Faculty action(s): via Philly.comhttp://dearmrpresidentelect.com

Dear Mr. President-Elect,

We are writing you from the University of Pennsylvania, your alma mater.
As you have probably heard a group of Black students in our 2020 class was assaulted on Friday by text messages, photos, and threats via a GroupMe chat to which they were added without their permission. As you have probably also heard, the attackers evoked your name numerous times in their onslaught, calling themselves “Daddy Trump.”
In their heinous chat, these attackers scheduled an event called “lynching” for the day of the GroupMe attack and also sent images documenting a lynching that took place in the US. In resurrecting our country’s long history of brutally murdering Black people and invoking our national legacy of white supremacy, the attackers followed a disturbing pattern that we, as a country, saw play itself out in the long weeks of the presidential campaign and in the harmful alliances that you built in your path to the election.
We remember from that recent past, as the Southern Poverty Law Center has documented, that you named far-right extremists as advisers to your campaign; that in your campaign rallies and from your Twitter feed, you repeatedly circulated and amplified racism, sexism, anti-semitism; that you gave press credentials to a white supremacist radio host; and that you refused to denounce the neo-Nazi David Duke’s endorsement of your campaign for many months. Additionally, you encouraged violence and hate repeatedly in campaign stops all across the country and assumed a permissive attitude toward identity-based intimidation and aggression.
It appears that these students were racially profiled and targeted for this vicious attack by individuals outside of our own institution. As the FBI, the Philadelphia Police Department, and the University of Pennsylvania administrators continue to investigate the origins of this hateful crime against our students, the President of the University, the Governor of the State of Pennsylvania, the mayor of the City of Philadelphia, and numerous student, staff, alumni, and faculty have publicly condemned these attacks.
You, Mr. President-Elect, Penn alum ’68, have been noticeably silent.
As your path demonstrates, Penn students are poised to be leaders in all aspects of social, technological, economic, and political life. The students who were viciously profiled and attacked are at the beginning of their college education. They and their families work hard and sacrifice much to provide this opportunity for them. They, like all Penn students, deserve the chance to learn in an environment that recognizes and values their ideas, their work and their contribution to our country.
What happened Friday irrevocably violated the safety and security of the students who were singled out and attacked. It also violated the safety and security of countless students on campus who are subject to the larger climate of identity-based fear and intimidation that your campaign specifically engendered and that, in the wake of your election, has grown ten-fold. Friday’s attack is one of several post-election incidents that have occurred on our campus and we are not alone in this experience. Students across the country are reporting verbal and physical assaults. It was reported over the weekend that a Black student at nearby Villanova University was knocked to the ground by three white men who charged at her yelling your name. As members of the Faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, we denounce the actions of those who viciously attacked our Black first-year students via social media on Friday. This particular attack was focused on Black students, but we are deeply concerned that other students are and will be subjected to similar assaults, both verbal and physical, given the dramatic increase in hateful speech and prejudice exhibited during the presidential campaign. We commit ourselves to supporting the many University of Pennsylvania students, staff, and faculty who are targeted because of ethnicity, religion, sexuality, gender, gender expression, disability, or because of their status as undocumented immigrants. We condemn the racist, xenophobic, sexist speech and behavior that you so consistently drew upon and also inspired during your campaign for President.
We implore you to immediately and publicly denounce Friday’s attack on our students.
Sincerely,

Gestures of Defiance

Saturday, November 19, 2016

University of Pennsylvania Faculty action: Dear Mr. President-Elect

Faculty action(s): via Philly.comhttp://dearmrpresidentelect.com

Dear Mr. President-Elect,

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