My dear SSW Community,
I have received and acknowledge the open letter written by Erin Matthews, M.S.W. ’05, and the Council for Students of Color Executive Board on June 5, 2020. I have read it closely and appreciate the importance of the issues raised.
Importantly, just yesterday President McCartney granted SSW an exception to the college-wide hiring freeze related to the pandemic. She has voiced her support for a SSW faculty search for the 2020-21 academic year. Over the next month I will be in contact with the Alumni Leadership Council and student leaders about building accountability into the faculty search process.
The faculty and I agree that recruiting and retaining Black faculty as resident faculty, instructors, field advisers and administrators are critical ways that our anti-racism commitment is put into action. Although we have been working on this goal, the bottom line is that not successfully recruiting any new Black faculty members highlights the work we need to do toward bringing greater anti-racism to our hiring and retention processes.
We realize that there is an urgent need for us to make real institutional changes that will allow us to be successful in hiring and retaining Black faculty. We also know and acknowledge that there are other areas across SSW that call for changes to truly deliver on our commitment. We have serious work ahead. We are committed to systemic change within SSW. Anti-racism work is about accountability and it is important that we receive feedback openly. We will communicate openly and regularly with you all as we identify next steps.
Many of our Black students and alums and other students and alums of color have given great labor already, in repeatedly sharing their perspectives and experiences about the ways in which racism manifests in our institution, and in making recommendations about how we could respond based on the struggles they endured. This information is central to us, but we also know that this labor is provided at a high cost to those who provide it.
We know there are others in our community who wish to share their concerns with us. I, along with Dawn Faucher, Director of Alumni Relations for the School for Social Work, will host a listening session on Wednesday, June 10, 2020 at 5 p.m. There will be no program for this session. We offer this session to our community as a way to listen deeply. We invite SSW community members to share their thoughts, opinions and/or experiences about SSW’s anti-racism commitment and work with us, the faculty and other administrators either through this listening session, by email or anonymously by using this form (link removed but available in email sent 6.9.2020). While all are welcome to participate, we will prioritize the voices and experiences of Black students and alumni. Instructions to join the session are below.
Join SSW Listening Session
Wednesday, June 10, 2020 at 5 p.m.
Click here to request link and password.
This will be the first of several listening sessions we will hold to ensure your voices can be heard as we continue our work. Additional sessions will be held midday ET on Thursday, June 18 and in the evening ET on June 23. Invitations to those sessions will follow.
We feel tremendous urgency to act and we also know it is important to hear what you have to say and to keep listening. This listening session replaces the previously scheduled event that would have paralleled the college’s Generating Justice event in response to the murders of George Floyd and other Black individuals. We rushed to create an event that addressed an institutional need to respond rather than to center the perspectives of Black students, faculty, staff and alumni. Honoring this feedback from student leaders who spoke to not holding the event as it had been conceived, we have chosen to cancel that event.
I want to thank each of you for your deep care and concern and for holding us accountable to our commitment.
Marianne Yoshioka, M.S.W., MBA, Ph.D.
Dean & Elizabeth Marting Treuhaft Professor
Co-Editor in Chief, Smith College Studies in Social Work
Smith College School for Social Work
Open Letter on 6/5/20
Dear President McCartney Dean Yoshioka:
The Smith community is now aware of the nearing departure of Dr. Joanne Corbin. Upon her departure, there will be no (zero) Black faculty members on the full-time resident faculty in the Smith College School for Social Work. For the past twenty years, Smith College School for Social Work has failed to hire any full-time Black faculty. Not one. Dean Jacobs, Mary Hall and Joyce Everett all retired as faculty members and Smith neglected its duty to replace these highly regarded Black professors with other Black resident faculty. This is unacceptable in an institution that prides itself on its anti-racism.
Since 1995, Smith College School for Social Work has highlighted an anti-racism pledge to “make explicit our responsibility to continuously learn about and disrupt systems of privilege, inequality and oppression that maintain white supremacy and reward, punish and silence because of socially assigned differences.” As it stands today white faculty make up 73% of the full-time resident faculty and Black faculty will be 0% as of July 2020. Having no Black tenured faculty perpetuates the systematic structure of white supremacy as documented in the racial makeup of resident faculty. As alumni and students, we will no longer pretend that the anti-racism commitment is honored through action. We see through hollow anti-racism statements that do not produce results. Students, especially students of color, come to Smith believing that an anti-racist academic environment will hold space for ideas to break down archaic racist structures. Will these conversations be directed by majority white professors who have never been under attack by systemic anti-Blackness?
We must demand that Smith tear down racist structures that keep Black faculty from gaining resident faculty positions. A new transparent search and hiring process must begin now. Black alumni and current students must co-chair this renaissance of the anti-racism pledge. We demand that a full-time, resident faculty member search to replace Dr. Corbin begin immediately. We demand more Black supervisors in the field. We demand more Black FFAs to be hired for the 2020-2021 academic year. If these demands cannot be met, we demand that Smith’s anti-racism commitment statement be removed from the program by the end of the summer.
As COVID-19 takes the lives of a disproportionate number of Black people in this country and as Black people continue to be assassinated in the streets, Smith College School for Social Work must show its commitment to those who endure economic and racial marginalization by acknowledging how school is part of the problem. We believe that everyone’s learning will suffer without this critical perspective, especially in these times of racial divisiveness in the country. It is also critical to have Black faculty because they provide a great deal of social support to Black students and they are an important point of reference to ALL students as they struggle to navigate the multiple relationship and educational complexities that are inherent in having the anti-racism commitment. We will be persistent in our calls for justice until it is served.
Erin Matthews, LCSW Alumni of Color Representative Alumni Leadership Council Field Faculty Advisor
Council for Students of Color Executive Board
Allegra Kartha A’20 Co-Field Representative
Chris Ferrari A’20 Faculty Liaison
Grace Wong A’21 Co-Representative to Student Org
Jamez Ahmad A’21 Co-Social Chair
Jordan Alam A’20 Representative to Curriculum
Latisha Rocke A’20 Treasurer
Lauren Adams A’20 Co-Field Representative
Lindsey Harrington A’20 Co-Representative to Student Org
Maricelis Abreu A’20 Co-Social Chair
Michelle Humbert A’20 Co-Social Chair & Co-Faculty Liaison
Naomi Johnson A’20 Historian & Interim Secretary
Selena Brazley A’20 General Meeting Coordinator
