The Anthropology Department at UCF is committed to respecting and promoting a diverse and inclusive community of students, faculty, staff, and alumni in our classes, offices, laboratories, workplaces, fieldwork sites, and other settings. Recognizing that true strength lies in diversity, not similarity, we strive towards a representation of department faculty and staff that better reflects the variegated tapestry of American society.
We value and celebrate the diversity of the human experience that encompasses ethnicity, class, gender, citizenship, sexuality, religion and spiritual beliefs, language, age, and ability. We recognize these identities intersect in multiple and complex ways, privileging some and disenfranchising others. We are committed to providing safe and inclusive learning environments that promote respect for difference, challenge stereotypes, embrace individual experiences, and advance scholarship and advocacy of historically marginalized groups.
Historically, anthropological scholarship frequently intertwined and intersected with hegemonic systems that actively served to disenfranchise indigenous groups and inflict irreparable cultural harm to millions worldwide. These dominant and now discredited systems include European colonialism, US settler expansion, eugenics, and racialized classification schemes that expedited empire building around the world and fraudulently legitimized social hierarchies and power differentials.
Increasingly, anthropological research and methods strive to dismantle the idea of biological race, promote greater understanding of social and cultural differences, and advocate for a more inclusive society based on the principles of cultural relativism. As a department we continually make meaningful connections between our discipline’s past and our ongoing work towards promoting diversity in our scholarship, student body, and community relationships.
Aligning with the policies and recommendations of the American Anthropological Association, the American Association of Physical Anthropology, and the Society for American Archaeology, among others, the UCF Department of Anthropology is committed to:
- Building an inclusive and diverse student body, faculty, and staff
- Rejecting all forms of discrimination
- Addressing power inequities and privilege in the classroom and other learning environments
- Promoting scholarship and advocacy of historically excluded groups
- Maintaining zero tolerance for sexual misconduct in the classroom, laboratory, field, and other work and research settings
- Establishing a Department Committee on Inclusion starting Fall 2020 to address our commitments outlined in this statement