Diversity
Our department has adopted core values that summarize our committment to diversity and inclusion. We seek to uphold these values throughout our work.
Department Diversity Efforts
Our department has adopted core values that summarize our committment to diversity and inclusion. We seek to uphold these values throughout our work.
Statement of Core Values
The Department of English at Kansas State University affirms our core values of diversity, social justice, critical thinking, creativity, and empathy. We honor Kansas's history as an abolitionist state and Kansas State University's legacy as a land grant institution that was, from its first class, coeducational and racially integrated. We stand for justice and against misogyny, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, Islamophobia, transphobia, ableism, and the ongoing dispossession of Indigenous peoples. We support efforts to reverse human-caused climate change, and we oppose other human threats to the planet.
We affirm the presence on campus of people from diverse backgrounds and promise to protect and to serve as a resource for any who feel targeted by hate speech and acts. We stand with the Modern Language Association and allied organizations in our commitment to "free inquiry and academic freedom for all, unimpeded by acts of prejudice and hate." Free inquiry and inclusive dialogue require an environment in which all feel safe and welcome. Therefore, we condemn all forms of harassment and prejudice that contribute to a climate of fear and suspicion in our community.
(Approved 12/18/16; updated and approved 12/11/19 to include climate.)
Land Acknowledgment
We acknowledge that our university is located on and continues to benefit from ancestral lands that were unwillingly ceded by the Kanza, now the Kaw Nation of Oklahoma, particularly in the treaties of 1825 and 1846. Today, Kansas is home to four federally recognized Indigenous nations: the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, the Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas, the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska, and the Sac and Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas and Nebraska.
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