Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts

MCLA creates a campus culture that "honors" diversity by "actively endeavor[ing] to recruit and retain diverse students, faculty, and staff."

In June 2023, MCLA President James F. Birge signed a joint statement responding to the Supreme Court's decision on race-based admissions. The letter stated, "Massachusetts will always be welcoming and inclusive of students of color and students historically underrepresented in higher education." The MA schools continued, "our values and our commitment to progress and continued representation in education remain unshakable."  

The college states the following regarding its curriculum: "MCLA strives to integrate topics of diversity in the curricular, co-curricular, residential, and work life of the MCLA community. In so doing, MCLA works towards collaboration and purposeful engagement to achieve social justice on campus and in the wider community."

MCLA has an "Integrative Core Curriculum" which is grounded in a "commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion." The College states, "Rather than requiring students to take a single course related to [DEI], our curriculum provides students with multiple opportunities to develop the skills and knowledge needed to not only succeed in a diverse world but also to be a part of making it more equitable and inclusive."

MCLA has a "Diversity Statement" in its 2024-2025 Academic Catalog. The College states it has an "inclusive education and informed pedagogy." It also states that it "strives to integrate topics of social, cultural, and physical diversity in the curricular, co-curricular, residential, and work life of the MCLA community."

The college outlines its bias reporting system which includes information about its Bias Incident Response Team which "supports the college’s efforts to maintain an inclusive campus climate by establishing a mechanism by which it responds to bias incidents."

MCLA has partnered and collaborated with many other institutes entities, such as the North Adams Artist Impact Coalition and MASS MoCA, in order to promote anti-racism through events and programming.

It was announced on May 13, 2021 that "MCLA’s Berkshire Cultural Resource Center (BCRC) has been approved for a $20,000 Grants for Arts Projects award to support the MCLA Institute for the Dismantling of Racism."

On December 13, 2018, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation gave a grant of $360,000 in order to create the MCLA Institute for the Arts and Humanities in order "to support a public humanities initiative to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion through community engagement, experiential learning opportunities, and a summer institute."

The Artist Lab Residency at MCLA is "dedicated to supporting the creation, exhibition, criticism, and documentation of work by historically underrepresented artists."

In February 2024, MCLA received over $110,000 from the American Institute of Physics (AIP) Foundation to "advance the College’s efforts to increase its African American physics student enrollment, increase African American students' sense of department belonging, and introduce systemic changes to the physics bachelor of arts degree program to ensure positive outcomes for the department’s African American students."

In May 2024, the "Racial Equity and Justice Institute (REJI)" project, which MCLA is partnered with, received $250,000 from the state government to "ensure racial equity tenets and practices are infused into all 18 Massachusetts partner institutions."

The Freel Library offers numerous anti-racism resources.

MCLA created a Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

MCLA Athletics has created the role of an Athletics DEI Coordinator who serves as the NCAA Diversity and Inclusion designee. MCLA Athletics has also created a Trailblazer DEI Working Group.

In 2020, MCLA announced that the "First Annual Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Conference" would take place. On June 11-14, this event was held and brought in numerous keynote speakers.

MCLA Professor Dr. Hannah Haynes contributed a chapter to a book titled "White Supremacy and the American Media" (Nov. 2022), and "continues to research and publish work as an expert in critical race studies."

Introduction to Cross-Cultural & Social Justice Studies is an Interdisciplinary Studies Course and "[c]onsiders social justice and (in)equality by studying themes such as racism; classism; migration; globalization and labor rights; human trafficking; Islamophobia; and environmental justice."

MCLA offers a course titled "Sex and Violence" which "engage[s] in readings in the general areas of psychoanalysis, feminism, queer theory, and critical race theory...."

MCLA's Diversity Task Force facilitates the "Campus Conversations on Race" program which is "an opportunity for students, faculty, and staff to come together to talk about race."

The Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is "deeply concerned with radical inclusion and will allow all community members the ability to have their voice heard as well as get involved with equity work." Additionally, the Committee "[e]valuate[s] existing policies, programs, and organizational structures that promote diversity and inclusion and recommend[s] additional policies, programming and institutional changes...."

As part of the English Department's "Anti-Racist Commitments," the Department "commit[s] to offering a high percentage of readings by BIPOC and gender diverse authors" which would "amplify the voices of the oppressed, while also encouraging a relational and intersectional understanding of how BIPOC, gender diverse people, and white people navigate—and thus interpret—the world differently because of existing power relationships."

MCLA provides a list of anti-racist resources which includes the books "White Fragility" by Robin DiAngelo and "How to be an Antiracist" by Ibram X. Kendi.

In October 2023, the school held its annual "Day of Dialogue" under the theme, "Cultivating a Sense of Belonging in Uncertain Times through a Racial Equity Lens." The event "encouraged [attendees] to continue to navigate the increasing diversity of incoming students and confront the historical systems of oppression that have influenced higher education institutions." 

The Freel Library released a Statement and Commitment to Anti-Racism on June 9, 2020, stating, "Freel Library believes unequivocally that Black lives matter. We add our voices to those condemning the continued shooting and killing of Black individuals by police and mourning the lives shattered and lost: Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, David McAtee, Breonna Taylor, Jacob Blake, and too many others."

The Freel Library committed to "using our role as selectors and disseminators of information, literature, and scholarship to amplify BIPOC voices" on June, 9 2020.

The MCLA Alumni Association Board of Directors released a BLM Board Statement saying that the association will "acknowledge and actively work against the structural inequalities that are ingrained in the fabric of our society."

MCLA holds an Annual Day of Dialogue, and the 2020 theme was "Creating Change Through Community: Action and Organizing" on October 21. The Day of Dialogue constitutes "a campus-wide day of workshops and discussions that focus on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion."

As part of its "Diversity Statement," MCLA states that it "critically addresses dynamics of inequality, exposing ways in which privilege and oppression are produced and maintained over time in society."

As part of its "Anti-Racist Commitments," the English Department issued the following statement: "As a department, we recognize that faculty and students of color have long navigated a racist system built upon and maintained by rhetorical and physical violence against their populations and upheld today by white silence. Discussing race and our country’s racist legacy has long been a matter of survival for some citizens, and a voluntary choice for others. To ensure transformative justice, white folks can no longer choose to ignore how we/they are implicated in the oppression and silencing of our/their fellow community members."

MCLA's 2024-2025 Academic Catalog includes a "Land Acknowledgement." It states, "With gratitude and humility, we respectfully acknowledge that Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts stands on the ancestral homelands of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohicans, who are the Indigenous peoples of this land...  We pay honor and respect to their ancestors past and present as we commit to building a more inclusive and equitable space for all."