The DEI Blog Greeting from the President

Salvete, o sodales! Welcome to 2022, a year in which the ACL has resolved to continue to grow, to improve, to meet the needs of our members and their students, and to support a change for good in our world.

The Board of Governors has not met in person since January, 2020. Much of that meeting was dedicated to working with and learning from Shannon Sullivan, founder of the Groundswell Alliance. During the fall of 2019 she had offered virtual workshops on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the Board and others in leadership roles for ACL. At that meeting we worked hard on identifying practices and beliefs that stand in the way of allowing ACL to become a truly diverse, inclusive, equitable organization where all participants have the opportunity to feel they belong. 

Shannon used our input to create for us a diversity lens: a series of questions to ask ourselves as we make decisions for ACL activities. It is available here and all committees use it. 

Quickly, of course, our lives all changed. COVID disrupted our teaching and our opportunities to be together–and a series of murders of Black Americans by police and others brought startling clarity to the reality of racism in our society.  Our good intentions became all the more urgent.

One action was to create a Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.  The initial Chair was William Lee, and he has been succeeded by Miriam Patrick. This month the Committee is inaugurating a regular blog to introduce themselves, their work, and the ways in which they’re available to aid us all with the goal of building a strong and meaningful community. 

These are kinds of topics that the blog aspires to address: 

1. Regular updates on how the ACL is progressing in their goals and proposed changes using the DEI lens including but not limited to

   1. regular updates from the board and committees

   2. donations made

   3. explanation of relationships with other organizations or companies when needed

   4. discussion of events or issues

2. Space for voices of those who have been, whether consciously or subconsciously, silenced by the Classics community, the ACL, and in teaching, research, etc. 

3. Stories, both positive and negative, from these communities

4. New resources including (but not limited to) the topics pertaining to DEI, multiculturalism, and progress for change

   1. research

   2. teaching ideas

   3. JCL progress

   4. novellas

   5. and other pertinent items

It is an honor to introduce such an important undertaking on the day when we honor the life and work of Martin Luther King.

Ex animo,

Mary