The Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) aims to promote inclusive excellence in the university’s teaching, research and service dimensions. ODI’s mission is to foster an institutional culture where there is no dichotomy between our values of diversity and inclusion, and our goals of educational quality and excellence.
We must constantly build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from his sermon, “Antidotes for Fear” in “Strength to Love”As we recess for the holiday break, wishing you peace this holiday season and the promise of a new beginning in 2018. Thank you for all the ways that you have engaged and pursued aims around diversity, equity and inclusion. I look forward to continued partnerships and engagement.
Last month the community came together to celebrate Mission Day, which was focused on SU’s 125-year history ─ a milestone that engenders both joy and self-examination. Anniversaries provide important opportunities to reflect on the past, assess the present and envision the future. As such, anniversaries can be filled with nostalgia, pride and challenge.
Read More about Open Letter to the Seattle University Community (Vol 1. No. 2)
Open Letter to My Seattle University Community,
I trust that you are well settled into the term and holding close the promise of beginning anew in 2017. For sure, these early days of the new year reflect a rapidly shifting and uncertain landscape; one that has caused many in our campus community to experience fear, isolation, confusion and distress, spurred most recently by the Presidential Executive Orders on immigration. While these sweeping actions meet the approval of some and the outcry of others, my message is not about who is and who is not drawn to a particular viewpoint in that regard. Challenges and opportunities abound. Period.
On November 13th, a group of our SU faculty and staff gathered in a co-sponsored event by the Center for Jesuit Education and the Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion and shared a robust and productive discussion, which centered around the article and presentation given by Bryan Massingale, Professor at Fordham, who invites us to see the very heart of Jesuit Education as the work of changing consciousness about racial injustice.
You can watch or read Massingale’s talk here
March 28, 2017, Benaroya Hall/S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium
Co-Presented by Seattle University
Bryan Stevenson is the Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer and a professor of law at New York University School of Law. He has won relief for dozens of condemned prisoners, argued five times before the Supreme Court, and won national acclaim for his work challenging bias against the poor and people of color.