Belonging at Blair

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Our Commitment

Our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) at Blair is grounded in our mission—to know our students and to prepare them to thrive in a diverse and complex world that we believe they will make better. As a School, we’ve endeavored to be thoughtful and deliberate, to ensure our actions are meaningful, based on good counsel from diverse voices, research, and our community’s lived experiences and truths.

Compelled by the global movement for improving and protecting Black lives and in response to community feedback, we also have a renewed sense of urgency. We are accelerating our ongoing work toward meaningfully improving the Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) experience at Blair. Blair Academy is grateful to the Black students, parents and alumni/ae who had reported stories that have spotlighted times when Blair has fallen short of ensuring every member of our community feels heard, seen, cared for and supported.

We are committed to creating and sustaining an environment that allows students and adults to be and express their authentic selves across all lines of identity and difference, that is anti-racist, that fosters meaningful understanding and deep relationships, and that ensures “ all in” and “all together” is a lived reality, not just a slogan. Our dedication to the dignity and humanity of all people is unwavering. And any words or actions that deny or demean the dignity and humanity of others have no place in our community.

The Inclusivity Committee

Selected based on their roles at the School and their perspective, 11 faculty members and three Trustees comprise Blair's Inclusivity Committee. The group, which convenes weekly, promotes a sense of belonging in the community, fosters the momentum of DEI work across campus, and serves as a resource to adults and students for that work. Meetings provide a forum for discussion, and the Committee acts as a planning and advocacy group for diversity, equity and inclusion matters. Committee members are also charged with the development and execution of DEI programs, review of hiring practices and other work to promote empathy across our community.

Committee members include:

Action Steps

Below are the important steps we are and will be taking immediately in furtherance of key priority initiatives from our Strategic Plan, understanding that our work and future steps will continue to evolve as we evaluate what is most effective and listen to our community’s experiences, stories and ideas.

Faculty Training

Sustained and effective faculty training is crucial to Blair’s nurturing a campus climate that fosters inclusion and equity. Building on recent professional development efforts, Blair has retained an expert diversity practitioner to inform and partner with our academic office and Inclusivity Committee to implement targeted training plans based on best practices for faculty. This effort will continue throughout the school year. Moreover, we will substantially expand faculty participation in known, meaningful professional development programs, particularly the National Association of Independent Schools’ People of Color Conference and the National Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity (SEED) Project in the 2020-2021 school year.

Curriculum

As per our Strategic Plan, our Curriculum Committee, working with the academic office and our department heads, will conduct a comprehensive audit of our academic course offerings and provide recommendations that will be published for our entire community in late spring of 2021 as to how Blair’s curriculum across disciplines can better reflect the diversity of identity, thought, experience and background critical to providing a world-class education to all of our students. This will allow Blair to develop a thoughtful and comprehensive plan that builds upon what we are doing well and embraces opportunities for growth and improvement in our programs.

Over the course of the coming school year, Blair will be revising its current curricular offerings, including developing a new course that all students must take on the historical and modern realities of racism, intolerance, empathy and understanding. This class will launch in the fall of 2021 and build on other course offerings, seminars, discussion groups and speaker engagement that we have developed over recent years and will continue to offer in the coming school year.

Faculty, Staff & Board of Trustees Diversity

We will continue to expand our online and in-person faculty recruitment efforts and tools, including participation in diversity hiring fairs, targeted outreach to colleges/universities, including HBCUs, continuing our winter internship program for aspiring teachers, outreach to alumni/ae for hiring referrals and on-campus recruitment opportunities. While we have made progress, we will build on those efforts in the coming weeks and months and expand our capacity to do this work. Toward that end, this winter, we appointed veteran faculty member Leucretia Shaw to the School’s senior leadership team in the role of Dean of Strategic Initiatives, effective July 1, 2020. Leucretia has already partnered with Head of School Chris Fortunato, Dean of Faculty Lorry Perry and others to recruit, retain and support exceptional faculty of color and to provide mentorship to all of our teachers. She will be seeking the input and help of our extended Blair community to do so.

To make important strides on this front, we will accelerate our plans to create a teaching fellowship program that will enable Blair to tap into a diverse range of aspiring graduate students/early career teachers, with plans to bring on our first teaching fellow(s) at the start of the 2021-2022 school year. We are in the process of raising more endowed funds to support this initiative, which we know works to enhance faculty diversity in other schools.

