Languages and Literatures
Raili Roy, South Asia Studies Center
Paul K. Saint-Amour, English
Melissa Sanchez, English
Bob Schoenberg
Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, History of Art
Kaja Silverman, History of Art
Marilyn Sommers, School of Nursing, Center for Global Women’s Health
Deborah Thomas, Anthropology, Africana Studies, Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies
Salamishah Tillet, English
Peter Van Do
Barbra Mann Wall, School of Nursing
Chi-ming Yang, English

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