Vow to Act

1st Annual Report

The Department of Government’s Vow to Act (the text of the Act appears in the appendix)

requires that we hold ourselves accountable and publicly report on our progress annually for the

next five years. The Vow was published online in July of 2020 and it was implemented beginning

in the fall term 2020. This is the first of five annual reports that audit the Department’s progress

on the items in the Vow to Act. This report summarizes how the Department enacted or failed to

enact the items in the Vow to Act between September 2020 and January 2022.

What We Have Done

● The fall 2020 event titled “Demand Racial Justice: Student Perspectives on the Black

Lives Matter Protests” (organized and moderated by Friedman and Lyall) discussed with

five of our students their experience and reflections in engaging with various protests

that had taken place earlier that year.

● The winter 2021 event titled "How we study race: a discussion across disciplines"

(co-sponsored with the Consortium of Studies in Race, Migration and Sexuality and the

Ethics Institute) (organized and moderated by Bedi) discussed various methodologies of

studying race and racial justice with colleagues from English, History, Sociology, WGSS,

and AAAS. The event was also shown to prospective students by the Admissions Office

and allowed the Department to publicly engage with other departments and programs

events that engaged with issues of race and racial justice, including: "What Now? 2020

Presidential Post-Election Analysis" with a diverse set of junior scholars (fall 2020) (moderated

by Costa); "Race Against Time: The Politics of a Darkening America" with Keith Boykin '87 (fall

2020); "After George Floyd - Policing, Racism, and Criminal Justice Reform" with political

scientists from other universities (fall 2020); and "Where Do We Go From Here? King's Sill

Unanswered Question" (winter 2021).

Government faculty also organized similar events through the Dickey Center including: "How to

build an anti-racist foreign policy" (with Travis Adkins) (fall 2020) (moderated by Powers);

"Diversity and Inclusion in the Military" (fall 2020) (moderated by Lyall) with two of our

President, and the (incoming) Senior Vice President & Senior Diversity Officers to express

concerns about Dartmouth’s responses.

Horiuchi was also interviewed by the Valley News after the Atlanta shooting and expressed his

views publicly. An article based in part on this interview was published on March 28, 2021.

In summer and fall 2020, Baldez participated in planning of the Dartmouth Symposium on

Police Violence and moderated the keynote address on "The Role of Race: The Practice of

Pivoting to Police as Problem-Solvers in Uncertain Times," by Dominque Day,

Founder/Director, DAYLIGHT and Chair, UN Working Group of Experts on People of African

Descent. The event took place in January 2021.

The Department used a diversity-specific channel within the Department’s Slack workspace to

With regard to hiring, there was a discussion and review of faculty hiring processes (led by

Lacy) at our May 2021 meeting and all hiring committee members took part in the IDE faculty

search workshops. As a result of those discussions, the Department conducted a search in

African American Politics and Political theory (the committee includes Clarke and Jerit, co-

chairs; Nyhan and Rose). As part of that search, the committee contacted more than eighty

people in order to expand the quality, diversity, and size of the candidate pool for this position.

Additionally, two subfields (American Politics and Political Theory) conducted this search, which

not only enlarged the possible pool of applicants but also means that any successful hire will

have senior faculty in another subfield familiar with their work. Also, the job advertisement

explicitly included the option of an affiliation with the Program in African and African American

Studies (AAAS). And faculty affiliated with AAAS also met with the job candidates and attended

among others, each of the 12 members of the APSR editorial team and select members of the

APSR Editorial Board; editors and select editorial board members of Comparative Political

Studies; the officers of NCOBPS; the Race, Ethnicity, and Politics section of APSA list serve;

the Latino Caucus of the APSA list serve; the Women and Politics section of the APSA list serve

and Facebook page; the Women Also Know Stuff database; and the People of Color Also Know

Stuff database.

The Department also submitted a request to the Guarini Institute for a two-year postdoctoral

position in the politics of race and ethnicity. This request was approved and the Department is

also conducting a search for this new position (the committee includes Crabtree, Costa,

government.

With regard to political scientists outside of Dartmouth, a faculty member (Horiuchi) contacted

the Guarini Institute's Program/exchange coordinator to obtain information about Dartmouth’s

current relationship with Spelman and Morehouse, two historically black colleges, and also

worked with a colleague at Spelman on an APSA committee. Due to the travel restriction, none

could attend the National Conference of Black Political Scientists. The Department can continue

to follow up on this outreach to our colleagues outside of Dartmouth.

