Dear members of the IAS community,

Even as we all have been deeply affected by shutdowns due to the Covid-19 outbreak this spring, we also have been witnessing and experiencing profoundly disturbing incidents highlighting an interrelated and equally alarming crisis: ongoing, systematized, and institutionalized racism toward African Americans. As brothers, sisters, parents, and children, many of us cannot imagine the horror of losing an innocent loved one at the hands of those meant to protect our communities. With deep sympathy, our thoughts and prayers go out to the family of George Floyd, the most recent victim of such racial violence, who died at the hands of the Minneapolis police. Other recent, devastating incidents in which Black people have been stereotyped, targeted, and killed have included Ahmaud Arbery, simply jogging, and Breonna Taylor, asleep in her bed at home. We know this is but a small recitation of the ways in which racism affects people of color, and Black people in particular, every day.

It is critical that the scholarship at IAS focused on racial violence, including that of law enforcement, continues. In the words of John Lewis, the congressman from Georgia who put his life on the line time and time again for civil rights: “This is a special moment in our history. Just as people of all faiths and no faiths, and all backgrounds, creeds, and colors banded together decades ago to fight for equality and justice … we must do so again.” We all must stand together against racism—in the United States and in all parts of the world—and, in our work, strive to be leaders in understanding and dismantling the ways that discrimination and injustice are perpetuated.

Robbert Dijkgraaf

Director and Leon Levy Professor

Institute for Advanced Study