Dean's Message - February 22, 2021
Dear GSBS Community,
I am writing to highlight President Monaco’s message from last Wednesday describing the work Tufts has been doing to work toward the goal of becoming an anti-racist institution. Over 100 faculty, students and staff worked together to identify and prioritize areas of change in each of the five workstreams. Links to those reports are below:
- Executive Summary
- Final report of the Institutional Audit and Targeted Action workstream
- Final report of the Campus Safety and Policing workstream
- Final report of the Public Art workstream
- Final report of the Compositional Diversity workstream
- Final report of the Equity and Inclusion workstream
Importantly, the University has pledged $25 million towards these efforts, an amount that includes resources dedicated to hiring faculty from underrepresented groups, thus addressing a longstanding challenge to creating more diverse and inclusive community at Tufts.
I’m especially proud of the accomplishments of the GSBS anti-racist working group, whose volunteer members have worked to define and find solutions for issues within GSBS. Our admissions subcommittee has provided cultural bias training for our admissions committees to ensure a more equitable process, and our public events subgroup has worked, along with others at GSBS, to put on a series of events to celebrate and recognize Black History Month. The last two events will be this week: “A New Era of Equity in Biotech,” a talk by Tia Lyles-Williams sponsored by the Black Student Alliance, will take place on Tuesday; and “Medicine, Public Health, and Anti-Racism Activism: The Life of Dr. Virginia M. Alexander,” a talk by Vanessa Northington Gamble, is happening on Thursday. More information about those events can be found on the GSBS calendar.
Dan Jay, Dean