After spending the summer interviewing candidates for the position of Chief Diversity Officer (CDO), the search committee, with the aid of the search firm Witt/Kieffer, has chosen four finalists to meet with the Brandeis community in the first three weeks of September. Brandeis students are encouraged to attend these meetings to evaluate the candidates and ask questions. Feedback will be gathered after each session to gauge the community’s opinions on each candidate.
Student input is crucial and beneficial in the CDO search. Not only are student interests inherently tied to the administration’s impact on campus life, but the search for a CDO would not even have begun without student vocalization last year. Yet in the job post for the CDO on executive search firm Witt/Kieffer’s website, Ford Hall—the protest that opened dialogue about appointing a CDO—is not even mentioned. The students involved in Ford Hall applied the pressure to the university to make our institution more diverse and inclusive; they initiated the labor of finding a CDO and making the Brandeis campus representative of all members. But in reading any informational emails or documents about the CDO search, including the official job posting, it is easy to think that the Brandeis administration sprang into action of its own volition.
The Plan for Diversity and Inclusion also requires all faculty members to attend two diversity training programs: a Title IX training and an orientation for new faculty members. However, the three other diversity and inclusion workshops throughout the fall semester are optional for faculty and staff. In order to make the university’s diversity efforts as impactful as possible, all training sessions should be mandatory.
Hiring a CDO is an extremely important step for the university’s efforts to become more representative, as are training programs to orient employees to Brandeis’ changing visions of diversity and inclusion. If the university is truly determined to be more inclusive, it should cite the labor of the Ford Hall movement rather than appropriate its ideas and mandate all employee training sessions in order to fully commit to its Plan for Diversity and Inclusion.
