The Department of Performing Arts calls for justice and equality at this time and always. Black Lives Matter.

The arts are a catalyst for social change, and a way to engage empathy, critical thinking, and innovation, skills necessary to solving the world's most complicated issues. Performing Arts education must hold itself to a high standard and educators should bring to the forefront the notable impact and contribution of black artist leaders and educators in our field while changing the marginalization, invisibilization, tokenism, and misrepresentation of African diasporic practices. The Performing Arts are basic to human understanding and progress. Let us work together to affect that progress with equity and inclusivity. With that aim we commit to the following actions:

• Commit to a Zero-Tolerance Policy toward hate speech and discriminatory actions
• Continue the work of educating our faculty, staff and students on implicit bias and delivering pedagogy for a diverse world
• Continue the work of decolonizing our curriculum to recognize BIPOC, women, and the LGBTQ+ community, as major contributors to music, theatre and dance, especially if they are not recognized in the traditional canon or textbooks.
• Continue to diversify the subject matter of our course offerings
• Make more visible the current course offerings which represent diversity in the arts, such as World Musics, Hip -Hop, African Dance, and our minor in Jazz and African American Music.
• Continue to provide and expand access to the Performing Arts to our neighboring communities of Mantua and Powelton with our classes, lessons, and programs offered in partnership with the Dornsife Center, Mantua Theatre Project, and throughout Philadelphia through the Youth Performance Exchange.