Dear colleagues:

As our community welcomes the new year, we thought we would reach out jointly with a brief note about our DEIJ efforts. We are well aware that in the past few weeks DEIJ efforts have come under increasing scrutiny in the media and been the subject of public conversation. It seems, then, worth reiterating the values that underlie what we have aspired to build at the school for the past going on to 10 years in the DEIJ space.

We aspire to be a community that is diverse, inclusive, equitable, and just. We have used the DEIJ acronym not passively, but actively, meaning each of the words in the fullness of their expression.

We mean diversity of identities, yes, but also of perspectives, of backgrounds, of life paths, of political views. And we have tried hard to live this value—to “walk the talk”—by investing, yes, in ensuring that the identities of our staff, faculty, and students reflect the populations we serve, but also that we create space for a diversity of perspectives, and that we see identity much more broadly than through a single racial/ethnic or gender lens. We have embedded some of our aspirations on diversity in our strategy map and are now starting to revisit this map for its every five-year refresh, with even more expansive intent.

We mean, by inclusive, a community that prizes inclusive excellence. We aspire to be a community where everyone who wishes to join us is welcome and can access the conditions necessary to thrive and succeed. We have never seen diversity and inclusion as being at odds with excellence. Rather we see them as enabling such excellence. We are not starry eyed dreamers. We recognize that excellence means hard work, commitment, perseverance, and that not everyone wants to be part of a community that aims to be excellent at all times. Inclusive excellence means that we make space for everyone who wants to be here and is willing to share in the work to push us forward.

We mean equitable, being careful that it is equity—not simply equality—that we aspire to. We mean equity of opportunity, allowing for the reality that equity may require us to lend a hand to some more than to others, to ensure that everyone can—through hard work and commitment—thrive and succeed. We mean equity while recognizing that the path to equity is not always so clear and sometimes requires judicious implementation, and always requires humility to make sure we get it right. Even as we recognize that sometimes we do not get it right, we always strive to improve, to be better.

We mean just, in its broadest sense. A just community is one that is impartial and fair, that gives everyone a hearing, that is merciful, never cruel, that listens to a plurality of perspectives, that is grounded in reason, and that is unafraid of moving forward, of trying to find the best way into the future amidst competing ideas of what that future should be.

That is the foundation of DEIJ that we have tried to build at the school, and our commitment is to keep pursuing this vision. To do that, we have always been clear that there is no one magic solution. No one hire will immediately make us a diverse community. No one training program will make us as inclusive as we hope to be. No one program will make us perfectly equitable. That is why we articulated in 2015 an 11-point plan towards our DEIJ efforts which has evolved over time, most recently into our DEIJ 10-point plan. And that is why we have said, time and again, that DEIJ is a journey, not a destination, that we will never have “arrived,” just as one never “gets to” being excellent. Achieving excellence in a community that is diverse, inclusive, equitable, and just is a journey, ongoing, one that involves all of us, which is why we have encouraged and supported the ever-growing school-wide efforts at the unit level that push local DEIJ efforts, reinforcing that DEIJ is what happens throughout the community, every day.   We also realize that as individuals, at times the pursuit of DEIJ can be messy, confusing, and difficult.  But so is our pursuit of scientific knowledge, scholarship, and teaching. Our goal is to create a school with the infrastructure and culture that supports each of us as we build a diverse, equitable, inclusive and just SPH community

We have been on this journey now for quite some time. We would like to think that we have come far as a community, and in so doing have contributed a bit to the broader academic public health community’s movement on this journey as well. And the further along we move on this path, the clearer it becomes how much there is to be done.

At a moment in time, when public conversation has centered around whether DEIJ efforts are compatible with a vision that prioritizes excellence, we suggest that our work on DEIJ is, in fact, complementary with the pursuit of excellence, that they elevate approaches that help us be and do our very best. As we pursue DEIJ in academic spaces, now is the time to double down on the excellence these efforts help sustain. It is time to reaffirm the essence of what makes universities an essential part of our national life: our commitment to maintaining a plurality of ideas and perspectives, towards the reason-informed pursuit of truth. This means being willing to interrogate our biases, to find areas of compromise with those we disagree with, to generate ideas that help create a healthier world, one supported by excellence in ideas and in practice.

Our goal is to continue doing this work. Not from a place of rancor, of railing against a world that does not understand, but rather from a place informed by clarity of vision, a willingness to act in alignment with this vision, and a belief that, eventually, the arc of the moral universe indeed will lead to a better world, for all.

We look forward to our continued work together on our DEIJ efforts in 2024.

Warmly,

Yvette, Sandro

Yvette Cozier, DSc, MPH
Associate Dean for DEIJ

Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH
Dean

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