Black lives matter.
The Scholars’ Lab declares our opposition to the racist terror and state-sanctioned violence that shape the lives of Black people and other people of color in the United States. We share the sorrow and rage of our community and stand in solidarity with protests against police brutality. This statement affirms our commitment to anti-racist practice and our pledge to use our skills and resources to advance the production of knowledge for social justice1.
We are here for our Black colleagues, students, and neighbors. We will continue to listen, promote, and support work that affirms Black lives. We are here for you.
We acknowledge that libraries have never been neutral2. We are indebted to the many practitioners who work toward improving racial justice in and of libraries, and we commit to continuing to question traditions, policies, practices that do harm to Black and Brown community members.
We recommit to doing our best to educate ourselves, to listen quietly, to amplify and cite, and most of all to speak up and act. Scholarly work is a community endeavour that cannot—and should not—exist without the care for others that builds a future where all can learn, discover, and teach for everyone’s good. We strive to make ours a community that supports all who recognize our shared humanity, and believe that sometimes means calling out, in, or removing those who make our space unsafe for people of color.
Footnotes:
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We adapted the first paragraph’s language from the Mina Rees Library of the CUNY Graduate Center’s open-source template, which is CC BY 4.0 International and meant to help others, like us, get started examining and recommitting to our values. ↩
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See, for example, UNC Vice Provost for University Libraries and University Librarian Elaine L. Westbrooks “The University Libraries’ Role in Reckoning with Systemic Racism and Oppression”. ↩