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Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging
Historians study the diversity of human experiences over time. We, the Department of History, recognize that many aspects of these experiences—race, class, gender, religion, and disability, among others—have particular historical significance because they have served as vectors for the exercise of and resistance to power, profoundly affecting people's daily lives and struggles for equality and justice. We are dedicated to evidence-based interpretations, while recognizing that historical evidence comes from multiple traditions and in many forms, and that its availability is the product of historical power relations.
The Department of History acknowledges that any legitimate attempt to understand the past thus requires deliberate corrective action in order to be hospitable to a diversity of perspectives. We acknowledge the many obstacles that challenge efforts to build an inclusive and supportive community, and we commit to overcoming such obstacles through purposeful action.
As part of our commitment to equity and justice, we aim to foster an environment free of barriers imposed on the basis of nationality, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, ability, or socio-economic background. We strive to establish spaces of mutual respect in our classrooms, offices, programs, and events. We are committed to enabling all students, faculty, and staff to enjoy the opportunities of Dartmouth's community while engaging in the productive exchange of historical interpretations. Recognizing that a diverse scholarly profession is our best defense against erasures of history, we are committed to recruiting, mentoring, and fostering the success of faculty, students, and staff from diverse backgrounds.
Dartmouth History Department Endorses AHA Statement Opposing Exclusion of LGBTQ+ History in Florida
The Dartmouth Department of History endorses the American Historical Association statement opposing exclusion of LGBTQ+ history in Florida:
AHA Statement Opposing Exclusion of LGBTQ+ History in Florida
The American Historical Association condemns the Florida Department of Education (FLDOE)'s recent ruling banning educators from "provid[ing] classroom instruction to students in grades 4 through 12 on sexual orientation or gender identity unless such instruction is . . . expressly required by state academic standards." No such mandates appear in current American or world history standards. To comply with this clause, teachers would have to exclude from their curriculum significant aspects of the nation's history.
Consider the implications of this radical legislation—radical in the sense of the reach of state government into local classrooms. Extending Florida's so-called "Don't Say Gay" law, the FLDOE would eliminate almost entirely the history of LGBTQ+ people from the Florida social studies curriculum. And to eliminate that history is to compel a distorted and incomplete teaching of the past. Neither law nor policy will change the fact that LGBTQ+ people have always existed. This erasure flattens the story of America's long Civil Rights Movement by ignoring the 1969 Stonewall Riots and the pathbreaking 2015 Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges. It bars students from examining cultures, religions, and societies—including Indigenous nations within Florida—that have embraced traditions of gender fluidity and homosexuality as meaningful categories of social identity and organization. Its effort to silence and segregate LGBTQ+ voices cannot but cripple our understanding of the richness and diversity of the human experience.
Historical aspects of "sexual orientation or gender identity" include heterosexual and cisgender peoples, too, and we wonder how the state might regard historical explorations of womanhood, masculinity, family relations, gender roles, even the marriages of John and Abigail Adams or Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. As the AHA explained in its 2021 Statement on LGBTQ+ History Curriculum, "Students who attend schools that include LGBTQ+ history will therefore not only be better informed citizens but will also be better prepared to engage with the complexities of everyday life." The new policy's distressing imprecision combined with threats of license revocation and termination for those who violate it will chill good history teaching in the state.
We ask that the FLDOE reconsider its vague and destructive policy of censorship, and instead encourage the teaching of accurate and inclusive histories of the United States and the world. These histories necessarily include LGBTQ+ people. Simple respect for the past in all its complex humanity demands that we give attention to these experiences.
