Pan Asian Council Statement
The United States now leads the world in confirmed cases of COVID-19, rising to the top of the chart at an unprecedented rate of viral transmission. The pandemic has instilled social and economic anxiety as it manifests hot spots of infection across the nation. The Pan Asian Council (PAC) recognizes that as fears and tensions rise around the global pandemic, so too does anti-Asian discrimination fester in our communities. Dedicated to addressing and advocating for the diverse needs of the numerous Asian, Asian American, Pacific Islander, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Indigenous communities at the University of Iowa, we acknowledge that racist sentiments have directly affected our members. We condemn anti-Asian bigotry, recognizing that xenophobia often disguises itself as a sensible reaction to crisis. We unequivocally reject: the racialization of the COVID-19 pandemic; the framing of COVID-19 as a wartime attack from foreign lands into our national borders; and the prescribing or associating of a nationality to the virus and disease, which only works to confirm that nationality as the viral disease.
Signatures in Solidarity
If you would like to publicly commit to rejecting racist acts and attitudes instigated by fears and misinformation about COVID-19 toward any community, we welcome you to fill out this form. We will publish the names of people, academic departments, offices, or other campus units every few days as this form populates.
Since the publication of this statement in April 2020, hundreds of people, units, and councils from the University of Iowa community have publicly committed to standing in solidarity with PAC and our COVID-19 statement against racism. Their names are indicated below:
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