In August 2020, I issued the Black Lives Matter President's Equity and Action Report and communicated to campus our critical mandate to diversify our faculty, staff, and student body and ensure equitable opportunities for all faculty, staff, and students.
At that time, we had embraced the Framework for Reconciliation in Long Beach and I met with several groups of Black and African American campus and community constituents to begin a much more focused process of acknowledging the existence and longstanding impacts of systemic racism, especially anti-Blackness, listening to accounts and experiences of racial injustice, inequity or harm to community members, convening stakeholders to shape reform, and catalyzing action in the short-term, medium-term and long-term.
That December, I provided a campus update via the President's Black Lives Matter Equity and Action Progress Report and emphasized three initial priority goals:
- Increase the number of URM students, faculty, staff, and leadership.
- Create communication structures that allow for continuous monitoring of the status of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at CSULB
- Interrogate and improve practices to ensure all community members have equitable opportunities to advance, succeed and contribute.
Today I am pleased that our DEIA work continues, particularly through the President's Equity and Change Commission, and we seek to keep the campus community up to date through the reports on this site.
