Marxe Diversity Committee Statement

June 6, 2020

The Marxe School Diversity Committee has written a statement, below, that is part condemnation of racism, part solidarity with Black communities, and part promise and call to action for our committee, our school and our field.  We hope the entire Baruch Community will join us in our efforts, and hold us to our task.  We look forward to coordinating with the Diversity Committees across the college to amplify each others’ work and make us more effective at our tasks.

Respectfully,  Cristina Balboa, Marxe School Diversity Committee Chair

Statement of Solidarity and Purpose from the Marxe School Diversity Committee

June 5, 2020

The Diversity Committee of the Austin W. Marxe School of Baruch College of the City University of New York vehemently condemns the individual, institutional, and systemic racism that permeates our communities and nation and, most recently, manifested itself in the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Aubrey. As New Yorkers, we cannot forget the deaths of Eric Garner and CUNY student Kalief Browder, among the long and tragic list of Black victims of racist and structural violence in our own city. As faculty and staff members in a school of public and international affairs, we will not ignore the historical policies that have institutionalized anti-Black discrimination and reproduced racism, creating a legacy of favoring some while disadvantaging and endangering others. We mourn the lives of so many African American people at the hands of a system whose design puts their lives in danger and by the individuals within the system who carry out both covert and explicit heinous acts of racial violence with impunity.

We salute the bravery of the thousands of protesters who are risking their health during a pandemic to expose how Black communities continually suffer violence under unjust and racist policies. We support you, and we stand with you because– like the Congressman John Lewis observed: “Sometimes you have to get in trouble – good trouble, necessary trouble – to make a way out of no way.” Protests are essential to create change. To stand with you means we acknowledge the importance of an integrated and interconnected society of which we are all a valued part. Your pain is our pain. Your protest is our protest.

The Marxe School is part of the largest urban university system in the United States, recognized for its leadership in social mobility and its focus on transformative civic engagement and public service. It is our duty to equip generations of students to serve as leaders in our communities, cities, states, nation, and across the globe. Now is a critical time when the tools from our coursework must be used in service of dismantling the racist policies currently in place and enacting more equitable and anti-racist policies that can reimagine and transform our institutions. The pursuit of racial justice and anti-racist practice has a place in every field that our students and alumni enter. As the faculty and staff of Marxe, we commit to work with our students to:

1. Understand the policies, policy processes, and budgets of our city, state, and national governments to have the ability to eradicate or defund racist structures.
2. Build communication skills to create, implement, and advocate for strategies that support just, anti-racist policies and leaders who promote them.
3. Explore how our management and leadership practices produce or hinder anti-racist organizations so that we may build more equitable institutions.
4. Analyze the ethical and moral dimensions of society’s complex problems to aid in the creation of solutions that address potential unforeseen or ignored impacts and implications to marginalized communities and people of color.
5. Remember that the purpose of public and international affairs is service – to our local communities, to historically disadvantaged communities, and to the global community.

No single group can dismantle racist policies or shift an oppressive culture alone. These changes require many of us to examine and acknowledge our privilege, our biases whether conscious or unconscious, to relinquish the power our privilege gives us, to identify and unwind the ways we uphold white dominant culture, to embrace multiple perspectives without exclusion, to communicate across difference, and to strike down destructive policies while envisioning and crafting more just ones. Our responsibility as the school’s Diversity Committee is to offer resources and leadership to our community on these issues, and to push our school to be more equitable in its hiring and promotion, its pedagogy, and its service work. We must lead by example.

As the Marxe School’s Diversity Committee, we acknowledge that we are legally and morally responsible to do more, given our mandate, to eliminate overt and subtle institutional biases. We commit to redoubling our efforts:

(1) to increase tenure track faculty and staff diversity at the Marxe School, with a focus on recruiting and retaining historically underrepresented minorities – and particularly Black people – in decision-making positions;

(2) to remove barriers to entry for students of color, so we can truly prepare the next generation of change agents;

(3) to develop and implement curricula grounded in principles of racial equity; and

(4) to actively work with marginalized and historically underrepresented minority groups, in New York City and beyond, to achieve social justice and equal justice under the law.

