Butler University’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Statement

Ovid Butler and the Disciples of Christ members who wanted a university away from the “pernicious influences of slavery” chartered Butler University as North Western Christian University (NWCU) in 1850. Founded on the values of diversity, inclusivity and equality, NWCU opened in 1855 admitting women and people of color on an equal basis with white males, which was a radical stance at the time. Today we work to continue to create a community where all can thrive regardless of race, color, national origin, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, ability, economic means, marital or parental status, or political affiliation.

DEI Statement
Our mission at Butler University embodies what we aspire to uphold for current and future generations of learners, educators, and leaders. We have a perpetual responsibility as an academic institution to continually face our own truths, eradicate injustices and enact change on campus and in our communities by working to cultivate a campus community that is an intentionally diverse, inclusive, and equitable learning and working environment. Our underlying commitments to social justice, intercultural development, and shared responsibility serve as guiding posts to actualizing our mission and efforts to be a diverse, equitable and inclusive university where everyone is valued, inspired, respected, and able to flourish.

Our Underlying Commitments to Social Justice, Intercultural Development, and Shared Responsibility.

Commitment to Social Justice
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
~ James Baldwin

We understand that to fulfill our mission to broadly educate and prepare all learners to lead meaningful lives, we need to first address issues of inequity in higher education. Our efforts to build a diverse and inclusive campus community to which everyone can belong and matter is based on a firm understanding of the structural roots of exclusion and harm that continues to impact underserved communities in our society today. Creating a collaborative, stimulating learning environment at Butler therefore requires that we center social justice so that students, faculty and staff have equal rights and access to opportunities and resources, and share in burdens and responsibilities fairly.

A key pillar of social justice is anti-racism: our approach at Butler is based on the understanding that color-blind racism, along with intersecting identity-based systems of discrimination and disadvantage, continue to perpetuate inequality, and considers that every member of our campus community is personally responsible for positive change. Our work to advance equity and academic excellence is always responsive to revelatory moments in history, and founded on cutting-edge research that acknowledges persistent social injustice, along with evidence-based practices that elevate the voices of the marginalized.
We are also sensitive to invisible forms of marginality, and are attuned to the needs of first generation, high financial need, and commuter students at our institution. We value student perspectives because we are aware that we need multiple generational lenses to better understand how to live our ideals of equity and academic excellence. Importantly, we understand that social justice is global in scope because, as an immigrant nation, our engagement with the world today not only impacts the lived experiences of our students, staff and faculty, but also the global community.

Butler University’s vision of inclusive excellence is based on a commitment to help all members of our campus community develop the capacity to interrupt exclusionary, inequitable practices at the interpersonal, institutional and structural levels in this society and beyond, through intentional programming throughout the University.

Commitment to Intercultural Development

“When we choose to love, we choose to move against fear, against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect, to find ourselves in the other.”
-bell hooks

We understand that our mission to create and foster a collaborative, stimulating intellectual learning environment requires a climate of mutual respect and kindness among all students, faculty, and staff from a range of diverse backgrounds and identities. This means that we are committed to upskilling efforts that create a strong sense of belonging and engagement in our campus community.

At Butler, we are committed to culturally responsive pedagogies that enable us to offer students from diverse backgrounds and identities educational opportunities that affirm the value of their lived experiences and knowledge, and embrace them in our definition of academic success. We offer a curriculum that reflects a genuine respect for the different ways in which we can understand our world, and challenge our students to seek solutions that are equitable and sustainable for all living beings.

In order to build the trust and resilience that our campus community needs to weather challenging moments, we are also committed to the development of strong intercultural skills amongst our faculty, staff and students. At Butler, we understand that intercultural skills are grounded in an awareness of implicit biases that influence the way we relate to others unlike ourselves. We further acknowledge that if unquestioned, the cultural norms and values of dominant or privileged identities within an institution decide the question of who does or does not belong. Together, these are foundational understandings that underlie the practice of empathetic listening across differences within and beyond the classroom.
We also seek to engender cultural humility amongst students, faculty and staff so that we can harness the benefits of a diverse community. At Butler, we emphasize interactional diversity and encourage all members of our community to have a genuine curiosity about others, the emotional resilience to examine and reflect on one’s own beliefs, and to value perspectives different from our own. We understand that intercultural development is also foundational to our ability to enrich communities and prepare all learners to lead meaningful lives as global citizens.

Butler University’s vision of inclusive excellence is based on a commitment to help all members of our campus community increase capacity in the area of intercultural
Commitment to Shared Responsibility
“We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

Butler University’s ideals of equity and academic excellence compels us to recognize that we have our shared responsibility for one another’s well-being. We express this by consistently building and maintaining institutional accountability and a culture of open communication. We invest in equity by our commitment to a system of accountability that allows us to surface and boldly address issues of inequity. We are committed to communicating openly with one another in order to work towards equity-minded policies and practices that are responsive to the needs of each and every member of the Butler community.

We also believe that a strong culture of shared responsibility helps to attract and retain the best talent from diverse identities and backgrounds and to foster trust in our community. We understand that institutional and personal accountability are foundational to building strong and lasting bonds of loyalty to our institution. This, in turn, allows us to create and foster a collaborative, stimulating intellectual learning environment, to boldly innovate, broadly educate, and enrich the communities that we serve.

Butler University is also committed to helping every individual in our campus community develop a keen sense of equity-mindedness, regardless of their own background or identity. We understand that each individual’s ability to identify patterns of inequity and critically assess exclusionary policies and practices rooted in the history of American higher education, helps to challenge such policies and practices in the spirit of continual improvement.

Butler University’s efforts to advance equity is based on a commitment to strengthen institutional accountability and a culture of open communication at the university, college and departmental/program level, and to help all members of our community to increase equity-mindedness through intentional programming.

1. Colorblind racism is based on the racial ideology of colorblindness that dismisses the lived experiences of people of color, and encourages individuals to disengage from conversations of race and racism, thus allowing society to ignore enduring structural and systemic racism.
2. Unlike representational or compositional diversity, interactional diversity is a process-focused concept of institutional diversification that stresses the importance of creating opportunities and spaces for inter-group interaction as a means to address implicit bias and improve individual attitudes toward members of outgroups.

Shared Language

As we address key aspects of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), it is important that we develop a common glossary of concepts and terms for reference. Recognizing that these important terms have a variety of interpretations and meanings, we offer these as a starting point. A shared language will help guide our overall efforts to ensure a diverse, equitable and inclusive campus environment. These definitions were compiled from existing definitions and/or drafted through campus processes. It is not an exhaustive list. The library also maintains several libguides with DE&I resources.