by The Faculty
We have initiated a critical examination of our School’s culture, curriculum, and governance.
We commit to changes that enable us to build an anti-racist, multicultural, and equitable future. We recognize that our silence has made us complicit with the agents of systemic inequality in our society and we apologize for this role that the school of architecture has played within the discipline. We were wrong and we are sorry. To this end, we promise our time, knowledge, resources, and eagerness to learn towards a community-wide goal of universal inclusion and equity.
We believe that architecture, our discipline and our profession, is uniquely positioned to nurture diverse communities and to enhance quality of life and livelihood. Historically our profession has not told the stories of all individuals equally. Attitudes and working methods are shaped in school, and our work contributes to society’s future. Knowing this, we must actively challenge existing structural biases, including racism, sexism, heterosexism, ageism, religious intolerance, xenophobia, and colonialism.
We commit to opening and maintaining time to listen and record the pain of our past so that we might learn and incorporate its lessons into our future plans. We also commit to sharing those stories and maintaining a culture of openness, transparency, mutual respect, listening, and lifelong learning in the years to come.
We commit to curricular change to address systemic failures, recognize western biases and promote cross-cultural communication so that faculty, students and the profession are able to better understand architecture as a global, human endeavor and not the purview of a privileged few.
We commit to amplifying minority voices. We must establish and enable new structures for participation and expression that provide opportunity for all. We commit to dismantling structures, policies, and practices that prevent inclusive decision making and power sharing. We must learn from both the scholarship and lived experiences of our diverse colleagues, students, alumni, and citizen experts.
As architects, we are committed to the health, safety, and welfare of all and as educators, we commit to the idea that diversity, equity, and inclusion are not peripheral to this long-held professional tenet, but are central to it. Our work is to refocus and make this commitment a lived reality.
We, the faculty, unite in our commitment to affect positive change in all our capacity. Only when we have organized ourselves to promote and maintain equity within our discipline, can we realize the vast potential of our community. With this high goal, we invite your continued participation. We see you. We hear you.
Jason Alread, Hassan Azad, Vandana Baweja, Stephen Belton, Stephen Bender, Frank Bosworth, Jeffrey Carney, Nancy Clark, Donna Cohen, Sarah Gamble, Martin Gold, Steve Grant, Charlie Hailey, Adeline Hofer, Lee-Su Huang, Lisa Huang, Sujin Kim, Martha Kohen, John Maze, Mark McGlothlin, Judi Shade Monk, Michael Montoya, Nawari, Nawari, Vernelle Noel, Alfonso Perez-Mendez, Nic Rabinowitz, Ryan Sharston, Peter Sprowls, Bradley Walters, Albertus Wang, William Zajac, Hui Zou, PhD.