Introduction

As a department leader, you have a critical and influential role to play in the culture and climate of your department, which in turn influences who chooses to join your community--be they faculty, staff, or students. Efforts to diversify the faculty, the staff, and the student body will only succeed when the climate is inclusive and equitable. Boise State has much work to do in this regard, so this section of the Handbook is by no means comprehensive. It serves as an overview of the institution's initiatives around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); a resource for inclusive leadership practices; and a resource for faculty development around DEI.

Recommended Reading:

• The Department Chair as Transformative Diversity Leader: Building Inclusive Learning Environments in Higher Education
• An Inclusive Academy: Achieving Diversity and Excellence
• Written/Unwritten: Diversity and the Hidden Truths of Tenure

Boise State's Statement of Diversity and Inclusivity

Adopted February 24, 2017

Boise State University is actively committed to diversity and inclusivity, a stance in alignment with our Statement of Shared Values. We recognize that our success is dependent on how well we value, engage, include, and utilize the rich diversity of our faculty, staff, students, and alumni. We believe that prejudice, oppression, and discrimination are detrimental to human dignity, and that a vibrant and diverse campus community enhances the learning environment of the populations that we serve. We are fully committed to treating all stakeholders with dignity and respect, and to working collectively on an ongoing basis to build and maintain a community that understands, celebrates, and values diversity, and expects and fosters inclusivity at all levels.

Diversity is the variety of intersecting identities that make individuals unique, including but not limited to race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender expression or identity, socio-economic status, age, country of origin, veteran status, abilities, spirituality, religious beliefs, and political beliefs. Diversity recognizes the uniqueness of individuals, populations, groups and their perspectives and experiences.

Inclusivity is the conscious and deliberate decision to continuously work towards the creation of an accepting and nurturing campus climate where similarities and differences are respected, supported, and valued by ensuring the active participation of the entire campus community.

An earnest commitment to diversity and inclusivity incorporates the following:

• Unconditionally rejecting every form of bigotry, discrimination, hateful rhetoric, and hateful action.
• Understanding that each individual is unique and deserving of respect.
• Recognizing that people have intersecting identities, which means that individuals experience identity differently, within structures of inequality and/or privilege.
• Expanding the view of diversity beyond the acknowledgment of commonalities to an acceptance, recognition and honoring of difference.
• Acknowledging that within diverse populations there are unique individual and collective needs, as well as individual and collective achievements.
• Moving beyond simple tolerance of differences towards the more comprehensive goals of acceptance, pluralism, and inclusive excellence.
• Explicitly addressing the barriers to communication, relationship building, and organizational development caused by misunderstanding, dominance, and fear.
• Promoting active and regular engagement between individuals and groups who represent different characteristics and categories of identity in order to explore difference in a safe and nurturing environment, and to develop understanding across lines of perceived difference.
• Endorsing our values of open, respectful discourse and exchange of ideas from the widest variety of intellectual, religious, class, cultural, and political perspectives.
• Making a commitment to inclusivity at all levels and the active and meaningful involvement of diverse individuals in decision-making processes.
• Developing a process for identifying goals regarding diversity and inclusivity, along with the reasonable and realistic allocation of resources and a structure for accountability for the achievement of those goals.