This site will serve as a collection of resources and readings, as well as a repository for actions past, present, and future to help arm us intellectually, morally and strategically against the hate groups organizing against and on our campus. This is a work in progress, like the fight itself. There is no place for hate on our campus. Together we can collect the best strategies, teaching tools, and information about events going on on campus.
The site is being developed by the Department of English at Ohio State, but we welcome input and suggestions from all members of the community. If others are interested, we are happy to share “ownership” of this resource far and wide. We are all in this together.
The following statement was send by the Department to its undergraduate majors and graduat student listservs on the week of 11/4/19:
Flyers have appeared in the English Department and other departments at Ohio State and elsewhere, containing simple words on white sheets of paper: “It’s ok to be white,” “It’s ok to be Christian,” “Islam Is Right About Women.” The first two statements may look innocuous on the surface, but, taken together, the flyers’ purpose is to make white supremacist ideas regarding race, religion, and patriarchy sound like common sense. Implying that whites, Christians, and heterosexual men are under attack, they target places like universities for promoting ideas of social justice and for challenging various forms of social oppression.
The English Department is committed to teaching and research that examines past and present social differences and hierarchies. This commitment is reflected in the English major’s Diversity requirement and opportunities for all students to investigate the construction of historical inequalities around race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexuality, religion, class, and disability. We hope that these teaching and research initiatives translate into community-building practices that rest on mutual respect, support, and solidarity across differences.
We write to assure those in our midst who feel attacked by these flyers—people of color, immigrants, international students, non-Christians (especially Muslims and Jews), and women—that the English Department rejects the politics of white supremacy and its attendant ideologies of xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism. We will always seek to create a climate that reduces alienation and exclusion for the most vulnerable among us, and that gives all of us the tools to combat ideas and rhetoric that divide us.
Announcements of updates to the website will be posted on twitter @NohateOsu. There is also a listserv for those interested in discussion and strategizing about these issues; subscribe at https://lists.osu.edu/mailman/listinfo/nohateosu
Please send any questions or concerns about the site to gardner.236@osu.edu. To suggest resources to be included, please use our suggestion form below.