MUSE MENTORSHIP

Representation and mentorship as resources for success in STEM

February 15, 2024

Statement regarding hiatus & current events

Welcome to our website!

MUSE is on a temporary hiatus until our leadership team has graduated from their respective PhD programs. Obtaining a PhD is a tremendous effort; our small team will need time to focus and complete their degrees before re-launching the MUSE Mentorship program. We appreciate your patience and continued support during this time. We have compiled a list of other amazing organizations at the bottom of this page to find mentorship and/or representation across STEM fields. 


In addition, academia does not exist in a vacuum. We believe this defining moment in history calls for more than our silence, especially while scholars across the country are disciplined and targeted for speaking up.

As leaders who are committed to diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and antiracism, (DEIJA) we believe in speaking up even when it isn’t popular to do so. We believe in standing in solidarity with all marginalized and oppressed people within and beyond our borders, even if they do not share our unique identity(s). 

We stand firmly with the people of Palestine, who have faced an illegal occupation of their land and apartheid for decades.

The ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people is the result of Western powers coordinating with and enabling a far-right, Zionist government to carry out their explicit and violent plans of settler colonialism. As of mid-February, more than 30,000 Palestinian people (over one third of which are children) have been killed due to indiscriminate bombing, chemical weapons, and other weaponry—80% of which has come from the United States government.

We are all complicit in a genocide that is paid for with U.S. tax dollars, therefore we all share an equal responsibility to educate ourselves, speak up, organize with one another, and do all that is in our power to stand with the Palestinian people.

This includes standing with our Palestinian and Arab communities in the U.S., who have faced a sharp rise in extreme violence, hate crimes, Islamophobia, and antiblackness while engaging in chronic advocacy and leadership. This also means standing with our anti-Zionist Jewish community, who have cried “not in our names” and marched with our Arab friends for a free Palestine despite increases in antisemitism. 

We affirm the words of our Jewish and Arab family who know that Jewish safety and Palestinian human rights are not mutually exclusive.

We can condemn antisemitism, Islamophobia, and all forms of violence while calling for a ceasefire and a free Palestine, rejoining Palestinian sovereignty from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean sea. We recognize that the Palestinian people have been fighting for human rights, dignity, and sovereignty for over 75 years. We are reminded of the Nakba in 1948–where 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes to make way for Jewish settlers and 15,000 people were murdered by the Israeli government and settlers. We wholeheartedly reject Zionism–a fundamentally racist ideology–and its dependency on violent settler colonialism. We understand that Zionism is not the same as Judaism no matter how ferociously Zionists attempt to conflate the two.

We also recognize that genocide and oppression carried out in predominantly Black and/or African countries often do not receive the same type of international solidarity or national attention.

We stand firmly with our Sudanese, Congolese, Haitian, and Tigrayan family who have faced ongoing genocides, violence, and oppression which have also been fueled by Western, European, and East/West Asian countries. We commit ourselves to learning more about the history of colonized nations and peoples–from the U.S.-backed assassination of Patrice Lumumba to the reparations Haiti was forced to pay to its enslavers, the French. We commit ourselves to learning these histories and present day realities while taking action in our communities.

We call on our peers in academia to commit themselves to self-education and action.

The resistance in academia to simply acknowledge the Palestinian people and their right to life and humanity can make us lose hope. We want to affirm scholars of color and other marginalized groups that your anger and rage are sacred. It is right to be struck with grief. It is appropriate for our nervous systems to respond to so much injustice with a rage that is grounded in love and truth. These institutions directly profit from their ties to Israel, all while turning around to share their “commitment to DEI.” The hypocrisy and silence from people in positions of power is untenable.

We stand with all scholars whose rage is a compass—one that points unwaveringly towards justice and collective liberation for all oppressed people.

Statement by MUSE Leadership

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