About

The Asian American Studies Program, and the Africana and Puerto Rican/Latino Studies, History, Jewish Studies and Women and Gender Studies departments deplore the horrific shooting in Atlanta on March 16, 2021 that left eight people dead, seven of whom were women and six Asian-American. Since then, some 20 other mass killings have occurred throughout the United States from California to Washington DC.

We come together to speak out against the Atlanta killings and to condemn the ongoing white supremacist, anti-immigrant, anti-sex workers, masculinist ideologies that help produce such acts of violence. The Atlanta shooting must be understood in relation to the anti-Asian hate that we have seen rise across the United States during the Covid pandemic. According to Stop AAPI Hate, between March 19, 2020 to February 28, 2021, there were 3,795 anti-Asian hate incidents – 68% of which were directed at women.

Over the past year, these communities have been subjected to increasing racism and xenophobia. A reminder that anti-Asian discrimination has a long history in this country from the Page Act (1875) that prohibited the immigration of women from Asian nations; to the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882-1943), the first federal legislation to exclude labor migrants by national origins; to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II; to the targeting of Muslims and those racialized as Muslim, including South Asian Americans, in the wake of 9/11 and the 2017 Travel Ban.

Our program and departments stand united against racism. We resist attempts to pit our communities against each other and we embrace the kinds of solidarity and coalitional work that can move us forward in the face of such attacks.

“We invite you to stop and hold space with us in memory of those who were lost and on behalf of those who feel (like so many of us feel in this country) that their lives do not matter. We invite you to stop and speak their names into the wind, adding them to the long list of names that we have been shouting, whispering, and remembering. We invite you to find ways to heal and to survive, in the spirit of Sister Grace Lee Boggs who reminds us that, “The only way to survive is by taking care of one another.” We believe that we do that by standing together, fighting together, and working to dismantle white supremacy together.”

– National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA )

Liberal arts graduates develop critical thinking, writing and presentation skills that make them attractive to a wide range of employers. The Women and Gender Studies curriculum at Hunter College trains students to connect their academic work to social and political realities outside the university. With a strong understanding of structures of privilege and inequality, our students are well equipped to engage the world as informed citizens and to take up work that promotes social change and justice.

Our majors have a high rate of acceptance in professional and graduate schools.

While Women and Gender Studies majors can go on to a wide spectrum of professions or graduate degrees, it is important to note that certain advanced degrees do require specific coursework, which must be completed prior to entering the field.  Readiness and admittance to graduate or professional school entail completing the required pre-requisite courses, not necessarily a specialized major. For better and for worse, bachelor’s degrees are increasingly a stepping stone in one’s training where specialization happens in the next phase of one’s studies. The learning one does as an undergraduate can matter enormously, but more often than not it doesn’t dictate the path or opportunities for ongoing study.

Graduate programs have come to value diversity in the students they admit, with the realization that it is valuable for both their programs and the professions. For example, law schools do not want to see all of their applicants come from pre-law, political science, and government programs. In a similar vein, Women and Gender Studies majors are being accepted without a STEM major to medical programs, having taken the relevant prerequisite courses needed and focused the rest of their undergraduate learning with the broad set of inquiries that the Women and Gender Studies major afforded them.