MUIH Community,
We are faced with troubling times; years of racial inequality, systemic racism, and the recent murders of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd. Like many others before them, these murders were exacerbated by the numerous incidents of police brutality, racial injustices, and horrific displays of white supremacist ideals toward African-American communities worldwide.
There is tremendous suffering, pain, and outrage throughout the country and the MUIH community. MUIH firmly supports those who are fighting for sustainable change, those who are suffering, and those who support and march with the Black Lives Matter movement. MUIH supports those who have personally experienced racial inequality in their own lives and in the lives of their family and friends. MUIH stands as a community demanding lasting change, inclusion, respect, justice, and human dignity.
MUIH will do more than send out an email with words of support for those who are suffering and those fighting for change. We will do more than express outrage for what is occurring now and has occurred over many years. Now, more than ever, we will lean on our foundational principles and values.
This a pivotal time of meaningful change in America and it will also be a pivotal time of meaningful change at MUIH. It is my expectation that MUIH will be a safe and equitable place for all members of our community. For starters, we plan on conducting an honest and independent assessment to address the deficiencies at MUIH relative to race, biases, and inequities. We will listen to one another and have hard and uncomfortable conversations to confront our own past and our internal blind spots. Our Faculty and Staff will become better informed and aware, as individuals and a community. We will take outcomes-based action. We are committed to long-term sustainable change in our self-awareness, mindset, interactions, and operations, and we will do this work together, as a community.
We will hire an outside expert to help us develop and implement a process to do this open and honest self-assessment and discovery to look into areas including institutional bias, implied bias, systemic racism, inequities, and support for African-Americans and other minorities impacted by these inequities. We strive to look at this from the lenses of students, faculty, staff, alumni, clients, and the populations we serve. We are developing a broad-based engagement plan to identify the suffering that has occurred at MUIH in the past and to implement systemic and sustainable solutions to our shortcomings.
In addition, we will evaluate our curriculum. As a university focused on health and wellness for the individual and communities, we plan to address how our curriculum relates to anti-racism and builds intercultural competency. As a first step, the University Curriculum Committee, in collaboration with members of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee, will establish a working group to develop a plan on how to incorporate anti-racism education and build intercultural competency throughout program curricula. The working group will seek input from a number of stakeholders including students. This plan will be presented to the Provost for formal approval by the beginning of the fall trimester and a summary of the approved plan will be made public at that time.
We will also look at what we can do in the near term to help MUIH move forward in addressing these issues. Our community and the general public will be updated as activities and opportunities are implemented. In the meantime, we welcome your ideas and feedback.
The objective is to perform a serious self-reflection of MUIH to make meaningful improvements. We want to do it right and we want to do it with integrity and authenticity. We need to take individual and collective responsibility. We will be open-minded and listen. We recognize that MUIH community members come from different backgrounds with different perspectives and experiences. We acknowledge there are biases that exist in each of us and in MUIH.
This will not be easy or comfortable work, but we are up to the challenge. We as a community will be better.
With Deep Sincerity,
Marc
Marc Levin
President and CEO