Brown has formed a new ad hoc committee tasked with drafting recommendations for the future of diversity and inclusion at the University, President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 announced on Thursday morning.
The Ad Hoc Committee on Diversity and Inclusion at Brown, chaired by Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion Matthew Guterl, will develop a framework to “sustain the diverse and inclusive community that is key to academic excellence” and propose an action plan for its implementation over the next decade, Paxson wrote in the announcement.
The recommendations will be submitted to Paxson by May 1, 2026.
“The committee members will now begin their work and will together chart the right course toward engaging with Brown community members, developing recommendations and proposing a draft action plan,” University Spokesperson Brian Clark wrote in an email to The Herald.
The University’s current diversity and inclusion action plan, spanning from 2016 to 2025, has guided Brown’s diversity and inclusion goals for the past decade. Titled “Pathways to Diversity and Inclusion: An Action Plan for Brown University,” the plan created the Diversity and Inclusion Oversight Board, which submitted memorandums to University leadership regarding the implementation of the DIAP’s goals.
“We are grateful for their efforts, and we recognize that the board’s experience and deep insights will be eminently valuable in establishing a future vision for diversity and inclusion at Brown,” Paxson wrote in the Thursday announcement.
The board submitted its final memo in June, writing that Brown’s diversity and inclusion efforts have “allowed the University to generate evidence that merit and diversity are mutually constitutive.”
On Wednesday, Paxson and Provost Francis Doyle responded to the memo, noting that Brown’s commitment to fostering diversity and inclusion “operates in tandem with our commitment to comply with legal prohibitions against discrimination and harassment reflected in federal laws and the resolution agreement.”
Paxson and Doyle pointed to Section 3.3 of the University’s Nondiscrimination and Anti-Harassment Policy, adopted earlier this year. The policy makes it “clear that we implement our educational and employment decisions without regard to any protected characteristic and that our programs and operations are open to all and advertised as such,” they wrote in their response.
They also noted that Brown’s admissions and employment processes are applied “equitably and consistently, regardless of any protected characteristic or singular dimension of one’s identity.”
The new ad hoc committee will consist of faculty, staff and undergraduate and graduate students, according to Paxson’s announcement.
“I encourage all members of our community to contribute their valuable thoughts, perspectives and experiences to this effort,” Paxson wrote in the announcement. The new plan “will offer an opportunity for a broader conversation across campus about the meaning and significance of the concepts of diversity and inclusion as drivers of our academic mission.”
In their June public memo, the board also wrote that Brown’s work on diversity and inclusion is especially important “at a moment when issues such as student admissions, faculty hiring and staff retention — largely uncontroversial issues in Brown’s strategic plan for diversity — have become contentious in new ways.”
Over the past year, universities across the country have faced threats from the Trump administration to cut certain race-conscious programs or risk cuts to federal funding. This has led to uncertainty regarding the future of diversity and inclusion initiatives in higher education.
Clark did not address whether Trump administration policies would impact the new committee’s work.
Sophia Wotman is a University news editor covering activism and affinity & identity. She is a senior from Long Island, New York concentrating in political science with a focus on women’s rights. She is a jazz trumpet player, and often performs on campus and around Providence.
