Just before the winter break, Interim President J. Larry Jameson convened the Presidential Commission on Countering Hate and Building Community. A full listing of the members of the Commission and their charge all can be found on the Office of the President website. We are grateful to Dr. Jameson for his leadership and share his view that hate has no home at Penn.
We also thank the faculty, students, staff, and alumni who have stepped forward to serve on this Commission. Together, we will undertake the urgent work of better understanding the experiences of our community, recommending strategies for how to foster a broadly inclusive campus through education and engagement, and identifying ways to support those who have experienced hate and to counter it at Penn. This important effort will be closely connected to Penn’s Action Plan to Combat Antisemitism and In Principle and Practice, Penn’s recently announced strategic framework.
The Commission will consult broadly with the Penn community, and we will be in touch in the coming weeks to share the ways you can participate in this work. In the meantime, we welcome your ideas, experiences, and perspectives and encourage you to share them with the Commission by writing to this email address: presidential-commission@upenn.edu.
Please remember that if you experience an act of bias or discrimination, including antisemitism or Islamophobia, report it through Penn’s Bias Incident Reporting process. If there is any threat to your physical safety, or you are being harassed online, please contact the 24/7 PennComm Emergency Call Center at 215-573-3333 immediately. Additional information on University resources for safety and support can also be found on Penn’s Supporting our Community website.
Our community is strong and resilient, united by our care for one another and by our commitment to Penn. We look forward to working with the members of the Commission and with all of you to root out and counter hate and to bring our community together.