Dear Gender and Women’s Studies community,
Given the outcome of the recent election, much about the future is uncertain. But two things are crystal clear—the value of feminist scholarship and the importance of an institutional home where feminist research is nurtured and taught. Every day the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies proves its worth. Our former students draw on their education as they shape policy, treat patients, organize communities, report news, advocate for the most marginalized, and raise the next generation. Our current students read, write, and research as if their rights are at stake. They ask questions, pose solutions, lead protests, and demand change. Our instructors challenge assumptions, guide conversations, and offer alternatives. They encourage, support, and inspire. Our faculty tell stories, analyze pasts, develop principles, reveal oppression, and imagine possibilities. We are, collectively and as individuals, making a difference.
At moments like this, higher education and the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies are indispensable. Our GWS community—alums, students, instructors, emeriti, staff, and faculty—understand the cost of emboldened white supremacy, racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, ableism and other forms of hatred and oppression that frame some lives as less than. Although members of our community don’t share an identical vision for a just world, we understand that injustice requires action. As the situation warrants, we will dig deep and we will rise up, we will persist and resist. Our rights, our lives, our futures, depend on it.
Forward, now more than ever.
Judith Houck
Chair, Gender and Women’s Studies