Brown has a longstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion as central to fulfilling its academic mission to advance knowledge and understanding. The Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) plays a primary leadership role in this work, ensuring openness, opportunity, and access to all faculty, staff, and students.

ODI is the caretaker of myriad pathways to - and through - the university, offering clear sightlines, open gateways, and bright illumination to everyone. We serve as the home of the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership, the Leadership Alliance, the Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship program, and other research-oriented, pipeline initiatives that intertwine imagination, excellence, and a diversity of perspectives, ideas, and experiences in higher education. We host and support events for our community that promote conversations about — and commitments to — diversity and inclusion as part of a strong academic community where everyone can thrive. And we thoughtfully oversee the University’s Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan, or DIAP (formally, Pathways to Diversity and Inclusion: An Action Plan for Brown University).

With a responsibility for the entire community, we often work with others. In concert with partners across campus and beyond, we strive to draw together a community that reflects the world beyond our campus; to support the Office of Equity and Compliance in ensuring that members of this community are free from discrimination and harassment through our work with the Campus Climate Response Team; and to provide an environment where all feel welcome and empowered in our dormitories, classrooms, laboratories, and offices that support Brown's education and research. We share a responsibility to foster diverse and inclusive living, learning and working environments, collaborating on assessments of campus climate, providing data-rich assessments, thoughtful resources and support, and intelligent action plans to the community. We support the recruitment of world-class and diverse faculty and staff, laboring to secure clear, open routes to career advancement and collective success for all.

Whether alone or in concert with others, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion works to affirm that every individual, no matter their background, is valued for their contributions as Brown endeavors to benefit communities, the nation and the world. We know that a diversity of perspectives, ideas, and experiences helps to overcome stereotypes and drives academic excellence, innovation, discovery, and better understanding of the human condition. We champion the empowering, inspiring histories of our diverse and inclusive community at each and every turn. We are better together.