The Act specifically asked us to establish two student research fellowships for the study of race

and racism, to begin in either winter or spring 2021, which would take the form of independent

studies under the supervision of a faculty advisor and of paid research assistantships to support

Eleven students opted for research assistantships, (advised by Crabtree and Horiuchi) as RAs

in "Research Fellowship on Race and Racism" during winter and spring 2021. Based on a

systematic data collection on the post-violence statements (after the Atlanta Shooting and the

killing of George Floyd) issued by the university presidents across more than 300 universities in

on this project will receive credit for an independent research project under Horiuchi’s

supervision and another student will work as a part-time RA funded by the department.

The Rockefeller Center also funded two research assistantships with students from

underrepresented groups on campus (advised by Barabas), one which led to a two-term UGAR

scholarship award. The UGAR also funded a two-term research project on the history of Black

students and faculty in the Department (advised by Clarke). The Department offered an

independent study focused on researching Native American voices on the Dartmouth campus

over time (supervised by Lind).

The Department can learn more about Dartmouth's Employee Resource Networks that support

faculty and staff from underrepresented groups. Horiuchi has been a member of the leadership

team for the Asia and Pacific Islander Caucus (APIC) and organized and participated in various

events throughout the year.

And the Department remains steadfast that we will pause the conversation when someone's

Multiracial Self-Classification” (Westwood) -- published in the American Journal of

Political Science.

● “Do Identity Frames Impact Support for Multiracial Candidates? The Case of Kamala

Harris” (Crabtree and Horiuchi, with a former student) -- forthcoming at the Journal of

Experimental Political Science.

● “Disfavor or Favor? Assessing the Valence of White Americans’ Racial Attitudes

(Horiuchi and Carey, with a former student) – forthcoming at the Quarterly Journal of

Political Science.

● “Changing Votes, Changing Identities? Racial Fluidity and Vote Switching in the 2012–

● “Are Americans Less Likely to Reply to Emails from Black People Relative to White

People?'” (Crabtree) -- published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

● “Patient Traits Shape Healthcare Providers' Choices on How to Best Allocate Life-Saving

Care.” -- forthcoming at Nature Human Behavior.

● “How Asians React to Discrimination Doesn’t Depend on their Party Identification." --

● “Soldier, Army, State, War,” in winter 2021 that addresses questions of race, ethnicity

and gender in the study of war (Lyall)

● “The Intellectual History of Racism,” in spring 2021 (Clarke, co-taught with faculty

from Middle Eastern Studies (funded by a DOF Innovative Course Award)).

● “Redistribution, Inequality, and Diversity” in winter 2022, has components addressing

both racism and discrimination against immigrants (Ferwerda)

● “Theories of Racial Capitalism,” in winter 2022 (Pinheiro)

The Department offered 97 separate courses between Summer 2020 and Summer 2021, and

revised the following 18 existing course sections to promote inclusion:

● “Recent Research in Social and Political Philosophy" added a racial justice

● “Quantitative Political Analysis” added emphasis on topics related to race and

ethnicity, encouraging students to pursue research projects in these areas, which in turn

funded 2 surveys through Lucid that addressed issues related to Race, Ethnicity and

Institute, and the Government Department provided funding for honoraria for these

– sometimes including simultaneous offers to excellent candidates – that would diversify the

faculty. It must be more willing to devote resources to recruit diverse faculty, post-doctoral

fellows, and to fund research related to race, identity and social justice. We can only succeed

as a department with the full support of the College.

including introducing new courses, organizing events, adding race-related content in our

teaching materials, etc. We can report specific “outcomes” for these action items. But other

essential components of diversity and inclusion outlined in the Vow to Act are harder to

measure: We need to create diverse, equal, and inclusive environments, in which we – faculty

members, staff, and students – can learn many perspectives through teaching, research,

2. We will deepen our commitment to diversity and inclusion within the department.

4. We will hold ourselves accountable by setting deadlines and publicly reporting on our

progress.

Specific Commitments

The Government Department makes the following commitments to our students, colleagues,

and staff:

1. We will create new opportunities to listen to, and learn from, our students and

starting point for increasing communication about race and racism.

○ Fall: "Protesting for Racial Justice: Dartmouth Students on the Front Lines"

○ Winter: "Learning About Racial Justice: Students and Faculty Discuss the

Classroom Experience"