Barnard Council on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Newsletter
Welcome from Ariana González Stokas, VP for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Dear Barnard Community:
Since I began working at Barnard in July, I have begun to understand its boldness, its brilliance, and its paradoxes. The paradoxes of Barnard, when placed in juxtaposition, may tell us something about the nature of the work of inclusion and equity here. I say here, because for me, the work of transforming institutions to serve diverse groups, particularly those historically underrepresented in higher education, is localized, relational, and complex. Contradictions abound in the work of equity and inclusion. What we do with these contradictions, what they can teach us about the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, is core to the work of DEI at a place such as Barnard — a college whose founding reminds us that higher education is a site of the collective
negotiation and interrogation of contradictions, values, beliefs, attitudes, and ideas. It is also a site of collective creation. What survives, flourishes, and is invented here is both because of and in spite of its conditions. Barnard is a place that has aimed at inclusion, enacted it, sometimes succeeded, and sometimes fallen short. It was, as most of you may know, founded through the insistence of a small group of highly resourced white women in the mid-1800s. Annie Nathan Meyer, the primary force behind the creation of Barnard, was not accorded the recognition of founder likely due to the anti-Semitism of the time; Barnard now holds a dual-degree option with the Jewish Theological Seminary. Barnard was permitted existence by a group of highly resourced white men. One of
those men, Frederick A.P. Barnard, advocated for coeducation and access to education for deaf children, was deaf himself, owned several enslaved people during his life, and was a self-proclaimed abolitionist. This is a school that enacted racial, socioeconomic, and ethnic quotas yet became a place to deepen feminist scholarship, intersectional theory, and social activism. It is a place where Malcolm X gave his final speech and Ntozake Shange gifted her personal papers, where Grace Lee Boggs began her philosophical and activist education and Dean Spade began his brilliant career defending the rights of transgender people. I want to emphasize here that
inclusion is not an assimilative force but rather a continual process of tinkering, transforming or eliminating systems, beliefs, and values that were designed with a narrow category of human experience in mind. This institution has been co-created the past 130 years through advocacy, resistance, refusal, and powerful collaborations across diverse groups. Barnard has been working on and with diversity, inclusion, and equity in a variety of forms since its founding and continues to do so with rigorous thoughtfulness in many corners of the institution. This work, as many of you know well, here or any place, is not the work of one or a few. The work of shifting beliefs, attitudes, values, and perceptions that may reproduce oppression or
foster marginalization, no matter how inadvertent, is the work of many, and it is the work of many to uplift those areas deeply committed to this work already. And in that spirit, I look forward to working with you all this upcoming year, and I invite you to join me in a community weaving event on Monday, Sept. 16, 11 a.m. – 3 p.m., in Barnard Hall to activate this collective and interconnected work. All the best,
Ariana González Stokas
In August, Barnard hosted Let’s Get Ready, an organization that helps first-generation students and students from low-income backgrounds get into and graduate from college. As one component of this full-day college transition event, Grad Bag provided free bedding and other dorm essentials to hundreds of local low-income students who were about to head off to college. In addition, this September, Barnard Sustainability, the Dean of Studies Office, and the Office of Opportunity Programs collaborated with Grad Bag to provide free bedding and dorm essentials to first-generation and low-income Barnard students. This effort is a great institutional example of how collaboration can lead to greater inclusion and equity for Barnard students and in higher education beyond the gates.
Important DatesMonday, Sept. 16, 11 a.m. - 3 p.m.
DEI@ Barnard Open House
Weaving Together: Activate interconnection
Barnard Hall Lobby The Weaving Together event at Barnard will give our community a chance to celebrate being together for a new academic year, get to know the new VPDEI, and think about the interconnected nature of our campus through the process of weaving with a group of professional weavers from Weaving Hand, a Brooklyn-based weaving studio and healing arts center. In an age where we are so connected virtually, it is important to build community around something physical. We invite people to bring their own materials, allowing the diversity of the materials to become a reflection of the community. Stay for three hours or for five minutes. Monday, Sept. 23
Council for DEI student application deadline Are you a student committed to the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion? Do you want to contribute to this work @ Barnard? Consider joining the council! Fill out this form to apply. Thursday, October 17
Annual Fall Community Outing Connect and explore Riverside Park and our local greenmarket on October 17, 3:30 – 5:30 p.m. All are welcome from the Barnard community, including students, faculty, and staff. The walk will be gentle; all paths are paved and accessible. The event is co-sponsored by Barnard Sustainability, the Health Services Division, and the Council on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. If you are interested in attending, please sign up here.
From the ArchivesInstitutional history, what it archives and what it leaves only a trace of, is core to the work of DEI. Knowing a place — what it has been, is, and believes itself to be — can help detect locations of transformative action. Barnard is fortunate to have wonderful archives, archivists, and students. This edition, we feature the work of Corinth Jackson ’20, who, while working as a digital humanities fellow this summer, created Black @ Barnard, a digital humanities and archival project that reveals the historical legacies of the college in relation to its black
students and black student life. It is also a project that strives to create more dialogue about Barnard’s history of racial exclusion and to provide accessible data for students, researchers, faculty, and members of the community.
Project reflection by Corinth Jackson ’20I became interested in this topic after doing archival research about Barnard’s historical social and spatial ties to colonial history through archival data collection. Through this, I was able to understand that because Barnard was established as a reaction to Columbia University’s policy of not allowing women equal access to education, the college’s sole mission at that time was to provide education to women who could not get a degree from the university or be seen as an elite intellectual. Barnard was built and curated to
educate white women because they were previously excluded from getting a degree from the university. This reaction made the founders believe that they were establishing an institution that would be inclusive, but in reality, they overlooked students who had no access. Black @ Barnard is focused on what it means to be in a space that was not crafted for the black identity. The fact that the college was not built for black students is not shocking or new information, given that the college was founded in 1889, and equal access did not then include race and other marginalized identities. Black @ Barnard is attempting to give affirmation to the students who have navigated the physical and social barriers of this institution.
A new campuswide health and wellness initiative — Feel Well, Do Well @ Barnard — will launch this fall. As an institutional priority, this initiative aims to interweave well-being with existing programs, practices, and campus culture. The approach of the initiative is exemplified by its secondary tagline, "Your wellness, your way." Wellness practices are deeply connected to culture, identity, and access. A broad range of ways our community can practice and model being well exists, and through this initiative we hope to help you practice your wellness, your way, at
Barnard. DEI @ Barnard is committed to an intersectional approach to well-being to support underrepresented identities to stay resilient in the face of conditions caused by societal and institutional "isms" and to connect across differences in ways that are authentic, honest, fair, caring, and compassionate.
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