As the administrative home for the Critical Gender Studies Program (CGS), the Ethnic Studies Department stands behind CGS' decision to issue a statement regarding faculty affiliations and disaffiliations within their program as a matter of faculty rights and program self-governance. We will continue work on our own departmental standards for conducting ethical research, following community identified cultural protocols, as well as work to update a separate document relating to faculty affiliation and disaffiliation criteria within our department from 2010. Let us be reminded that our ethical responsibilities are of paramount importance to our students. It is our hope that other departments in the Division of Social Sciences and on the UCSD campus will also develop criteria for faculty affiliations and disaffiliations as well as criteria for following a robust set of cultural and ethical protocols for conducting research. 

Our discipline requires that we have the highest form of ethical responsibility and as such we recognize the limits of the IRB process and call on all departments and programs to create and adopt their own criteria specific to their disciplines. By having department specific criteria we ensure that disciplinary standards for best practices are being achieved. We also believe that all faculty and students should follow and orient themselves to department and program level criteria before even applying for IRB approval. In this way we as faculty are doing our proper service to the mission of the institution with respect for department and program autonomy and institutional diversity, equity, and transformative justice.