The Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies has a nice ring to it. As of September 4, it’s the name the University of Maryland‘s Women’s Studies department will bear.
New UMD President Darryll J. Pines hailed the change in a letter to the campus community:
[This is] the first honorific naming of an academic department at UMD, the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. It is fitting that this heroic Marylander is now honored at the state’s flagship university.
The department is widely acclaimed for its unique concentration in Black feminist thought and intersectionality, and it is the only department in the nation that offers a Black women’s studies minor, jointly with the Department of African American Studies.
Historically, Black women have played a brave and critical role in social justice. Harriet Tubman’s life and her dedication to freedom and equality speaks directly to the department’s mission, now and in the years ahead.
Bonnie Thornton Dill, dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland said to WTOP News she hopes the name change helps to bring awareness to Tubman’s contributions locally and nationally.