Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Plan Status Update, July 2020

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The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Plan was released in November 2019. This annual report documents progress on the initiatives stated in that 2019 plan.

President and Provost Introduction

This inaugural Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Plan Status Update comes at a time when our nation is grappling more actively with the ongoing reality of racial injustice than at any time since the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. Since our own arrivals at Colgate in 2016 and 2017, we have engaged in a systematic and rigorous review of the campus and the development of a pathway to a better and stronger future for Colgate. This work has resulted in both a comprehensive long-term plan for Colgate, The Third-Century Plan, and the first roadmap for ongoing strategic work to make campus life and campus culture more inclusive and equitable, The Third-Century Plan for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (the “DEI Plan.”)

The conversations that we have been having with groups of students, faculty, staff, and alumni suggest that so many of us share a common purpose: the creation of a more excellent Colgate, the commitment to being an anti-racist institution, a desire for concrete and sustained action, and a pledge to establish accountability for the University’s intentions. Such alignment is deeply encouraging.

The DEI Plan was informed, first, by a comprehensive external review of the University’s campus climate in 2016–17. The actual plan was created through the tireless work of more than 70 faculty and staff members over two years. The DEI Plan was adopted by the University in November 2019. This Plan presents a long-term roadmap for Colgate to achieve true excellence — excellence that has as its foundation a respect for a diversity of perspectives and backgrounds, a commitment to equity at all levels, and a passion for the transformative power of a liberal arts education. The plan calls for fundamental and significant changes in our hiring and admission, staff support, and student residential and social life practices as well as dozens of other first steps on the path to becoming a better university. One of the Plan’s major recommendations is to hire a Chief Diversity Officer, and that national search is actively moving forward, despite the pandemic.

There is now an eagerness, which we share, for quick solutions, and as this update shows, some meaningful first steps have been taken. But we know — not only from our work on this campus, but also from our time on other campuses — that true change, the core change to which we have dedicated our professional and personal lives, can only come from the intense, sustained, rigorous work that planning and implementation require. It will demand the joint dedication of the faculty, staff, Board of Trustees, alumni bodies, and University administration in the years ahead. This is why both of us, in our early years as members of this community, worked through our University governance systems to develop plans that can guide Colgate forward.

As a recent Maroon-News article makes clear, and as Colgate’s more recent history demonstrates, creating a more inclusive campus cannot be accomplished simply through administrative reaction to individual incidents. In Colgate’s history, these moments of “event and reaction” have only resulted in — as the Maroon-News noted — a repeated cycle in which the University’s culture does not significantly change or improve. This cycle denies Colgate the opportunity to forge systemic, sustained, and meaningful change. This is why, as we arrived a few years ago, we committed ourselves to leading Colgate to a new pathway forward. We committed ourselves to the engagement of all constituencies of the University, to robust debate of our aims, and to the development of a clear, measurable set of actions as part of a public plan.

It is important to note here that the faculty have themselves been involved in their own work of discernment, commitment, and planning, as reflected in their work on the review of Colgate’s core curriculum. On July 6, the Core Revision Committee, consisting of faculty from across academic disciplines, released a draft of a revised Liberal Arts Core Curriculum, titled Diverse Perspectives, Inclusive Communities: A Core for Colgate’s Third-Century, for consideration by the entire faculty in fall 2020. A stated goal of this new core is to “align the faculty-driven core curriculum with the institutional mandate of the 2019 DEI Plan.” The faculty will take up this proposal in this academic year and engage in the very challenging work and necessary discussion that curricular change requires. Our responsibility — again as President and Provost — is to support the faculty as they take up this work and consider change through their faculty processes.

Ultimately, our work must be embedded in University planning and governance in order to fulfill our shared commitment to an equitable, inclusive, anti-racist, truly excellent Colgate. It also requires ongoing accountability. Accordingly, this University Report will be issued annually to hold all of us accountable to the goals set forth in both plans, to allow us to chart our progress, and to update our plans as the context changes.

In the year ahead, we will — as part of our commitment to sustained work — bring back to the faculty, the Board, the Alumni Council, and the administration, both The Third-Century Plan and the DEI Plan. We must ensure that the plans stay relevant. Are they bold enough? Are they still relevant? How can we do more? These are the questions that we must continually strive to answer, not just in the current moment, but for the foreseeable future.