Blair’s Board of Trustees has reaffirmed its commitment to more fully reflect the diversity of race/ethnicity, background and experience of our students, alumni/ae and families. A standing Inclusivity Committee is now being established at the Board level, and its Chair will serve on our Board’s Executive Committee and provide Trustee oversight of Blair’s campus climate and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

Engagement & Transparency

We have much to learn and must continue to listen to all members of our community to inform our work on identifying, addressing and educating around issues of bias in order to better create a more inclusive community. This past school year, we conducted the NAIS Assessment of Inclusivity and Multiculturalism, a survey instrument sent to students, faculty, staff, Trustees, parents and alumni/ae. We were in the process of analyzing those results when we had to transition to distance learning in March, and we will share that data with the full community this fall.

The Inclusivity Committee will further engage the broader Blair community through outreach, open meetings and regular updates in order to make recommendations to the School on staffing, programming and student support needs. We also will share plans for regularly auditing our discipline process and responding to issues of bias and intolerance on our campus in ways that are consistent, appropriately transparent and honor the dignity, privacy and humanity of all involved.

School-Wide Programs & Initiatives

DEI Training

The Inclusivity Committee, in collaboration with the Dean of Teaching and Learning, organizes and oversees regular faculty and student-leader training with DEI experts on race, social justice, anti-racism and identity. Blair administrators who trained with the National SEED (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity) Project lead annual year-long seminars for faculty, staff and employee spouses.

AIM Survey

All-School Read

For the last several years, Blair’s English department and all-school read committee have selected books that delve into the topics of race, oppression and free speech. Recent selections read by every Blair student include Yaa Gyasi’s debut novel Homegoing (which tells the story of two half-sisters born in 18th-century Ghana, one of whom is sold into slavery while the other is forced to marry an English slaver), Uncensored: My Life and Uncomfortable Conversations at the Intersection of Black and White America (a memoir by free speech activist Zachary R. Wood detailing his troubled upbringing and the life experiences that inspired him to become a “crusader” for open dialogue) and Trevor Noah’s 2016 memoir Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (which details the author’s journey from a harrowing childhood in apartheid South Africa to a career as a political commentator and host of television’s “The Daily Show”).

Black History Month Programming

Counseling

The Blair counseling department takes a student-centered, multiculturally responsive approach to counseling. Blair counselors understand the influence of systemic and environmental factors in presenting student needs, and avoid pathologizing normal reactions to personal experiences. They also engage in yearly professional development that specifically focuses on building competency around this approach. Counselors recently participated in trainings on culturally competent care of transgender, nonbinary and gender non-conforming (TGNC) individuals, challenging racial disparities, trauma-informed care and the impact of white-dominant culture on social work practice. In 2020-2021, the counseling department will also be utilizing a personal inventory tool to assess what of a student’s identity is most important to that student, which will enhance its individualized, identity-sensitive approach.

Curricular Changes

Blair offers courses across disciplines that focus on racism, human rights, injustice, relationship-building, identity, culture and community. Examples include the fine arts department’s “Art for Social Change,” the history department’s “Race in America,” the English 4 elective “The Harlem Renaissance" and the religion/philosophy courses “Human Rights” and “Mind, Body and Spirit.” Whether required for graduation or taken as electives, seminar courses, such as the Freshman Seminar, Blair LEADS, Belonging at Blair and another seminar course on race still in development also emphasize the importance of examining societal constructions and discovering and valuing one’s own perspective and the perspective of others. Blair is currently working to review and adjust its curriculum to ensure every academic department offers coursework that focuses on intolerance, empathy and understanding.

Race Relations Forums

Society of Skeptics

During the 2020-2021 school year, a number of Skeptics speakers will focus on topics related to diversity, equity and inclusion, including Nishta Mehra, the author of Brown White Black: An American Family at the Intersection of Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Religion, and National Geographic photographer Alison Wright, who will share photographs of New York City during the protests over racial injustice amidst the coronavirus pandemic.

Speakers & Thought Partners

Blair’s student life office partners with scholars, leadership coaches and artists to shine a light on diversity, equity and inclusion in myriad ways throughout the school year. We have welcomed many guests to campus, including Roland Davis, Julie Foudy, Mykee Fowlin, Debbie Irving, Cindy Pierce, Alex Scott, Hudson Taylor ’09, Zachary Wood and others. Some share their message with the whole school community, such as national champion slam poet SC Says, while other DEI experts and practitioners work with small groups of students and faculty on an ongoing basis.

Student-Run Organizations & Clubs

There is no shortage of activities in which students can become involved at Blair, and many organizations and clubs work to further diversity, equity and inclusion on campus and beyond. Examples include the Black & Latinx Student Union (BaLSU), Blair International Awareness Club (BIAC), Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA), La Conexión and the Healthy Relationships Committee (HRC).