by Dena Zaldúa, Operations Manager, CSWS

Last fall, we were still reeling from the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on the University of Virginia campus when the school year began. Few of us in the CSWS family could believe this was really happening. If only that had been our nadir. During the 2017-18 academic year, we have seen children separated from their parents at the border and incarcerated in cages. 

It is hard to remain hopeful in the face of such inhumanity. But at CSWS, we know this struggle—the collective struggle for right over might, for justice over hate, light over dark, the rebellion over the empire—was never going to be easy, or quick. As women, as people of color, as queer folk, as people from circumstances that fall outside the norm, those of us who make up CSWS have seen the struggle grow and regress over decades. We know this is not the end. Acutely aware that Oregon was founded as a white utopia, we focus on working to ensure that the University of Oregon is a safe haven for those who feel threatened and alone. 

CSWS is proud to look back on last academic year and note the many ways that feminist, anti-racist, anti-classist, anti-homophobic dialogue was elevated on the UO campus through our work. Even if we couldn’t see that happening in the wider world around us, we are steadfast in our commitment to doing so here at the University of Oregon. 

We kicked off the school year with the aptly titled, “Why Aren’t There More Black People in Oregon?” talk given by Walidah Imarisha—to an overflow audience of more than 350 people. In her engaging and interactive conversation with the audience, Walidah walked us through the timeline and history of Oregon and its founding as a white utopia, and the ways in which this racist legacy has ripple effects felt in Oregon to this day. Attendees came away with a better understanding of the context and historical legacy in which we all find ourselves as we go to classes and partake in the life of this university each and every day. 

We were thrilled to welcome internationally known and American Book Award winning poet, writer, performer, and musician of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation, Joy Harjo, to campus along with some of our campus partners. To everyone’s delight, she played her clarinet and read her poetry to a full house in Straub Hall, as all sat and listened in rapt attention. 

For the second consecutive year, CSWS sponsored “Practicing Resistance: Becoming & Growing as an Ally” training for people on campus and in the community. Trainer Janée Woods helped us uncover and unpack our privilege and take a close, deep look at the ways in which systemic systems of oppression, including white supremacy and misogyny, are baked into the very fabric of our lives. We were thrilled that close to 150 participants were able to join us last year, and look forward to building on our trainings for next year. 

Last February, scholar Khiara Bridges talked to us about her book and research on “The Poverty of Privacy Rights,” which makes a simple, controversial argument: poor mothers in America have been deprived of the right to privacy. Bridges was joined by Camisha Russell, assistant professor of philosophy, and Ellen Scott, professor of sociology, in the commentary and discussion of her claims.

In her book, Bridges “investigates poor mothers’ experiences with the state—both when they receive public assistance and when they do not. Bridges seeks to turn popular thinking on its head: Poor mothers’ lack of privacy is not a function of their reliance on government assistance—rather it is a function of their not bearing any privacy rights in the first place. Until we disrupt the cultural narratives that equate poverty with immorality, poor mothers will continue to be denied this right.” 

All of us at CSWS are particularly proud of our annual Acker-Morgen Lecture in honor of founding mother Joan Acker and long-time director Sandi Morgen. In March, we featured sociologist Rhacel Salazar Parreñas as the 2017 lecturer. Her talk, “The Gendered Organization of Migrant Domestic Work,” examined the experiences of migrant domestic workers in Dubai and Singapore. At that event, CSWS initiated a successful online crowdfunding campaign to keep the lectureship running for years to come. Thanks to twenty-two generous donors, we raised over $4,000 in Joan’s and Sandi’s memories. 

In April, CSWS hosted the first of what we hope will become an annual Queer Studies lecture. Our inaugural speaker, Princeton scholar Regina Kunzel, spoke about her research and work delving into the archives of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., which opened in 1855 and was the first federally operated psychiatric hospital in the United States. Kunzel brought to light new and interesting ways of looking at the encounter of sexual- and gender-variant people with psychiatry and psychoanalysis, and examined the role of psychiatric scrutiny and stigma in the making of modern sexuality. See pages 40–41 for more on her lecture’s impact on students.

Capping off the year of events was our Northwest Women Writers Symposium, headlined by award-winning novelist and columnist for The Nation, Laila Lalami. Lalami opened conversations about contemporary issues around Muslim life in the West, undocumented immigrants in the United States, the meaning of a border wall, and the significance of borders and walls in the United States as well as other parts of the world. A panel discussion among Lalami and UO scholars examined her novel The Moor’s Account, and is looked at in detail on pages 36–39.

Our choice of Lalami as headline speaker was even more prescient than we anticipated at the beginning of last academic year. When we hosted her in late April in a discussion of immigration and its attendant policies, controls, meanings, effects, and impacts, it was only a short while later that the president of the United States and his administration ordered children to be taken from their parents at the Mexican border and to be incarcerated in cages—without records, without compunction, and without due process.

Now that putting kids in cages is part of the American psyche, we cannot unsee it—nor can we find a way to responsibly and quickly undo it. Children are still being held without their parents. Many thousands are still unable to be reunited with their families, due to lack of proper records, lack of resources to provide competent legal services, lack of appropriate translators, and more. 

Although reuniting these families is outside the scope of CSWS, we also recognize that there is a way this is part of our work, too—elevating feminist, anti-racist, anti-classist discourse; creating community; and reminding each other of our responsibilities to each other on campus is one way we work to create more informed, better equipped, and motivated citizens of the world so that the many stains of racism, sexism, homophobia, and greed that color this country’s founding and continued survival might someday be reversed. 

What this next year, and these mid-term elections, might bring, we cannot say, at this moment in time. But we will persevere, all of us, and continue to do the good work of reaching out for equity and inclusion, because there is no other choice than to forge forward. 

We hope you will continue to forge forward with us. 

In peace, justice, and solidarity,

Dena Zaldúa, Operations Manager