“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
- Aboriginal activists group, Queensland, 1970s
- Aboriginal activists group, Queensland, 1970s
The events over the past three months have made it abundantly clear that we are overdue in expanding our group’s mission to include advocacy and support for all marginalized and underrepresented groups in economics.
Starting now, our organization will take an explicit and clear stance in supporting all individuals who identify as part of any structurally under-resourced or under-represented group. To do this, we will need to not only provide loving support but will also need to transform the economics profession to eradicate deep seeds of racism, sexism, homophobia, and cis-sexism that shape our research, teaching, and policy engagement.
With this change, we will update our mission statement and the name of the organization to Berkeley Economists for Equity (BEE).
We know that we cannot do this alone. It will take community and solidarity across a number of students and institutions to enact change. Everyone must join in this effort - we welcome all who want to work, learn, and grow. In particular, we welcome those who can and will challenge us to be better, to show us how we ourselves are contributing to the perpetuation of injustice. We all have much to learn and are committed to evolving as we identify new ways in which we can move economics towards a more equitable and inclusive environment. Establishing equity is not only the right thing to do, but is absolutely necessary for making the research, pedagogy, and policy that we produce more impactful for creating a brighter world.
Our new Mission statement
Our goal is to increase representation in economics by dismantling barriers to participation in our field and confronting bias. We recognize that we operate within a discipline with a long history of systemic exclusion of students and scholars based on their race, gender, sexual orientation, or other historically oppressed identities. Making economics more inclusive will require breaking down these systems and building new ones that facilitate broader, more diverse, and more equitable scholarship.
We provide academic opportunities and a supportive community for individuals from underrepresented groups to successfully complete their Ph.D. in economics. Looking past the Ph.D. program, we are invested in building an inclusive economics community through diverse faculty recruitment, graduate admissions, and undergraduate mentorship. We maintain a public and vocal presence advocating for underrepresented economists through our website and associated blog.
