I pledge to be an ethical area studies student. I promise not to work with U.S. government agencies and departments engaged in gross human rights violations—in particular the CIA, Dept. of Defense/U.S. armed forces, and the Dept. of Homeland Security. I refuse to weaponize my area studies knowledge and language proficiency on behalf of these and other gross human rights violators.

The CIA boasts a long track record of human rights abuses around the world. Throughout its history, the CIA has orchestrated a litany of coups and assassinations that have crushed democratic movements across the Global South, imperiling the possibility of self-determination for millions of people.

Similarly, the DOD and the U.S. armed forces have distinguished themselves as the single greatest threat to peace and security since the end of the Second World War. During U.S. invasion and occupation of Vietnam, the U.S. military murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians. U.S. Special Operations forces have often disregarded international law in their engagements abroad.

At home, the Department of Homeland Security  has administered the American “War on Terror” by profiling and entrapping Muslims by leveraging the legal cover of the Patriot Act. DHS today manages a string of migrant internment camps along the U.S.-Mexico border in coordination with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Health & Human Services.

The EASC opposes the perversion of area studies knowledge and language proficiency to serve the CIA, DOD, and DHS’s chauvinistic foreign and domestic agendas. Instead, we pledge to commit our time and resources to the promotion of human rights in our regions of study via community engagement, consciousness-raising, and solidarity with those who are demanding and defending their freedom and dignity.