See the task force members.

Marquette University seeks to create a genuinely inclusive, anti-discriminatory campus climate by strengthening campus efforts at equity, diversity and inclusion. The President’s Task Force on Equity and Inclusion will put forward a set of recommendations that will result in positive and enduring changes that are inclusive of Marquette’s students, faculty, staff leadership and community.

Marquette University is engaged in a series of projects intended to create a transformational pathway toward a more inclusive campus. The President’s Task Force on Equity and Inclusion is intended as a full complement to Marquette’s established diversity initiatives including the development of a campus plan for diversity, equity, and inclusion and for the MU Campus Climate Study Project, both expected to be completed during the 2015 calendar year. The task force will be informed and guided by the work of the Diversity Advisory Committee and University Academic Senate Committee on Diversity and Equity.

The President’s Task Force on Equity and Inclusion has three purposes:

1. Serve as a locus of discussion on equity, diversity, and inclusion that will better inform ongoing planning as well as analysis of campus climate
2. Review existing strategies and vet proposed courses of action
3. Make recommendations regarding Marquette’s campus and community initiatives

The President’s Task Force on Equity and Inclusion will also employ constructs proposed by the University Academic Senate Committee on Diversity and Equity to frame discussions and recommendations. They are:

• Diversity refers to the experience of each member of the University community; with the understanding that each individual possesses unique social identities and that some of these social identities can intersect. Our commitment to diversity also includes cultivation of a climate that respects and values individual differences. Thus, the principles of diversity and inclusion refer to characteristics of each social identity (including the intersection of multiple identities) as well as systemic factors that lead to an inclusive community and environment.
• Equity is the full embrace of equality and fairness. The term equality is defined to mean that an individual should receive fair and similar treatment within a given community. Fairness means just treatment of all persons within the University community with an acknowledgment that persons with certain social identities have historically been oppressed within society. Therefore it is important to recognize that personal, cultural, institutional, and organizational discrimination and stigmatization along social identities creates and sustains privileges for some while creating and sustaining oppression for others. Further, the Marquette University community embraces the ethic of cura personalis (care for the whole person) and shares a commitment to moving beyond tolerance to embracing diversity.

In addition, the task force will work with the definition of inclusion advanced by the Association of American Colleges and Universities:

• Inclusion: The active, intentional, and ongoing engagement with diversity—in the curriculum, in the co-curriculum, and in communities (intellectual, social, cultural, geographical) with which individuals might connect—in ways that increase awareness, content knowledge, cognitive sophistication, and empathic understanding of the complex ways individuals interact within systems and institutions.

University leadership will review the task force and its objectives in spring 2016.