DIVERSITY, EQUITY, INCLUSION, AND BELONGING
Our mission:
We build on our strengths and address our weaknesses as a department to continuously enhance a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) for all our students, faculty, and staff. We understand diversity to be dynamic, constituted by persons from a growing array of backgrounds, cultures, identities and experiences; equity as the process of ensuring that all our programs and procedures are impartial, fair and provide equal possible outcomes for every individual; inclusion as embracing differences and offering respect in words and actions for all people. The goal of DEI is to make everyone feel that they belong and are welcome.
As a department devoted to promoting the understanding of and engagement with the rich diversity of the languages, literatures, and cultures of East Asia, we embrace DEI as our core values. We acknowledge and are deeply disturbed by the history and ongoing reality of systems of injustice in the United States and around the world and the structural role that institutions of higher learning play in them. We take a stand against all forms of discrimination based on race, gender, gender identity or expression, sex, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, immigration status, religion, disability, age, economic class, and veteran status, recognizing that they often intersect to create systems of biases.
We strive to make our learning and working environment equitable, accessible and inclusive for all who work and study in our department. To this end, we are committed to opening up spaces for dialogue, deep listening, learning, reflection, and actions as we advance the department’s mission to educate on the languages, literatures, and cultures of East Asia. Through various initiatives and activities, our goal is to support and encourage all members of our department to practice DEI in our daily teaching, research, administrative work, and social interactions. We cannot do this work alone and need everyone’s participation.
For the university’s anti-discrimination policy, see: https://www.osu.edu/assets/uploads/policy110-non-discrimination-notice.pdf.
What we are currently working on:
- DEI Pedagogy Workshop Series: We held the first workshop in spring 2021 and have been organizing one or two workshops per year since then (see below for the programs of past workshops).
- DEALL Graduate Student Support Program: we are starting this program to partner an experienced graduate student (as a mentor) and a new graduate student (as a mentee) to foster support among our graduate students.
- DEALL Undergraduate Diversity Award: we launched this award in fall 2022 and have been holding this award twice a year, once in the fall and once in the spring.
- DEALL Student Organization: we are working with the chair of the department’s undergraduate studies committee to set up the DEALL Student Organization.
- Departmental social events
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Statement to condemn racism toward our Asian, Asian American and Pacific Islander communities
As scholars of East Asian languages and literatures, as colleagues, friends, neighbors, and family of Asian and/or Asian and Pacific Islander Americans, and as Asian identifying individuals ourselves, the faculty of the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures condemns in the strongest possible terms the racist violence toward Asian, Asian American and Pacific Islander individuals and communities, which has witnessed an unfortunate and dangerous rise recently in the United States. Racism is a destructive force that tears away the fabric of our shared humanity and our bond as a community. Just as we do not tolerate any forms of racism or discrimination against any groups of people, we do not tolerate any forms of racism against Asians, Asian Americans or Pacific Islanders, may it be in speech, action, or attitude. We are determined more than ever to bring the perspectives of East Asia to Ohio State, Ohio, and the country to expand our collective understanding and to train our students to navigate the interconnected world, both locally and globally, through our research and teaching of East Asian languages and literatures. We stand in solidarity with our Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander communities and will take individual and departmental action to report instances of Anti-Asian racism on campus.