The murder of George Floyd and the global protests that have followed in its wake have occasioned statements of solidarity from American Studies associations worldwide. The structures of racism and police violence are, after all, longstanding subjects of Americanist academic inquiry. The statement of the Netherlands American Studies Association is worth posting in full here, too.
Recent American demonstrations against racist police violence have been met with yet more police violence and with militaristic brutality. The Netherlands American Studies Association condemns this violence and applauds the uprising against it.
We study American history, literature, politics, and culture. We teach our students to think about systems, voices, and form. For the most part we do so from afar. But that endeavor resonates abroad: whatever “America” is has implications, at least somewhere down the line of inquiry and interpretation, for who and what we are, where we are.
Due to the pandemic, NASA has had to cancel its annual Amerikanistendag this year. In light of ongoing events, and in solidarity with anti-racist struggles in the United States and Europe, we have redirected the funds we would have spent on that event toward two organizations, one in the U.S. and one in the Netherlands.
The Bail Project is an American bail fund dedicated to fighting mass incarceration. Controle Alt Delete is an organization dedicated to ending ethnic profiling by Dutch police, and to racial justice in the Netherlands more broadly.
We believe this gesture is in keeping with our scholarly commitments.