DEIR Statement

In the wake of the extremely harmful sentiments recently published in the article by Tomáš Hudlický in Angewandte Chemie International Edition (ACIE), the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Respect (DEIR) committee would like to take the opportunity to reaffirm the faculty’s commitment to inclusivity. 

The ACIE article expressed multiple sentiments that are offensive, and which have no place in the chemistry community.  Equally upsetting is the fact that this article made it through peer-review and the editorial staff, thus highlighting the racist and sexist ideas that permeate the larger community.  Unfortunately, we also know these ideas are not unique to one individual. 

We would like to reaffirm our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion not only in words but in direct actions. We would like to commend our students for stepping into the leadership role and identifying steps to take.  In response to student concerns, the DEI committee puts forth the following actions:

• The Diversity portion of the Georgetown Chemistry website will be updated to include our statement denouncing the ACIE article and its publishing. 
• Recognizing that this is a systemic problem, faculty can carefully consider future avenues of publication. To help our community with these efforts, the DEI committee will evaluate current publishing patterns and consider institutional change and promotion of DEI values across different publishers.
• Through collaboration with faculty teaching courses, diversity and inclusion training will be incorporated into the undergraduate and graduate student curricula. Additionally, faculty will be provided training to reinforce the importance of these issues in research labs and the chemistry community.
• Georgetown Chemistry will broaden the already existing departmental outreach and seek out more diverse viewpoints and perspectives in our seminar series.

Georgetown Chemistry actively condemns racist, xenophobic, and sexist views and strives to replace those with ideas of inclusion, diversity, equity and tolerance. Georgetown Chemistry strives to be a leader in the field by promoting DEI values and systemic change. 

Sincerely,

The Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Respect Committee

This statement is supported by the faculty in the Department of Chemistry, Georgetown University