Decolonization, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at AMPD

1. There should be a focus on the student, faculty and staff experience within AMPD, with an emphasis on culture, belonging and inclusion, to make diverse community members feel welcome and valued. This will support AMPD to retain these individuals in their roles.

2. There should be a focus on the student, faculty and staff experience within AMPD, with an emphasis on culture, belonging and inclusion, to make diverse community members feel welcome and valued. This will support AMPD to retain these individuals in their roles.

3. Establish a students’ advisory group on equity that regularly meets directly withthe Dean, where matters of student recruitment, experience, and expectation can be freely discussed.

1. Commit to the ongoing and intentional recruitment of students from different identity groups, in all disciplines.

2. Establish a plan, in consultation with students, faculty, unions and alumni, to enhance the identification and recruitment of more racially diverse faculty in all academic disciplines. These individuals should be considered for all levels of teaching, as well as faculty leadership positions.

a. The Collective Agreement between YUFA and YorkU recognizes a joint Subcommittee to the Joint Committee on the Administration of the Agreement (JCOAA) on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.

1. The Dean’s Office is encouraged to share this report within the AMPD community and with all relevant stakeholders.

2. Provide the opportunity for and support the development of identity-based student, faculty, and staff affinity groups (or something similar), particularly across academic departments.

a. Create a formal process to solicit feedback, strategic direction, and support from these groups.

b. Provide consistent and clear updates on equity issues, commitments, and responses to feedback and guidance received.

c. Support and recognize the students, faculty, and staff leaders who take on the additional labour to do this work. Integrate equity work into annual reviews and promotional considerations for staff and faculty.

3. Create a faculty support group for white faculty. Use this as a place to acknowledge, learn, develop, and grow collective awareness around privilege and whiteness.

a. Create specific training sessions/modules that explore the production and maintenance of whiteness (particularly in academia)

b. Collectively decide on learning topics that are important to the group. Ensure a diversity of topics, authors, speakers, and perspectives.

c. Ensure psychological safety within these spaces. Make room for mistakes, honesty, and accountability.

1. Establish a robust, transparent, and clear complaints and feedback process within AMPD for students, faculty and staff, which can be complementary to processes already in place at York University.

a. The process should be guided by principles of confidentiality, impartiality, procedural fairness, and timeliness.

b. This approach should be complainant-centred, equity-informed, and mindful of power differentials, mitigating against victim-blaming or reprisals.

c. There should be informal transformative justice principles built into the approach to support students, faculty, and staff who do not want to participate in launching a formal complaint.

2. Create a sustainable process to regularly survey all AMPD community members- students, faculty, staff and management - to gather data on their identities, experiences, and priorities to address and achieve equity:

a. Ensure that information gathering objectives and processes are made clear, including conditions around anonymity, uses of data, and ways in which results will be shared and/or suppressed;

b. Disaggregate data by race and other identity markers wherever possible to identify disparities, and work with students, faculty, and staff from those identity groups to expand upon data gathered, solicit guidance on how it can be interpreted, and determine what interventions need to be implemented; and

c. Commit to a long-term data gathering and analysis process, where results can be collected consistently, and data is comparable.

1. The Dean should explicitly acknowledge the findings in this report and denounce racism, colonialism, and inequities within AMPD.

2. Adopt and model a posture of practice, in which leaders (the Dean, management and Chairs) can appropriately acknowledge and repair harm caused, and continue to learn and work towards becoming equity-informed leaders.

1. Create a system for further engagement with stakeholders and to operationalize findings and recommendations from this report;

a. Commit dedicated staff and resources to this work;

b. Develop short-, medium-, and long-term equity commitments in collaboration with the AMPD community and stakeholders;

c. Ensure commitments are communicated throughout the School so that all students, faculty, and staff understand that equity is a priority; and

d. Implement ongoing reporting to share progress on equity commitments, goals, and targets to ensure the AMPD community can hold leadership accountable for this work.

1. Provide training for all faculty and staff which educates AMPD employees on foundational elements of equity and anti-racism.

a. Commit to ongoing training and capacity building of incumbent staff and faculty, as well as onboarding new employees.

2. Provide resources (training, guides, videos, etc.) for everyone in the AMPD community on how to address racism and discrimination, including a shared vocabulary for acknowledging, identifying and responding to incidents when they occur.

1. Create expectations outlining how all members of the AMPD community(including students, faculty, staff, and administration) are expected to address racism and discrimination when they witness it and reaffirm that there will be no repercussions for doing so.

1. Provide resources, informational materials, guides, strategies, and best practices for staff and faculty on eliminating systemic racism and oppression thatcontribute to the differential treatment of black, Indigenous and racialized students.

2. Create an annual, open consultation series on equity, where the Dean’s Officecan engage with students, faculty, and staff to understand their perspectives and receive feedback on how AMPD can make the School more welcoming.

a. Ensure these recommendations are documented, shared, actively considered and implemented where possible.

b. The Dean should communicate why recommendations are not feasible in order to build transparency within the community and demystify assumptions around the capacity of the Dean‘s Office

1. Work with Indigenous artists, faculty and, where appropriate, students to identify and remove colonial perspectives and content in current curricula, and to decolonize and Indigenize lessons. Ensure this labour is compensated.

2. The Dean’s Office should procure trainers to offer role-specific training for faculty on how to diversify their lessons and engage with students inconversations about equity.

1. Work with Indigenous artists, faculty and, where appropriate, students to identify and remove colonial perspectives and content in current curricula, and to decolonize and Indigenize lessons. Ensure this labour is compensated.

2. The Dean’s Office should procure trainers to offer role-specific training forfaculty on how to diversify their lessons and engage with students inconversations about equity.

1. The Dean’s Office, in partnership with Chairs, faculty and unions, should clearly articulate that academic freedom and equity-informed teaching are not mutually exclusive.

2. Foster collaboration between the Dean’s Office, departments and programs to question notions of “classical” forms of art, recognizing and revising Eurocentrism within curricula.

3. Chairs and faculty should ensure content concerning Indigenous cultures and histories, as well as perspectives from other equity-deserving groups, isformally included in every department’s curriculum, and:

a. Chairs should encourage faculty to pursue equity-focused research and artistic projects; and

b. Faculty should encourage students to broaden their studies and research to engage with new content and consider how equity and the arts intersect.