Dear Members of the Eastman Community,
Thank you for the many messages of interest, support, and encouragement that you have shared with us at the Eastman Action Commission for Racial Justice since we began our work in June.
Now that we have been meeting for just over a month, we would like to give all of you a brief update of where we are in our progress towards the final report and recommendations which will be shared with Dean Rossi and with all of you.
In accordance with the racial justice imperatives that have come out of the Black Lives Matter movement at this moment in time, we have focused much of our attention on working to improve the Black experience at Eastman. At the same time, however, we also recognize that there are many additional questions of racial justice to address before we can truly say that the Eastman School of Music is equally inclusive and respectful of all people.
We hope that our work on this Commission will be just the beginning of the more extensive and expansive work that will make the Eastman School of Music a better place for all of its faculty, staff, students, community partners, and Rochester neighbors. To accomplish our task, we have established five Work Groups to study the School and make proposals in the following areas::
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- Academics
- Community Engagement and Partnerships
- Environment and Culture
- People (faculty, staff, and students)
- Performance Activities and Ensembles
Our over-arching goal is to move the Eastman School of Music toward a culture of anti-racism. Some of the many topics we are considering include land recognition; anti-racism and anti-bias workshops for Eastman faculty, staff, and students; admission and support of Black students; recruitment and retention of Black faculty; commissioning of works and acquisition of scores by composers of African descent; acknowledgment and celebration of singular achievements by Black Eastman alumni; new ways of working with Black students in the Rochester City Schools; and new ways of supporting Black-owned businesses in the Rochester community. And much, much more.
We are keenly aware that our progress toward a culture of anti-racism at Eastman is a multi-year and multi-level journey. Some of our recommendations will focus on steps we can take now, while others will require further systematic implementation over time.
The twenty members of our commission include Eastman faculty, staff, students, and alumni, as well as members of the greater Rochester community. We have received over thirty-five pages of email suggestions from Eastman faculty, staff, and students; we have consulted with representatives of many different sections of the Eastman School of Music and the University of Rochester; and we are currently soliciting additional input from Black Eastman alumni, from current Black Eastman students, and from the entire Eastman faculty. We will augment our report with input from the entire Eastman staff once the school year has started.
We had originally hoped to report our findings by mid-July, but we still have a great deal of work to do before we can produce a report that lives up to our own high expectations of breadth and depth, a report that truly serves to help move the School to a new place where everyone will feel welcomed and included. We are currently planning to submit our report and our recommendations to the Dean in August.
After presenting our findings and associated proposals to the Dean, we will share them with the Eastman community through one or more Town Meetings with Eastman faculty, staff, and students in the fall.
If you have any questions about the work of the Commission in the meantime, we would be very happy to hear from you.
Sincerely yours,
Lee Koonce, ‘96E (MM), co-chair
President & Artistic Director, Gateways Music Festival
Senior Advisor to the Dean, Eastman School of Music
lkoonce@esm.rochester.edu
Jean Pedersen, co-chair
Associate Professor, History, Eastman School of Music and
Arts, Science & Engineering, University of Rochester
jpedersen@esm.rochester.edu