We will approach this work unapologetically as the status quo in academia is no longer acceptable. We invite our broader community at Marxe to join us in this endeavor.

The Marxe School Diversity Committee:

Cristina M. Balboa, Associate Professor and Chair Hilary Botein, Associate Professor
Neil Hernandez, Assistant Professor
Sonia Jarvis, Distinguished Lecturer
Ideen Riahi, Assistant Professor
Michael Seltzer, Distinguished Lecturer
Melissa Sultana, Associate Director of Assessment
Nancy Aries, Professor and ad-hoc Diversity Committee Member
Jeremy N. Block, PhD, MPP – Adjunct Professor and ad-hoc Diversity Committee Member
Anna D’Souza, Associate Professor and ad-hoc Diversity Committee Member
Leora M. Johnson, Associate Director of Graduate Admissions and Enrollment Services and ad-hoc Diversity Committee Member
Rahul Pathak, Assistant Professor and ad-hoc Diversity Committee Member

This following members of the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs also support this statement:

Christopher J. Adams, Adjunct Associate Professor
Jonathan Alarcon, IT Associate Director of Technology Services
Enrique Desmond Arias, Marxe Chair of Western Hemisphere Affairs
Deborah Balk, Professor
Daniel A. Battista, Adjunct Lecturer
Neil Bennett, Professor
William Casey Boland, Assistant Professor
Dr. Liza Ann Bolitzer, Substitute Line, Assistant Professor
Kelly Brosnan, Vice President, MPA Club
Howard Buxbaum, Adjunct Lecturer
Bin Chen, Associate Professor
Hector R. Cordero-Guzman, Professor
Els de Graauw, Associate Professor
Angelina Delgado, Senior Director of Finance and Administration
Patria de Lancer Julnes, Associate Dean
Jonathan Engel, Professor
Jason M Epstein, Deputy Director of Marketing and Communications
Sandra X. Fajardo, Director of Academic Advisement
Michael Feller, Distinguished Lecturer
Cheryl Garber, Assistant to the Associate Dean of Academic Programs
Diane M Gibson, Associate Professor
Jessica Greene, Professor & Luciano Chair of Health Care Policy
Jose Guevara, Data Analyst
Suzanne Grossman, Deputy Director of Career Services and Alumni Relations
Young Hah, Director of Graduate Admissions and Enrollment Services
Frank W. Heiland, Associate Professor
Chloe Hoang, Executive Assistant to the Marxe Dean
James D. Howell, Computing Director, CUNY Institute for Demographic Research
Andrea Hundley, Coordinator Coordinator of Academic Operations and Global Initiatives
Leora M. Johnson, Associate Director of Graduate Admissions and Enrollment Services
Bryan Jones, Assistant Professor
Judith Kafka, Associate Professor and BSPA Faculty Director
Sanders Korenman, Professor
Karl Kronebusch, Associate Professor
Diana Lazov, Assistant Director of Academic Operations
Asli Leblebicioglu, Marxe Chair in International Economics and Associate Professor
Tiffany Lewis, Assistant Professor
Zachariah Mampilly, Marxe Chair of International Affairs
Michael T. Marino, Director of Operations and Research
Jerry Mitchell, Professor
Jessica Njoya, Associate Director of Budget and Special Projects
Leticia Nunez, Administrative Specialist, Office of Finance and Administration
Alexis Perrotta, Lecturer
Maria Xique Ramirez, BSPA Advisor
Dahlia Remler, Professor
Carla Anne Robbins, Clinical Professor
Della Saju, Assistant Director of Academic Programs
Maureen Samedy, Associate Director of Academic Advising
Sherley A. Santell, Assistant Director of Graduate Admissions
Nigel Sizer Ph.D., Adjunct Assistant Professor
Marny Smith, Assistant Director, Marxe Graduate Career Services
Robert Smith, Professor
Ryan A. Smith, Associate Professor
Linda Shatzer, Adjunct Professor
Ronald Spalter, Adjunct clinical Lecturer
Zin Mar Thu, Sr. Marxe Graduate Admissions and Recruitment Coordinator
Elaine Truong, Assistant Director of Academic Advisement
Rubia R. Valente, PhD, Assistant Professor
Don Waisanen, Associate Professor
Dan Williams, Professor