Community is at the centre of Carleton
We’re fortunate that ours is a diverse community. Students, staff, and faculty from around the world call Carleton home. Established as a university to meet the needs of the local community, and later becoming known for internationally engaged research and student support, many of us are guests in this territory or are descendants of those who arrived by transatlantic and transpacific processes not of our making. We are connected to each other and to this place.
We know that throughout our national history, dominant cultures have simultaneously resisted and embraced diversity through patterns of evolving contradiction. Diversity has expanded alongside exclusion, discrimination, harassment and violence. But it has also been and continues to be a vital source of collective resilience, renewal and creativity.
We acknowledge and respect the Algonquin Anishinaabeg people within whose unceded, unsurrendered territory the Carleton campus is located. This acknowledgement is important to us and is a reminder of our pledge for (re)conciliation with Indigenous Peoples.
EDI is critical to our success.
It provides a powerful lens through which to chart our future. That has become ever clearer in the immediate environment of pandemic dislocation, transition to virtual operations, economic contraction, geopolitical instability, and social justice reckoning. We know the combined thrust of these dynamics has only exacerbated pre-existing societal disparities.
But prioritizing EDI isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s fundamental to our vision for excellence, community and wellness.
Inclusive communities are generative and prolific, bringing together different perspectives, experiences and identities to disrupt convention in ways essential to consequential imagination and discovery. This may be observed within organizations across multiple sectors and is especially vital for learning, teaching, research and working in institutions of higher education.
As a diverse community, it’s essential that we integrate equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in the core activities and academic mission to ensure everyone can achieve their full potential.
This is more than paying lip service, it’s about acting every day – building the appropriate structures and adopting the right processes, procedures and behaviours – to advance our EDI objectives.
This plan touches every part of the university
To have a real impact, the action we take must be felt across the whole university. That’s why these recommendations are comprehensive. They’ve been developed with extensive consultation with our community, to ensure diverse voices are heard and acted upon.
Prioritizing EDI isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s fundamental to our vision for excellence, community and wellness.