School of Communication Studies Commitments to Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Access and Social Justice (IDEAS)
The School of Communication Studies is committed to identifying, analyzing, and dismantling interpersonal, institutional, and systematic oppression and privilege that pervades all aspects of our interactions. We commit to creating and strengthening a culture that is anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-bigotry of all kinds and combats prejudice, hostility, and discrimination against any culture or group. These commitments require increased individual and organizational reflexivity; individual and collective examination of embedded habits, policies, and structures; and sustained action toward equity. This commitment is an ongoing process of discovery, action, and transformation.
The School of Communication Studies is complicit in a world in which social and political power, resources, access, and participation are systematically inequitable. This inequity is based on race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic status, nationality, indigenous identity, immigration status, religion, ability, and other forms of socially-constructed difference. Our School, College, University, and higher education are produced by and reproduce these structures of inequity. Communication is central to the ways in which power and inequity are both enforced and challenged. Therefore, we have an opportunity and an obligation to confront and strive toward eliminating these inequities.
The multiplicity of our histories, cultural backgrounds, and embodied experiences offers the School of Communication Studies a source of vitality to productively and continuously craft new models of institutional change. We are committed to building an equitable and inclusive community that expands access to the interpersonal, institutional, and systematic mechanisms by which people are seen, recognized, and heard. Embracing commitments to equity for faculty, staff, and students in recruitment, admission, hiring, retention, and success is a necessary condition for excellence in learning, teaching, research, administration, service, and community engagement.