Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement
Our Mission
The Elliott School’s comprehensive mission focuses on teaching, research, and policy engagement: To educate the next generation of international leaders; to conduct research and produce scholarship that advances understanding of important global issues; and to engage the public and the policy community in the United States and around the world, thereby fostering international dialogue and shaping policy solutions. These intertwined mission-level responsibilities must take into account the great changes transforming the world, and therefore the field of international affairs, over recent decades.
Our Commitment
The Elliott School is committed to ensuring that every student, faculty, and staff member has a chance to reach their full professional potential and to thrive. This requires effective collaboration across and in celebration of differences, including elevating and amplifying the voices of excluded and under-represented groups.
Our community members strive to proactively engage with difference by recognizing that diversity reflects the societies in which we live and can be their greatest strength. Our leadership, faculty, and staff are committed to attracting applicants and supporting students, faculty, and staff from diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences, including race, ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, age, sexual orientation and identity, disability, nationality, religion, and immigration status. GW is a yellow-ribbon university, working with the Veterans Administration to help close the education funding gap for veterans. We also value a healthy exchange of ideas and shared learning based on diverse ways of perceiving the world, including religion, culture, political perspectives, and research methodologies. Our diversity helps us appreciate different approaches to problems, and our shared desire for impact brings us together, ready to roll up our sleeves and tackle the big international challenges before us.
Why Now?
With the end of the post-Cold War unipolar moment, which had been dominated by the United States, a landscape of more diffused global power has come into view. Rising powers increasingly shape world affairs, and demand recognition reflecting their growing role: The balance of power has shifted from the Group of 7 to a more diverse and diffuse group of the Group of 20. At the same time, within and across countries, participation in the international affairs arena has expanded: foreign ministries are now one among many actors shaping global interactions. In recent years, state and local governments have entered this arena, bringing international affairs more broadly to the homefront, and strengthening the field with local level perspectives.
Add to this the recognition in many countries of persistent inequalities and lack of broader representation in fields like national security, foreign policy, and international economic policy, leading to calls for greater inclusiveness. International affairs leaders can and should come from many walks of life and bring multiple perspectives to bear because international concerns affect daily lives in tangible ways. Taken together, these trends mark the broadening and deepening of the international affairs field.
The Elliott School’s focus on preparing students and faculty to navigate these changes—“building leaders for the world”—necessarily requires an appreciation for this complex international environment. Today’s international affairs practice inherently engages many and more diverse perspectives. Scholars and students explore calls for equity at the global as well as domestic levels, listening and responding to a more inclusive range of views. The research and training emerging from this broader, increasingly inclusive field connect directly to the Elliott School’s mission to engage the public and policy communities. Thoughtful inclusion and awareness of the many views and actors shaping the international affairs field at the global, national, and even local levels, positions our school to better explain and foster solutions to the most pressing challenges facing the interconnected world today.
How we work
We challenge ourselves to foster an inclusive environment where every person feels they belong and can thrive. We strive to support our community members with the resources they need to excel as global leaders and change agents in whatever field they pursue. We are committed to inclusive excellence and integrate equity and inclusion strategies into our policies, practices, and processes. Our work together includes advancing inclusive teaching and supporting students with cultural competency inside and outside of the classroom, including in partnership with affinity organizations. The Elliott Equity Fund addresses student financial needs to lower barriers to access for an Elliott School education.
Our elected and appointed members of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council serve in an advisory role to the administrative Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and provide recommendations to the Dean regarding our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and access in international affairs. Achieving our goals requires addressing and removing structural barriers that perpetuate systemic challenges. Our commitment to learning and growth as individuals and as a community extends to learning from our mistakes and striving always to do better. This includes welcoming members of our community to report bias-related incidents.