Oct 14, 2020
Dear Campus Community,
This fall, all UCI community members are encouraged to Take the Pledge as a first step in helping to shape a university culture where Black people can thrive. The Take the Pledge campaign builds on the UCI Black Thriving Initiative, which aims to respond to and recognize anti-Blackness as an existential threat to our mission as a great public research university. A Black thriving culture relies on all of us being accountable for confronting anti-Blackness where teaching and learning, discovery and creativity, and healing and serving take place at and on behalf of UCI.
The purpose of the Take the Pledge campaign is to mobilize the campus community and Anteater nation to make UCI the leading university for talented Black people to thrive as undergraduate and graduate students, medical students and residents, faculty, staff and alumni. The pledge, of course, is voluntary. By choosing to endorse the pledge’s four expectations, you can make a powerful positive influence on the environments in which we teach, learn, discover, create, heal, work and serve.
The pledge invites you to:
- Acknowledge the existence of anti-Blackness.
- Understand your relationship to anti-Black macro- and microaggressions.
- Recognize the uncredited labor that Black people expend to manage the daily effects of unconscious and conscious acts of bias, prejudice and bigotry.
- Confront anti-Blackness to build a thriving culture for Black people.
To learn more about the Take the Pledge campaign, please visit the Change the Culture action platform at the Black Thriving Initiative website here.
Douglas M. Haynes, Ph.D. (Pronouns: he/him/his)
Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
Chief Diversity Officer
Director, ADVANCE Program
Professor of History
