coe-staff: A Notice of Departure: An Open Letter to the COE Community

[Lillian Duran]

My heart hurts reading this and I am so sorry we failed you as a community, as colleagues, and as friends.
You have every right to use this tone and I admire your courage and honesty. We have to face our racism and our inadequate attempts at supporting our Black faculty and other faculty of Color. It is a great loss to our college and to the university to have you leave our community.  Please accept my apology as part of this community for not doing enough, for not paying attention, and for allowing you to suffer this way. I want to do better, I want to be braver, and I want to be a true ally.
I felt compelled to send this out as you deserve to be responded to, acknowledged, heard, and seen. You are not invisible and I am sorry.
I wish your family nothing but strength and support as you move to your next location and I truly hope you find a warm and welcoming community that recognizes your amazing contributions and that can provide the safe nest every family deserves to call home.
Please take care and thank you for challenging us and making us look hard in the mirror to understand how urgently we need to improve and face the racism is our systems. We are not antiracist until we can acknowledge the roles we play in supporting racism and white supremist ideologies. I personally am taking this as a pivotal learning experience and a call to action in the COE. We have to do better and be better. Losing you both is a profound loss to our college and you will both be missed.

From: <coe-staff-bounces at lists.uoregon.edu> on behalf of James Muruthi <muruthjr at uoregon.edu>
Date: Thursday, June 30, 2022 at 1:24 PM
To: "coe-staff at lists.uoregon.edu" <coe-staff at lists.uoregon.edu>, "cphs-faculty at lists.uoregon.edu" <cphs-faculty at lists.uoregon.edu>, "cphs-instructors at lists.uoregon.edu" <cphs-instructors at lists.uoregon.edu>, Lisa Fortin <lfortin at uoregon.edu>
Cc: Yvette Alex-Assensoh <yalex at uoregon.edu>, Provost <provost at uoregon.edu>
Subject: coe-staff: A Notice of Departure: An Open Letter to the COE Community

Hello COE Community,

We are writing this email to communicate that we will be leaving the University of Oregon at the end of this summer. We have accepted job offers elsewhere and are enthusiastic about the opportunities that await. We have enjoyed working with our colleagues, and the students have been a great joy to teach and mentor. And, of course, we all know that the COE does not function without the stellar skills and efforts of the COE staff. Thank you all.

As we leave, many people will reasonably ask why. Ultimately, we have decided that Oregon is not a place we want to live and work. The White Utopia and racist history of Oregon still hold a pungent stench in the way people do their business here. And quite honestly, the university is not immune to the White supremacy culture. For example, James was a direct target of racism when he received racist (xenophobic and homophobic) emails (see example attached) in response to his participant recruiting materials for LGBTQ and caregiving studies. Another case included racist chants yelled at our family as we looked for housing - our first week in Oregon. Our friends with school-age children express that their children are undergoing chronic racially related bullying and sidelining under the watch of teachers. Allies speak cliche social justice language without knowing the core of diversity issues while forcing their allyship on groups that do not deem them as such. The list could go on.

While the characteristics of Oregon cannot be controlled, the university and the COE (particularly) can do better to address the needs of racially diverse faculty. For example, leveraging the recent openness to online learning can ensure Black faculty can still work for the university while living in more racially welcoming environments. For instance, we must express our disappointment in the lackluster efforts to work with us to explore the off-site route. Our interpretation of the response from university leadership was that our feelings and experiences did not matter as long as the students who came in did not feel like the university environment was not conducive for Black professors who worked off-site.

We decided to use this tone of voice as the last act of activism for other racially diverse faculty and staff (and students) who remain at the COE or the ones that will join. We believe that this honest expression of our stories opens a window into the lived experiences of racially diverse faculty (staff and students) and encourages more profound empathy and activism across the board. Best of luck to you all.

With Gratitude,

Drs. James & Bertranna Muruthi
______________________
James R. Muruthi, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
College of Education | University of Oregon
Office: 350 HEDCO
Phone: 541-346-2344
Email: muruthjr at uoregon.edu




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