The Executive Branch of the United States government has recently tried to defund any initiative that involves critical race theory. It has also threatened to withhold federal funding from schools that incorporate The 1619 Project of the New York Times into their curriculum. In light of these attacks, ASLE takes this opportunity to affirm critical approaches to race, enslavement, and settler-colonialism as central to the study of nature writing, environmental literature, and ecomedia. We further affirm Africana, Latinx, Asian American, and Native American and Indigenous Studies as integral to a justice-seeking ecocriticism. ASLE is committed to promoting these methods in research, teaching, and service. We stand in solidarity with the ACLA and other organizations that have defended them in public, and we call upon all academic organizations to do so without delay.

Signed,

ASLE Executive Committee
ASLE Activism Committee

Read or circulate in PDF Format: ASLEStatementCriticalRaceTheory2020