Our Commitment to an Inclusive and Supportive UM

October 12, 2021

Dear Campus Community, 

The University of Montana is at its best when we translate into action our abiding commitment to fostering a supportive, inclusive learning and working environment. This is a priority for me personally, and it is our shared responsibility as stewards of this University.

We embody this commitment when we repudiate – as strongly as possible – conduct that violates our values. I find personally abhorrent the recently discovered misogynist and homophobic content published by one of our faculty members. Such views do not represent our institution’s values, and as we address this matter internally, we also must counter hate and exclusion through words and actions.

Embodying this commitment requires not only responding to conduct that does not align with our values, but also proactively and relentlessly working toward equity and inclusion through our daily actions.

What proactive actions and efforts, then, do represent University of Montana values?

Actions that continue to shine a light on and remove inequities and barriers to a safe, supportive learning and working environment. Actions that build inclusive excellence into all we do. Actions that ensure we maintain an unyielding focus on where we are falling short and how we can improve.

Inclusivity is a tenet of our institutional mission. And while our work in this area is often quiet, it is real, ongoing and critical. UM’s Diversity Advisory Council leadership has spent the last year partnering with the UM executive team to develop a refreshed UM Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Plan that outlines the near-term and future actions we commit to taking, as well as establishes layers of accountability to create an equity-minded, inclusive standard across the University. We will work with faculty, staff and students to track progress and collaboratively revise the plan over time.

This plan, together with the work already underway, builds upon recent investments in our Student Advocacy Resource Center, the Office of Equal Opportunity & Title IX, the Office for Disability Equity and the Office of Organizational Learning and Development. It builds upon the successful re-launch of the Women’s Leadership Initiative and the establishment of an Excellence in Native American Education plan for UM. And it also builds upon the decisions we’ve made over the past two years to hire talented leaders into newly established roles here on campus, including a tribal outreach specialist, a director of the S.E.A. Change Initiative and a director of inclusive excellence. Many across campus are advancing in other important ways our commitment to become a more inclusive, equitable campus, and our leaders at the highest levels – including me – will be held accountable to making progress.

I highlight these established and ongoing efforts not to suggest that UM is perfect but rather to encourage all of us to recognize that we must continually identify where we need to take action to be better. That is why I want to take this opportunity to reassert our ongoing collective obligation to confront injustice and inequities in our community. Doing so requires that we look deeply inward to assess whether we are proactively and wholeheartedly combating racism, sexism, homophobia and discrimination in all forms.

Systemic change requires deliberate and ongoing work. This work belongs to each of us, and it is only through self-reflection and daily concrete action that we will move closer to being a model of inclusive excellence.

Seth