In direct response to recent events and with renewed urgency, the College of Arts and Sciences re-affirms its commitment to Inclusive Excellence and Belonging (IEB) for all people. We stand with Black Lives Matter and related movements to eradicate racial injustice and white supremacy. We have a responsibility, both individually and systemically, to address racism as a priority, in addition to its intersectionality with sexism, heterosexism, and other behaviors or attitudes that harm and dehumanize others. In this work, we will appropriately challenge and support each other for the good of all.
Our commitment to inclusive excellence and belonging translates into the following actions:
- We will further diversify our faculty, staff, and students, and provide opportunities to support their development. We will highlight and celebrate our differences, both the visible and the invisible.
- We will further modify our curriculum to infuse inclusive excellence and belonging throughout our courses, and to create more courses focused on under-represented perspectives, in order to reflect the voices and experiences of all people. In our activities and assignments, we will examine issues of inclusive excellence and belonging as they relate to the discipline.
- We will listen to our students, faculty, and staff about their experiences and perspectives with respect, interest, humility, and empathy. We will honor freedom of thought and freedom of speech, and we will encourage all voices to be heard even if we disagree or we are uncomfortable. In order to foster genuine dialogue, we will listen to learn, articulate our perspectives with civility, and grant ourselves and others the grace to make mistakes as we learn.
- We will engage in ongoing professional development to acknowledge privilege, address implicit biases, foster inclusive pedagogy, and create safe spaces in our classrooms for difficult conversations around issues of inequity.
- We will create and distribute a list of resources on inclusive excellence and belonging to further our development, spark discussion, and prompt solutions.
- We will examine our policies and procedures to ensure inclusive excellence and belonging, and to ensure our educational institution is free of structural racism and other systemic inequities.
- We will invite a wide variety of guest speakers with varying perspectives and backgrounds to campus to share their expertise.
- We will regularly assess our efforts and hold ourselves accountable for tangible progress in each of these areas.
Through these actions, we commit to furthering inclusive excellence and belonging, ultimately, enhancing our community – a community that we affirm in our values and civility statements.