Here you will find documentation of Conflict Resolution's engagement with the present historical moment, especially the issues of racial justice and systemic oppression of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color on the PSU campus and in our broader community.  Below you can read how our students and faculty have been active in supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, DisarmPSU, and efforts to improve Diversity, Equity and Inclusion ("DEI") at Portland State University. 

Academic Year 2020-21

26 May 2021

Land Conflict Acknowledgement

Conflict Resolution will post on its PSU website a Land Conflict Acknowledgement as a site for faculty, students, and staff to critically engage with the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism in Multnomah County, especially as manifest on the university campus. This engagement further involves relationship building and potentially ally-ship in annual shared activities, attendance at Honor Day, and other collaborations between CR, the Native American Student and Community Center, and Indigenous Nations Studies. 

 

26 January 2021

Statement on Washington, D.C. Attack

With the Congress's electoral college vote certification and the Biden-Harris inauguration behind us, Conflict Resolution affirms the necessity of forthrightly naming the violent assault on the US government on January 6th as a coup attempt and commits to the work of rebuilding shared democratic purpose in our community and country through listening, engagement, and transformative social practices.

3 November 2020

DEI Strategic Plan

Conflict Resolution passes a motion to explore a three-year Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategic plan, in concert with similar initiatives across the PSU campus.

Academic Year 2019-20

17 April 2020

Peace Pole for new offices in Smith Memorial Student Union

Dr. Vandy Kanyako coordinated the creation of a Peace Pole for the new Conflict Resolution suite in SMSU. The Pole is inscribed with the phrase "Peace in Our Schools" in four languages: English, Sign Language, Chinook Wawa, and Sanskrit.

 

3 June 2020

Statement on the murder of George Floyd

In the midst of anguish and anger over the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Conflict Resolution faculty here state our commitment to justice and safety for our students. We acknowledge especially our African American, Black, and racialized minority students, colleagues, and members of the campus community who are unjustly and disproportionately vulnerable to lethal violence and social inequities from both expressed overt racism and oft-ignored structural racism in US society. Conflict Resolution supports peaceable and constructive approaches to transforming the current conflicts in our cities into meaningful, positive change, including reform of conditions which led to the death of Jason Washington near the university campus in June, 2018.

17 June 2020

Letters to the PSU Board of Trustees regarding #DisarmPSU and the death of Jason Washington

I write to you speaking only for myself and hoping that many others will also write to you regarding this matter.

I testified three times to you when the question originally came to you six years ago. I opposed it then, noting that the literature in our journals gave us many reasons to not make that decision [to arm campus security] and that, as a research university, we should be paying attention to the scholarship.

Along with the majority of students polled and the votes of the PSU Faculty Senate, I urged you not to set up conditions that would statistically make people of color less safe rather than more safe. Instead, you went against the stated opinions of the majority of the PSU community.  In the silent seconds followed your voice vote I stood and said, "I can't breathe," and walked out. 

Last year, with a slightly different PSU Board of Trustees assemblage, in the hearing that took place in Lincoln Hall followed the murder of Jason Washington [on 29 June 2018]--exactly the tragedy we had forecast and that  you ignored--in my testimony I noted that any of you who were on the PSU Board of Trustees and voted in favor of arming campus security should apologize to the family of Jason Washington, and to the PSU community, and resign.

Now, yet again, I am just one member of the PSU community and I know many of my feelings are shared by many others and I am insisting that  you reverse your poor decision from those years ago and #DisarmPSU. Not after a long study. Now.

Yours for a nonviolent future,  Tom Hastings, Ed.D.

I appreciate the many issues on the table and believe it is time to take a stand against guns, violence, and abuse of power. And a stand FOR community engagement, strategic intervention, and compassionate response. I advocate for disarming PSU.

Barbara Tint, Professor of Conflict Resolution

I am emailing to demand that Portland State University immediately disarm the Campus Public Safety Office. I was a graduate student attending PSU when CPSO shot and killed Jason Washington. I have been truly disappointed by PSU's lack of serious action since Washington's death on my campus.  Groups and community members have been calling for change regarding CPSO since 2014. The president's and board's inaction over the years has directly contributed to the failings of today's institution.

I demand that PSU engage students, faculty, and staff in dialogue about how to reimagine safety outside of the logic of policing. I demand that money diverted from the disarmament of CPSO be invested towards the rebuilding of Black futures and liberation and towards campus services that do no rely on the practice of policing.

Austin Averett, MS, Conflict Resolution 2019

I am writing to express my support for the demand that Campus Safety DISARM immediately.  At last week's rally, there was no doubt that the campus community as well as the larger activist community passionately support disarming Portland State University's Campus Safety post haste.

I would hope--and truthfully, expect--that the swift leadership of Portland Public Schools, among so many other public institutions throughout the country, will serve to inspire comparably prompt action from PSU.

The world is changing and the message is loud and clear: less police, more humanity.  The strength of PSU's future depends on following suit.

In honor of Jason Washington's family, Amanda Smith Byron

I attended the original meetings related to the decision to arm Campus Safety. I also supervised several graduate students conducting enquiries and "town halls" for our department on this issue. I conducted listening sessions with international students and students of colour and was frankly shocked when the decision was made, nevertheless, to arm campus safety.

I then attended meetings to discuss how our de-escalation was going to be carried out and was, again shocked that the expertise on campus was ignored and left out of the consultations on the types of training that we believed would be necessary to prevent a tragedy.

Then Jason Washington was killed.

And then came an external review which solicited input and despite a large majority who either wished to disarm or didn't express an opinion, the decision was made to retain an armed force. We can still have a sworn force without arming them. The advantages of having a sworn force with special expertise in the issues that our students face can still be ours but they do not need guns. This does not reduce our campus safety officers to janitors or security guards. Instead, it provides options for reimagining policing, safety, and enquiry when confronted with difference, rather than leaping immediately to the notion of threat. The opportunities to use restorative justice to engage harm would then be real.

Please take this opportunity to show leadership and disarm PSU.

Rachel Halfrida Cunliffe, Assistant Professor of Conflict Resolution

The arming of CPSO is a thorn in the body of our campus community. The principle of shared governance, in which students, faculty, and administrators deliberate and reach mutual agreement suffered in the 2014 decision. Evidence-based decision making also suffered.  Two years ago this month, guns in the hands of CPSO broke a family's heart by taking the life of Jason Washington.

Repair of this damage must begin by acting now to disarm CPSO.

Last week, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences issues its report "Our Common Purpose: Reinventing Democracy for the 21st Century." Among their findings is a wide-spread sense that our institutions lack legitimacy.  Institutions have been unresponsive to the expectation that they abide by their own stated principles.  Institutions have also resisted forthright engagement with those they purport to serve.

Black Lives Matter. Black Studies Matters. Jason Washington Matters. PSU must resist militarizing the urban core of Portland. Our campus must instead be a place of trustful engagement, genuine safety, and learning for all. 

Disarm PSU now!

Patricia A. Schechter, Interim Director & Professor of History