The ponderous pace at which institutions of higher education are moving toward achieving a state of social justice may be one of the most challenging problems academia has ever faced. For many decades in the United States, academic communities have been making sustained efforts to educate their communities about the necessity for diversity and to attract a diverse population of students and staff to their campuses. However, lacking intentional plans to ensure that equity and inclusion are also deeply embedded in an institution’s identity, those individuals recruited as diversity representatives to otherwise non-diverse communities have often experienced inequity and exclusion from the dominant populations. This problem continues to plague higher education. Academic libraries, often considered to be bastions of liberal ideology due to, for example, their work preserving intellectual freedom, opposing censorship, and advocating for equal access to information and education for the greater good of society, are not immune from societal and institutional inequities.

Bombaro, Christine. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Action: Planning, Leadership, and Programming: Introduction. In Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Action: Planning, Leadership, and Programming, edited by Christine Bombaro, ix-xxi. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2020.

For more information on the published version, visit ALA's (American Library Association) Website.