Equity and Inclusive Excellence

The work of the Office of Equity and Inclusive Excellence focuses on actively addressing dynamics of bias, structural barriers, and privilege. Its work is grounded in a shared equity leadership (SEL) framework that scales diversity, equity, and inclusion work in a way that connects individual and localized transformation to institutional and collective transformation. This approach emphasizes the idea that every member of the campus and institution plays a key role in advancing the goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion toward counteracting inequity, unfairness, and bias.

Land Acknowledgment

Washington State University acknowledges that its locations statewide are on the homelands of Native peoples, who have lived in this region from time immemorial. WSU Pullman is located on the homelands of the Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) Tribe and Palus people. The University expresses its deepest respect for and gratitude towards these original and current caretakers of the region. At WSU, we acknowledge our responsibility to establish and maintain relationships with these tribes and Native peoples, in support of tribal sovereignty and the inclusion of their voices in teaching, research, and programming.

Labor Acknowledgment

WSU Pullman also recognizes our debt to exploited workers past and present whose labor was and continues to be stolen through unjust practices. We respectfully acknowledge our debt to the enslaved people, primarily of African descent, whose forced labor and suffering built and grew the economy and infrastructure of a nation that refused to recognize their humanity. We must acknowledge that much of what we know of this country today, including its culture, economic growth, and development has been made possible by the labor of enslaved Africans and their descendants.

We further acknowledge all immigrant labor, including voluntary, involuntary, trafficked, forced, and undocumented peoples who contributed to the building of the country and continue to serve within our labor force. We recognize our collective debt to women whose invisible and under-compensated labor has supported social, economic, and domestic infrastructures central to the nation’s growth, the Indigenous peoples of this land whose labor was forced and exploited, the Chinese immigrants who built railroads that allowed for westward American development, Japanese Americans whose properties and livelihoods were taken from them while incarcerated during World War II, and migrant workers from the Philippines, Mexico, and Central and South America who have worked Pacific Northwest farms and canneries for generations. We acknowledge that the theft of labor is the theft of generational progress. Nearly all people of color in the United States have been systematically denied the opportunity and wealth that their ancestors might otherwise have passed on to them creating persistent equity gaps towards which higher education can play one small, but significant part in closing.