Statement in Support of Valued Members of Our Community
We write in the face of the recent barrage of executive orders targeting 2SLGBTQIA+ people, particularly trans and gender-expansive people, people with disabilities, immigrants, refugees, and undocumented people, and individuals and communities represented by and working on DEI initiatives, including Black, Indigenous, Latine, Arab/MENA, Asian, and other people of color, religious minority groups, and women.
We write in the face of myriad falsehoods and disinformation campaigns. The truth is that the overwhelming majority of immigrants, like native borns, are law-abiding, hardworking, community-minded, and benefit our country. The crime rates among undocumented immigrants are less than half as high as among U.S.-born citizens. The truth is that queer, transgender, and gender-expansive individuals have the same rights to their identities as any other groups. Racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination have not been eradicated and so we need DEI initiatives to help eliminate the barriers impeding opportunity for people of all genders, races, ethnicities, religions, sexual orientations, disabilities, and classes.
We write in the face of pressures that would silence these words, hinder our ability to recognize our colleagues, and censor our appreciation of our friends. We must speak plainly and openly, without evasion or pretense. Each and every member of our university community brings valued perspectives, skills, experiences, understandings, and strengths to our university. And yet, we are aware that many are experiencing a political and governmental onslaught—one that would deny them their pursuit of happiness, closet their experiences, and separate them from us, quarantined within invisible zones of erasure. All of these tactics serve to dehumanize these individuals and the communities of which they are a part.
To our many friends and colleagues in the staff, student, and faculty bodies who now find yourselves under renewed attack, we emphatically state here and now that you matter. Your value to our community is unquestioned and unshakable. You belong here, just as much as any of us belong here, and we unflinchingly proclaim the continued importance of including your perspectives in our diverse community. You are welcome here, regardless of politics, as cherished members of our university family.
To our university leaders, we call on you to resist current and planned federal actions that attempt to undo decades of anti-discrimination policy and civil rights laws meant to address systemic discrimination. The higher education community must not give in to these attacks or preemptively yield to them. Obeying in advance to authoritarian mandates is not a successful strategy. Instead, we should actively and vocally resist. The federal government has threatened to take funding hostage to politicize and redefine our community’s humanity—but principles can only be revealed when challenged. Now is not the time to surrender our values, because otherwise those values never truly existed. We urge our university leaders to remember that the University of Michigan was a leader on issues of diversity and inclusion as evidenced by former University President Bollinger taking the fight to defend affirmative action all the way to the Supreme Court.
To our university leaders, we call on you to be unapologetic in defense of the autonomy of higher education and the value of public education. To do otherwise would compromise UM’s efforts to realize its mission of “creating, communicating, preserving and applying knowledge, art, and academic values, and in developing leaders and citizens who will challenge the present and enrich the future.” Our commitment to the mission of higher education should not retreat under threat. We must not sacrifice our values or members of our community for federal funding.
Most importantly of all, we call on our university leaders to repeat with us, in the face of the barrage, that our vulnerable friends, colleagues, and peers matter and to commit to the following supports:
- Recognize the value that these important groups—2SLGBTQIA+ people, particularly trans and gender-expansive people, people with disabilities, immigrants, refugees, and undocumented people, and individuals and communities represented by and working on DEI initiatives, including Black, Indigenous, Latine, Arab/MENA, Asian, and other people of color, religious minority groups, and women—contribute to our campus and actively counter negative narratives stigmatizing and denigrating these peoples;
- Commit to, reaffirm, and defend the core values of the University of Michigan that include integrity, respect, inclusion, equity, diversity, and innovation;
- Confirm what support the Institution will give to students, staff, and faculty if they are taken by ICE from our workplace;
- Provide emergency funding to mitigate loss of federal funding, and transition staff positions funded by federal grant money to a permanent university funding source;
- Develop criteria for advancement and promotion that are not based on externally funded research and supports public scholarship and other non-academic forms for the dissemination of knowledge, and provide optional extensions to the tenure clock for faculty who encounter cuts to federal funding or disruptions because of executive orders;
- Protect faculty, whether tenured or not, by honoring the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, formulated by the American Association of Colleges and Universities and the American Association of University Professors; and
- Ensure that the University of Michigan Press remains committed to publishing research manuscripts by faculty who are positioned within targeted communities. The publishing of these materials is crucial for tenure.
Sincerely,
The Committee on Anti-Racism (CAR)
The Committee on the Economic and Social Well-Being of the Faculty (CESWF)
The Committee on Fairness, Equity, and Inclusion (CFEI)
The Committee on the Oversight of Administrative Action (COAA)
Faculty Representatives from the Queer and Trans Task Force
Endorsed by the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs (SACUA) on February 10, 2025