Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging in the MSU College of Music

This letter was e-mailed to all College of Music students on June 2, 2020.

Dear College of Music Students,

We write to you with tremendous sadness as well as with outrage. This past weekend of brutality and murder in Minnesota has brought forward yet again, the truth that there is deep and pervasive racism throughout American society that deeply stains our nation. The horrors of unspeakable violence, which has ended the lives of Black Americans most recently including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, is an ongoing tragedy that we must work together to overcome. Anguish and anger has been expressed at home and across the country, from Grand Rapids, Lansing, and Detroit to Seattle, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York City. We feel this anguish and anger on the MSU campus as well.

We support the commentary provided by President Stanley and Interim Provost Sullivan who have spoken out about these atrocities with a commitment to acknowledge inequality on our campus with a pledge to address issues “well beyond words.” This surely extends to the MSU College of Music community and underscores our commitment and need to make decisions and take actions that move issues of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging forward in meaningful ways.

We join in solidarity with our Black and Brown students, staff, and faculty in the College of Music. We acknowledge the responsibility and the imperative to continue listening, learning, and taking action every day with the goals of fostering a greater sense of community, creating a more effective and equitable learning community, and extinguishing racism in our midst. We need to listen even more carefully to those members of our community whose experiences and perspectives are often so very different from those whose life experience has been grounded in white privilege. We must work together to end this senseless violence and to affirm that Black Lives Matter.

In this context, we will be returning to campus this fall in the midst of a pandemic that has created challenges to the ways in which we live, communicate, and make and learn about music. Plans are in place to welcome you and to provide a safe and productive Fall Semester. Our efforts to more effectively build an inclusive community will be a high priority as we move forward. You will be hearing further from us later in the summer with specific plans.
We wish you a safe, healthy and productive summer.

Sincerely,

James Forger
Dean

Rodney T. Whitaker
University Distinguished Professor
College of Music Director, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging

This list was compiled from multiple individuals engaged in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging efforts in the College of Music. These works are intended to be read in the order presented here and may be updated from time to time.

 

White Fragility
Robin Diangelo

 

 

 

I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness
Austin Channing Brown

 

 

 

Stamped from the Beginning
Ibram X Kendi

 

 

 

A People’s History of the United States
Howard Zinn
“Young people’s” version available for elementary and middle school readers.

 

The Warmth of Other Suns
Isabel Wilkerson

 

 

 

The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin

 

 

 

Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates

 

 

 

Democracy in Black
Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.

 

 

 

White Rage
Carol Anderson

Students, faculty and staff of the MSU College of Music are invited to participate in workshops and listenting sessions to learn more about the University’s initiative to create a more diverse and inclusive teaching and learning environment.

Workshops

Examining Implicit Bias. A series of workshops designed to examine implicit bias and begin the work of interrupting personal and embedded biases within our culture.

Listening Sessions

Exploring Diversity. Join us, offer your perspective, and listen to others as together we discover the many ways we can build unity and understanding through music, culture, and beyond.

Working groups led by students, staff and faculty have devised strategies for listening and learning sessions that are designed to build upon MSU’s overarching vision of a diverse and inclusive university.

Joint Studios

A master class featuring artists from various cultural backgrounds and disciplines bringing together Jazz and Classical studios.

DEIB committee members are chosen through the same process as all other committees in the college using nomination and voting procedures. The original committee previously provided the college with a list of recommendations.

See Faculty Governance