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Reed College

Undergraduate School

Mailing Address
3203 SE Woodstock Blvd
Portland, Oregon 97202
Phone
(503) 771-1112
School Information
Founded in 1908 in southeast Portland, Oregon, Reed College is a coeducational, independent liberal arts and sciences college. Referred to as one of the most intellectual colleges in the country, Reed is known for its high standards of scholarly practice, creative thinking, and engaged citizenship. Reed students pursue the bachelor of arts degree in 40 majors and programs. The curriculum includes a yearlong humanities course, broad distribution requirements, and a senior thesis. A 10:1 student-to-faculty ratio and small conference-style classes allow faculty members to truly mentor students and engage with them in individual discussions. Reed also offers a graduate program leading to a master of arts degree in liberal studies.
General Information
Reed currently requires campus safety staff to take mandatory bias training. According to their Dean of Institutional Diversity, as of Spring 2021 they are working on expanded faculty and student training. See below for specific actions taken.

Actions Taken

Anti-Racism, Bias, and Diversity Training
  • The Dean for Institutional Diversity has announced numerous hires to address diversity on the Reed campus, and to participate in work groups to develop new trainings.
  • One of Reed's 2022–23 Strategic Priorities is to "[p]rovide anti-racism training and professional development opportunities to students, faculty, and staff."
  • The Office for Institutional Diversity at Reed College provides "Inclusive Practice Workshops" for faculty and staff which include workshops that focus specifically on the topic of "students of color."
Curriculum Changes and Requirements
  • After student protests in 2017, Reed College made significant changes to its required Humanities 110 course taken by all freshmen.
  • The English department at Reed College spotlighted Professor Pancho Savery who “teaches the Beat Generation, critical race theory, and Ibsen and Shaw.” Furthermore, “Pancho also teaches Humanities 110—an intensive, year-long course required of all first-year students—and is a strong advocate for the conference-style learning that happens at Reed.”
Disciplinary Measures
  • Reed's Office for Institutional Diversity outlines its bias reporting system and states that it "encourage[s] all community members to help create an environment free of bias and harassment by modeling honorable behavior, discouraging inappropriate behavior in others, and speaking up when one is the target of or witness to discriminatory harassment."
Faculty/Staff Requirements
  • In the summer of 2022, Reed "[l]aunched unconscious-bias training modules for all new employees."
Program and Research Funding
  • Reed has "allocated $28,000 to support the programming of the Multicultural Resource Center (MRC), Students for Education, Equity, and Direct Service (SEEDS), and International Student Services (ISS)."
  • The Office for Institutional Diversity Mission Grant at Reed College is an "internal funding opportunity to promote, uplift and advance our Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Anti-Racism (DEIA) mission here at Reed." Proposals are eligible for up to $2,000 in funding.
  • The Social Justice Research and Education Fund at Reed College "supports paid student internships...for projects or research that focuses on community engagement, civic engagement, equity, and/or social justice."
Re-Imagining Policing
  • Campus safety staff go through a series of trainings in various issues surrounding equity.
Resources
  • Reed College has joined the Liberal Arts Colleges Racial Equity Leadership Alliance hosted by the University of Southern California’s (USC) Race and Equity Center. The alliance is a newly formed group that brings together 51 liberal arts colleges from across the country to work and learn together to support and elevate racial equity and anti-racism initiatives on each campus.
  • Reed College has formed numerous committees to study diversity on campus.
  • The Office for Inclusive Community (OIC) seeks to build a diverse and inclusive community at Reed. The Office for Inclusive Community includes the Multicultural Resource Center (MRC), the Peer Mentor Program (PMP), and SEEDS (Students for Education, Equity, and Direct Service) Community Engagement Program.
  • Reed College has a program in Comparative Race and Ethnicity Studies that is “intended for students who wish to combine focused study in anthropology, dance, English, history, music, religion, sociology, or theatre with comparative interdivisional work on race and ethnicity.”
  • The English department at Reed College “offers courses on a range of critical topics such as race theory, Shakespearean mimesis, contemporary American poetry, literary history, and narrative theory.”
  • One of Reed's 2022-2023 Strategic Priorities is to "[c]reate equitable systems that promote academic equity and student success for BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, People of Color] and historically marginalized students both inside and outside of the classroom."
Symbolic Actions
  • The Department of Psychology seeks to “establish anti-racism as foundational” to the department culture and understands that “racism is deeply embedded in the structures of higher education and U.S. society at large, that the field has been complicit in perpetuating racial discrimination, and that racial bias often unwittingly guides the thoughts and actions of well-intentioned individuals.”
  • Reed states that the purpose of diversity, equity, and inclusion at the college is to "[r]edefine issues of equity, diversity, and anti-racism as fundamental to the organizational bottom line of mission fulfillment and inclusive and intersectional excellence."
  • Reed's "Anti-Racism Statement" reads in part as follows: "We acknowledge the historical legacy of exclusion and marginalization in higher education. We affirm our responsibility to continuously learn about and disrupt systems of privilege, inequality, and oppression, and to reform our programs, policies, pedagogy, and practices in accordance with this responsibility."
Last updated December 13th, 2023
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