Dear members of the Barnard Community,
With the fall semester underway, I want to offer my warm greetings to all of you, and for those of you new to the Barnard community, a brief introduction and an invitation to take part in creating a community that helps all of us to thrive.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion stand at the heart of Barnard’s mission of education and knowledge creation. We approach that shared responsibility through the lens of “engaged learning,” a coordinated effort to ensure that all members of our community have a voice in the exchange of ideas, and an equitable opportunity to discover and develop — from our classrooms and labs, to our co-curriculars and social justice initiatives, to opportunities for education outside our campus gates, to our lives together in community.
This rigorous focus on learning ensures that students are at the heart of our work. DEI at Barnard is not an optional or disconnected set of activities, but a central, coherent, and defining part of the College’s identity. To support that commitment, the College has invested in several structures to help catalyze and support our shared work.
The Office for Diversity Equity and Inclusion cultivates a climate and community where we all belong and are accountable to one another. As part of that, we work across the College on important global and national issues that directly affect our diverse community, such as affirmative action, reproductive rights, and freedom of expression. Most recently, I have worked closely with the College’s senior administration to make changes to our nondiscrimination policy to include caste as a protected category. To learn more about the importance of caste as a protected class, read an interview with Anupama Rao, Professor of History.
The Office of DEI is closely affiliated with several other offices and centers that share our commitment to engaged learning, including the Center for Engaged Pedagogy, which focuses on curriculum and our formal teaching and learning; the Athena Center for Leadership, which offers co-curricular opportunities to develop leadership with a focus on social impact; and the office for Community Engagement and Inclusion, which facilitates two-way opportunities with our neighborhood and across this great city. I encourage you to take a look at our Diversity Resource Hub to learn about other ways in which Barnard supports all of us and our shared work together.
Two other important notes about our work in support of diversity, equity, and inclusion: First, we understand that progress requires accountability. To help us be accountable to our community, and to help all of us better understand this community, we posted our DEI institutional commitments and an online dashboard that offers easy access to a rich trove of statistics on our makeup, climate, and outcomes.
Second, creating a diverse, equitable, and welcoming community belongs to all of us, and each of us is responsible for our participation. With that in mind, I invite all of you to consider taking part in upcoming opportunities that can help provide you a starting point and some momentum in the new year:
September
- 9/19: What the Constitution Means to Me with President Rosenbury
- 9/20: The Great Broadway Sweep
- 9/21: CEP’s Student Visualizing Goals for the Fall Semester
- 9/22: CEP’s Three Es: Teaching AI Ethics, Equity & Empowerment
- 9/25: CEP’s Student Joy and Science of Effective Note Taking
- 9/25: Athena’s Changing the Narrative by Changing the Storyteller event
- 9/26: Studying the Now: Unpacking the Supreme Court on Affirmative Action with President Rosenbury and Melissa Murray
- 9/29: Beyond Diversity: The Importance of Inclusion, Equity, and Belonging in Retaining Gen Z with Beyond Barnard
Ongoing
- Employee Resource Groups (ERGs)
- Athena’s Community of Practices: Take the Mic, Take Action!
- DEI workshop series
- Fall 2023 CEP Faculty Events
I often return to Black feminist scholar and activist bell hooks, and her idea of a beloved community — one that finds in our differences profound strength and new opportunities, one that will continue to shape each of us now and far beyond the time we leave these gates. I am deeply grateful every day to each of you who make up this beloved community, and I look forward to our time and work together throughout this semester.
With appreciation,
Jennifer Rosales
Vice President for Inclusion and Engaged Learning, and Chief Diversity Officer, Assistant Professor of Practice, Education