For too long, we have failed to acknowledge both the blatant, and also subtle, violences that have been the legacies of American slavery, the genocide of indigenous peoples, and exclusionary practices and illegal internments of Asian migrants and their descendants. We have also disavowed the intersection, modeling, and impact of these racist policies in other societies across the globe. Complicity with this disavowal at every level of our institutions, including those of higher education, belie the principles of democracy to which we believe scholars and people across the globe aspire. Indeed, as people everywhere reflect on the origins of modern national cultures, we believe we as scholars must undertake far-reaching examination of  how our very critical concepts , not only of “race,” but of “racism” itself, may yet perpetuate systemic racism and the violences that accompany it, including in the knowledge practices called area studies. We therefore urge Cornell University, in the coming year, to encourage and promote extensive reflection on these matters, as well as intersecting oppressions (e.g. gender, sexuality, and class), and how they may be addressed in our teaching and research, in hiring and promotion, and in transforming the cultural and social life of the university as a whole.