Dear Members of the Brown Community,

I’m writing to share the next steps for the diversity action plan, including an important decision that the University’s leadership has made about an essential role for the campus community concerning the plan.

First, what started as a diversity action plan is now a plan for diversity and inclusion at Brown. Rather than release the plan as a final document at the end of November as originally planned, we will share the plan this Friday, Nov. 20, as a working document. By releasing a working document early, we can gather the community input we need to establish a set of concrete, achievable actions that will make Brown more fully diverse and inclusive. We will seek the feedback of our entire campus community of students, faculty and staff on the set of actions to ensure ownership by Brown as a community in the steps the plan will put forward.

The comment period for an online form will be open for two weeks, until Dec. 4, and we will perform a thorough review of the feedback to ensure that the final actions are those to which we as a community can hold ourselves accountable. We’ll release the final plan by the end of the semester, informed by our commitment as a community to effect real change.

This is not the start of a process. We have been hearing from our community on issues of diversity and inclusion for some time, so this provides a moment for Brown as a community to commit collectively to action.

Sincerely,

Christina Paxson
President
Professor of Economics and Public Policy
Brown University