In an email to the campus community on Friday, May 29, Chancellor Kumble R. Subbaswamy denounced the deeply troubling acts of racial violence, institutional racism, and expressed the urgent need to stand united and reject racism and bigotry in all its forms.  

That message reads as follows:

Dear Campus Community,

It is with a heavy heart that I write to you today. 

AMHERST, Mass. – The notion of conserving climate change refugia – areas relatively buffered from current climate change that shelter valued wildlife, ecosystems, and other natural resources – is only about 10 years old, but the field has matured enough that a leading journal has prepared a special issue on the topic.

AMHERST, Mass. – In the first study to use systematically collected data from multifamily housing inspections to track bed bug infestation, investigators including Christopher Sutherland at the University of Massachusetts Amherst “confirm what has long been suspected for bed bugs, but also for public health issues in general” – infestations are strongly associated with socioeconomic factors, including neighborhood income, eviction rates and crowding.

Dear Campus Community, 

Today, I write to you with a range of emotions. Fear for protesters, some of whom encounter fierce violence. Disappointment in our country for not reckoning with our intimate relationship with anti-Black racism. Frustrated at our institutions for failing to undo the institutionalized racism that we know to be true. 

Associate Professor of Communication Disorders Mary Andrianopoulos and recent doctoral graduate Colleen Gargan PhD '20 presented a webinar on "Telepractice Delivery of Speech and Language Services: Basics, Logistics, Guidelines, and Evidence Based Practice" for speech-language practitioners transitioning to remote delivery in response to the ongoing pandemic

AMHERST, Mass. – For the first time since its inception, the 26th annual Chef Culinary Conference will be hosted in a virtual format June 9-11, 2020. The long time conference is widely known for bringing together diverse groups of forward-thinking individuals to tackle issues affecting the food service industry. As such, this year’s theme will be Planetary Health - with a focus on post-COVID-19 times in the areas of strategic operational planning, wellness and safety and communication.

AMHERST, Mass. – A group of artificial intelligence experts including computer vision researcher and lead author Erik Learned-Miller of the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s College of Information and Computer Sciences recently proposed a new model for managing facial recognition technologies at the federal level.

In a white paper titled, “Facial Recognition Technologies in the Wild: A Call for a Federal Office,” the authors propose an FDA-inspired model that categorizes these technologies by degrees of risk and would institute corresponding controls.

AMHERST, Mass. - University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers surveyed over 2,500 essential workers in Massachusetts between April 24 and May 1 about their working conditions. Six weeks into the COVID-19 shutdown, they found that large numbers of essential workers felt stressed, unsafe, and financially insecure.

To the UMass community,

I share my thoughts today not just as the leader of the University of Massachusetts system, but as a human being stunned and deeply saddened by the brutal murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.

Lee Pelton, the president of Emerson College, is a valued colleague. We recently served together on a forum examining the future of higher education. During these recent days, many have expressed pain, sorrow and outrage in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, but few have done so as powerfully as Dr. Pelton has in this statement.