#SeeingIsBelieving Newsletter (10.23.19)

Our country's oldest academic institutions are revered for their prestige, history, thought leadership, and concentration of collective knowledge. And yet, while walking those hallowed halls, how many of us have felt that an important perspective was blatantly missing? As we stroll through yards surrounded by buildings named after men, reading textbooks and literature predominantly written by men, it's easy to perceive that women are not equal leaders in thought, impact, and contribution. It's easy to forget that women belong.

One group of students at Columbia University aims to change that mistaken perception. At the beginning of this month, they hung a banner above the names of eight male writers inscribed on the university's largest library. Dubbed the Butler Banner, the enormous piece of cloth depicts the names of eight female writers - Toni Morrison, Diana Chang, Zora Neale Hurston, Ntozake Shange, Maya Angelou, Leslie Marmon Silko, Gloria E. Anzaldúa and A. Revathi. Their action has started a necessary conversation about the importance of representation in university spaces and collections. 

Role models and representation matter. Having a diverse and representative set of perspectives matters. It takes each of us to have the courage to do what Laura Hotchkiss Brown started with the original Butler Banner in 1989: to see a lack of representation and to speak up. #SeeingIsBelieving for all of us, and it's up to us to make sure future generations see the full breadth of all that they can be.