MIP Statement on Racial Justice

The Masters in International Policy (MIP) joins other university centers at Stanford in condemning the police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, David McAtee, and countless other African-Americans. We express our outrage at police violence and express our solidarity with Black Lives Matter.

In order to realize the goal of racial justice, we believe it is important for every American institution to take a critical look at its own practices and performance, and that includes MIP. We need to move beyond words to concrete actions.

MIP recognizes the need to improve our record on diversity, both with regard to students and faculty, and acknowledge that we could do better. This is particularly true with regard to the Black community, which has been under-represented in the program.  After convening a Town Hall with the MIP community, we are able to pledge to do the following:

• The program will redouble its efforts to consider such applicants, and will undertake to increase the pipeline of applicants through outreach to historically black colleges and universities, and to community colleges.
• MIP will seek to increase the diversity of its adjunct faculty and work with the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) to do the same with Institute fellows teaching in the program. It will encourage existing faculty to expand their syllabi and readings to encompass broader points of view. The program urges students to make suggestions for more diverse classes to be added to the area of specialization requirements.
• We encourage the International Policy Student Association (IPSA) to elect a Diversity and Inclusion Officer(s) who can serve on the new FSI Racial Justice Task Force.
• MIP will consider ways of including mandatory diversity and inclusion training as part of its curriculum for incoming students.
• The program will hold regular Town Hall meetings to allow both current students, faculty, and alumni to come together to discuss implementation of these and other ideas.  

We want to thank our students for challenging us to meet this moment, and we look forward to continuing this engagement in the coming school year.

The MIP Program Leadership