Section I. Foundational DEI Structure

Colgate’s efforts to become a more equitable and inclusive community must be reframed, once and for all, as part of the ongoing work of the University. This requires the identification of resources, regular reports to the campus, and communication to external constituencies on the DEI work in which the University is engaged. It will also require that every division of the University be held accountable for moving these efforts forward.

Initiatives

Section II. Equity in the Student Experience

Given the remarkable potential of every student admitted to Colgate, the University must ensure that every student has equal access to the opportunities afforded on this campus. This includes every academic track, various forms of University housing and dining, and desirable spaces for social hosting. Inequitable access undermines the University’s goals of academic excellence and its sense of shared community.

Initiatives

Section III. Diversification of Faculty and Staff

Colgate continues to struggle to recruit a diverse faculty and staff. A lack of diversity in the University’s employees can undermine students’ sense that Colgate is a welcoming place for those from historically underrepresented groups. It can also hinder efforts to retain employees from these backgrounds. To the extent that students may more frequently turn to faculty and staff with whom they identify for support, this can also lead to an inequitable (and often unrecognized) load of labor on those faculty and staff.

Initiatives

Section IV. Retention and Development of Diverse Faculty and Staff

It is not enough for the University to recruit a diverse faculty and staff. It must also provide pathways for members of underrepresented groups (most notably, faculty and staff of color) to advance in their careers.

Initiatives

Section V. Campus Culture and Communication

What we say matters. In addition to ensuring that the University’s policies are equitable through regular review, University communications, both internal and external, should reflect our commitment to inclusivity and equity. Every employee should be well-prepared for supporting the University’s mission of living and learning in a diverse community and should understand this is crucial for their work at Colgate.

Initiatives

Section VI. Responsiveness

To the extent that the challenges of living in a diverse community will continue to be felt keenly by members of our campus community, Colgate must do a better job of responding with commitment and compassion when failures of equity and inclusion do harm to community members. This will require not only better support for those employees who already play this role, but also an exploration of new models that can undermine the current sense, so often expressed, that the University is incapable of responding well to such harms. Students, faculty, and staff must also have access to avenues that allow them to express their concerns without fear of retaliation or loss of control.

Initiatives

Moving Forward

Colgate’s DEI Plan will continue to grow and evolve as we work to become more ambitious in our hopes for equity and inclusion throughout the broad Colgate community. The incoming CDO will surely help to guide this evolution, but it must also be fed by all constituencies and all members of our community. Plans for outreach and conversation with campus constituencies were set aside when the pandemic required the emptying of campus last spring, but these efforts will need to be renewed this fall. In the 2020–2021 academic year, more voices must be engaged if the vision of long-term sustained effort is to be realized. Recommendations from the Board, faculty governance bodies, staff groups, student organizations, alumni affinity organizations, and other groups will be considered and will serve to refine the plan as the context changes. In preparation for the arrival of the CDO, the University will assemble a DEI Coordination Group. The group will be composed of appropriate representatives from each division — individuals selected by virtue of their complementary job descriptions. The Group will be responsible for ensuring that information and policy from the CDO is brought to senior leadership in each division, and that implementation is managed accordingly, given the unique challenges and opportunities in each division. This group will focus on ensuring that the University’s legal and policydriven obligations in regard to diversity, equity, and inclusion are consistently met.

In addition, the University will form a DEI Advisory Group. This group will be made up of practitioners whose perspectives the CDO will regularly need to engage, and whom it would be good to convene in a collaborative space with some regularity. (There may well be overlap in the makeup of these two groups). The Advisory Group will provide a network that will ensure ongoing DEI efforts are well-coordinated, communicated, and planned in the context of overall institutional strategy.

As called for by the DEI Plan, DEI work will also continue to be moved forward through the overall work of advancing The Third-Century Plan, and, in this context, it will be a subject of attention and effort on the part of the Board of Trustees, faculty governance, and University administration in their shared efforts to build a stronger Colgate.

Divisional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statements

DEI Updates from Divisions and Departments

Colgate’s administrative divisions were encouraged to develop their own strategies and initiatives for strengthening equity and inclusion in alignment with the philosophy laid out in The Third-Century Plan and the Plan for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Some of the details of these efforts are included here, to give a sense of the ways in which this work is moving forward beyond the initiatives reported above. This is by no means an exhaustive list of efforts taking place in departments across the University, but it does give a sense of the variety of ways that departments are working to make DEI an integral part of their work.