Confronting Racism: September 2021 Update

McCourt’s Confronting Racism Initiative to date

In the summer of 2020, and in response to the protests and social unrest in the U.S. and around the world, the McCourt School redoubled our efforts to become a more diverse, equitable, inclusive, and anti-racist public policy school. In an unprecedented collaboration with McCourt students, academic and research faculty, alumni and staff, McCourt developed a framework for confronting racism in our community which included:

Within this framework, we identified our goals and formed four committees made up of McCourt students, academic and research faculty, alumni and staff who volunteered to participate and advance this work.

The work from our four Confronting Racism Committees has been incredible and has created resources and recommendations to move this important work forward. To read more about the progress made from our four confronting racism committees, visit McCourt’s confronting racism page here .

Even as the McCourt School is grateful to the members of the four committees for their research, recommendations, and community impact to advance a more just and equitable community, we are equally excited for what lies ahead for this important work. 

Next Steps for McCourt’s Confronting Racism Initiative

With a solid foundation from which to build, and in recognition of the need to remain engaged in this work at the highest levels of our school, the McCourt School is poised to institutionalize Confronting Racism within our existing organizational structure. We will embed this effort in two related ways:

(1) establish the Inclusive Environments committee as a standing committee, and assign responsibility for the Teaching & Learning, Partnerships and Impact recommendations to other standing McCourt School committees or offices and, 

(2) create the Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Committee to coordinate this cross-school effort to advance our work on Confronting Racism, and other opportunities to expand diversity, equity and inclusion. 

These committees and offices have taken lead responsibility for the recommendations: 

•  Teaching & Learning recommendations will be reviewed by the Curriculum Committee, which will have responsibility for working with the faculty and others on implementation.
• Recommendations of the Partnerships committee will be pursued by the Dean’s Office.
• Ongoing work on Impacts committee recommendations will be led by the Communications team.
• The Inclusive Environment committee will become a standing committee.

In recognition of the importance of engagement and participation from our entire community, the Inclusive Environment standing committee will continue including members that represent students, staff, faculty and alumni. We are grateful to Wesley Joe and Jacyln Clevenger for their continued leadership in chairing this committee. 

To ensure that we have a comprehensive overview of all activities in the justice, equity, diversity and inclusion space, we will be creating the new Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) coordinating committee that will be co-chaired by our Chief of Staff Sharon Mar and Associate Professor of the Practice of Racial and Social Justice Jasmine Tyler. The committee will be responsible for advising the Dean with progress of all streams of work and provide recommendations for ways to further advance and institutionalize them. The JEDI Committee will be responsible for hosting bi-annual meetings to set goals and report on progress.