Statement by the Dartmouth AAUP Supporting the Asia/America@Dartmouth Action Plan
The Dartmouth Department of History endorses the Asia/America@Dartmouth Action plan and the recent statement issued by the Dartmouth chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). This statement is as follows:
Statement by the Dartmouth AAUP supporting the Asia/America@Dartmouth Action Plan
The Dartmouth chapter of the AAUP condemns anti-Asian violence and stands in solidarity and grief with the Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander community at Dartmouth and beyond. In the past year, racist and white supremacist language used by U.S. leaders to describe COVID-19 has sparked a surge of anti-Asian violence. Yet as the March 16, 2021 murder of 8 people in Atlanta, including six Asian migrant women—Daoyou Feng, Hyun J. Grant, Suncha Kim, Soon C. Park, Xiaojie Tan, and Yong A. Yue—viscerally reminds us, these terrible acts are grounded in long and intersecting histories of racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and legal discrimination. They are also a consequence of over 100 years of U.S. colonial violence and militarization across the Asia-Pacific that has led the United States to brutally perpetuate and disregard Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander death and suffering. As a consequence, violence against Asians, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders, particularly women, is consistently overlooked, ignored, or rendered invisible.
Asian American activists, leaders, and scholars stand at the forefront of anti-racist efforts to dismantle both structural and interpersonal racism and white supremacy. In support of these efforts, the Dartmouth Chapter of the AAUP wholeheartedly supports the Asia/America@Dartmouth Action Plan and the establishment of an institutional home for Asian American studies in a stand-alone program and/or through collaboration with other units. For over thirty years, students, alumni, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty at Dartmouth have demanded a firm institutional commitment to Asian American studies on our campus. The college has almost no faculty lines in Asian American studies and older lines in this field have disappeared or gone unfilled. A 2006 report requested by COP and the Dean of the Faculty recommended the establishment of an Asian American Studies minor through dedicated faculty lines and expanded institutional resources; this did not come to fruition. Dartmouth's failures in this area—particularly when compared to peer institutions—highlight the urgent necessity of expanding the college's support of Asian American studies through faculty hires on the junior and senior level, postdoctoral fellowships, curricular expansions, and funding for events such as speaker series, working groups, and mentoring programs. The Asia/America@Dartmouth Action Plan presents a forward thinking and intersectional vision for increasing the visibility and representation of Asian Americans and Asian American studies at Dartmouth in the coming year and beyond.
April 2021
Dartmouth History Department Statement on the History of Racist Violence in the United States
We, the Faculty of the Dartmouth History Department, share the world-wide outrage that lethal police power ended George Floyd's life. We speak out now in solidarity with the Floyd family and with the loved ones of Breonna Taylor, another recent victim of senseless police violence. We are sickened by the vigilante killing of Ahmaud Arbery captured on video earlier this year. We believe that these and countless other acts of violence must be situated within the long American history of anti-Black racism. We draw attention to the succinct and powerful indictment of this shameful legacy circulated by the American Historical Association this week. This statement appears below in full.
In 1903, W.E.B. DuBois used his training as a historian to forecast that the problem of the twentieth century would be the problem of the color line. Now that we are well into the twenty-first century, we deplore the repeated disregard for Black lives that violates all norms of human decency. As historians, we echo and expand DuBois's condemnation of what the AHA terms the sordid history of racial violence in the United States. We heed DuBois's admonition to consider "the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men" in the broadest possible framework. We witness the horrific racialized violence across the globe that demands attention and compels condemnation. We are scandalized by the U.S. government's own deployment of xenophobic and violent racism at our borders and within our communities.
We take this opportunity to amplify two formulations crafted by our colleagues at the AHA. It is our shared conviction that "a constellation of structural injustices" exists that "are immune to the platitudes of anguish and concern that routinely follow instances of police-initiated violence against African Americans." Further, we align ourselves with the statement's conclusion, which reads: "We are killing our own people. Even as we mourn the death of George Floyd, we must confront this nation's past; history must inform our actions as we work to create a more just society."
The current crisis demands concrete actions. In supporting our students this month, we have directed them towards those efforts undertaken by the Consortium on Race, Migration, and Sexuality, whose powerful statement created a clearing house for immediate needs. As a community of historians, we resolve to develop by the fall of 2020 a set of specific objectives that will advance the actual achievement of racial justice. Details will be shared publicly. We will hold ourselves accountable for abiding by shared commitments. Our intent is to assure that this department is a leading institutional actor in the fostering of anti-racist scholarship and teaching.
June 2020