June 10, 2020

Dear Rensselaer Architecture Community,

The vitality and enduring impact of any civilized, virtuous society can be traced to its shared commitment to the ethical integrity of its governance, its steadfast and celebratory support for the broad diversity of its citizens, and above all, its compassionate and benevolent behavior in the face of intolerable acts of injustice and other atrocities that blight the social and political landscape around the world.

The mass protests that we’ve witnessed in response to the brutal killing of George Floyd have unleashed a spontaneous sense of outrage and anger around the world concerning the systemic racism and injustice that the Black community continues to endure as an oppressed people in the U.S.

Clearly something in the collective consciousness of the protestors acknowledges that, in the senseless murder of George Floyd, alongside those of Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and Ahmaud Arbery and countless others, this country has arrived at a tipping point where the moral character of a nation is under indictment, requiring a global rallying cry for radical change.

As we all know, the latest casualties of police brutality aimed at Blacks in America are not isolated incidents, but part of a larger pattern of institutionalized racist policies implemented by the dominant white ruling class since the inception of slavery. Aimed at suppressing the political influence and economic power of the Black community, the adoption of racially biased federal and state policies such as Jim Crow laws, poll taxes, the war on drugs, stop-and-frisk policing, and gerrymandering, to name just a few, have resulted over many years in the forced displacement and segregation of countless Black families, the mass incarceration of a disproportionate number of young Black men, ongoing voter suppression, and substantial wealth and income inequality that suppresses generations of Black men and women, causing undeniable harm to the unrealized potential of an entire community.

Set in stark contrast to the larger promise of our great American democracy—opportunity, freedom and prosperity for all—the deep racial and ethnic inequities that exist today are not only morally unjust to people of color but also disregard the basic humanistic principles underlying our democratic ideals. Comprehensive structural change that transforms our institutional policies and collective behavior throughout America is long overdue!

As James Baldwin observed in the 1960s concerning its corrosive power, “racism compromises where it does not corrupt, all the American efforts to build a better world—here, there, or anywhere.”

Rensselaer’s School of Architecture strives to serve as a catalyst for social change.

WE stand in solidarity with Black communities

WE join the call for equity and justice

WE demand broad systemic change in support of establishing a more fair and humane way of life for all of our citizens

WE advocate for greater understanding, compassion and empathy for those less fortunate and a renewed sense of hope and optimism in pursuit of substantial change

WE are committed as educators to creating an inclusive, respectful and culturally rich environment for all of our students and faculty

WE firmly believe that architecture at its core is a deeply social project with the capacity to transform, in the most profound sense, the lives of people and communities from all walks of life

WE are committed as life-long mentors to preparing our graduates to move out into the world as ethically responsible, multiculturally astute, and environmentally conscious global citizens.

In solidarity,

Dean Evan Douglis
Rensselaer School of Architecture

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