Syracuse University implements 5-year DEI plan
'We will demonstrate our commitment to being an inclusive campus that supports... underrepresented minorities, international students and faculty, the disabled, the LGBTQ+ community.'
SU does not see the 'national trauma being created by DEI, and will likely continue to exploit deteriorating race relations to their own benefit and to everyone else's detriment,' Vice Chairman of the College Republicans said.
Syracuse University (SU) released its first draft framework for its Strategic Academic Plan recently, in which the school affirms its commitment to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) principles and programs.
The draft is a five-year roadmap outlining 10 goals for the university to reach by 2028, marking the first academic strategic plan SU has released since its 2015’s Trajectory to Excellence. One of those goals is to promote DEIA programs on campus.
“We will demonstrate our commitment to being an inclusive campus that supports human thriving and a sense of belonging for all students, faculty and staff of any ability, orientation, or background, with particular attention to the experiences and success of underrepresented minorities, international students and faculty, the disabled, the LGBTQ+ community, and Native Americans,” the draft reads.
[RELATED: ‘UMich prepares to launch DEI 2.0’]
It also describes SU’s commitment to diversity and inclusion as “broad, distinctive, and ongoing,” and proposes concrete ways to fulfill it.
Some methods mentioned include “investment in our diversity hiring plan, expanding our professional development opportunities and affinity group work, and making important changes to promotion and tenure to recognize the significant and unacknowledged advising work and public scholarship undertaken, often by underrepresented minority faculty.”
The proposal also aims to orient all curricula across all disciplines towards Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility.
“Faculty will need to modernize curricula across disciplines to ensure relevant approaches to DEIA and internationalization and will have incentives to center their research and creative endeavors on issues of DEIA,” the draft reads.
The proposal echoed this sentiment again in its concluding pages, vowing to “[a]pproach diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) as part of everything we do—a responsibility to be shared by all parts of campus.”
[RELATED: ‘DeSantis admin requires public universities to report DEI, CRT-related expenditures’]
DEIA was even its own “working group,” one of seven formed to help create the draft.
Dominick Buehler, Vice Chairman of the College Republicans at SU, shared his thoughts with Campus Reform on the proposal’s DEIA priorities.
“While myself and my Republican colleagues will always support equality under the law, colorblind meritocracy, and treating everybody with dignity regardless of skin color, the universities and the left which controls them are, unfortunately, too high off of the electoral profits of identity politics to realize the national trauma being created by DEI, and will likely continue to exploit deteriorating race relations to their own benefit and to everyone else’s detriment,” he explained.
The plan will be finalized and shared early April after a feedback period, according to a Friday SU news release.
Campus Reform has reached out to Syracuse University Media Relations, Vice Chairman of College Republicans at Syracuse University Dominick Buehler, and Student Association President David Bruen.
Follow @johnjparker12 on Twitter.
