The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and the entire Memorial University community extends its solidarity and support to our colleagues at the University of Waterloo in the wake of the recent act of violence on June 28.

We condemn these actions and offer our outrage and sadness in response.

We are collectively concerned in response to reports that this attack was motivated against the field of gender studies.

This specific attack was on a Philosophy classroom, and we therefore offer particular sympathy to the members of Waterloo’s Philosophy Department.

We recognize also that gender studies is an interdisciplinary field, and many of us who teach in this field across the humanities and social sciences feel the chill of this violence.

The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Memorial commits to responding to this event by convening our own internal  conversation.

This conversation will develop an action plan to support the kind of work that has been attacked so violently at Waterloo.

The work of gender studies — understood broadly in its transfeminist, intersectional and Indigenous iterations at our university — is increasingly the target of threats.

Yesterday’s events at Waterloo remind us that we must take these threats very seriously.