MIT Press IDEA Plan for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility

January 25, 2022 – Dear Colleagues, I’m delighted to share with you the MIT Press IDEA Plan for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility: https://dei.mitpress.mit.edu/

This roadmap supports our commitment to “be a diverse, equitable, and inclusive organization in how we hire and promote, how we work, and what and who we publish,” with the goal of providing actionable recommendations in three areas:

• People: Who works at MITP, and do all staff feel included and that they belong? How can we grow the diversity of our staff, and their experience of inclusion and belonging at work, going forward?
• Publishing: Who and what is being published currently? Given the fields in which MITP publishes, what possibilities exist for further diversifying the authorship and topics of our publications?
• Ecosystem: What is currently happening at the industry level with regard to EDI? What leadership role could the Press play, building in part on our leadership on equity, in access to published knowledge?

We worked with a consultant to conduct four months of research, including an all-staff survey, access to demographic data provided by MIT’s Office of Institutional Research, and numerous individual meetings and focus groups. This resulted in a series of recommendations, with a primary focus on people, employee life-cycle, and evolving work culture in the context of the pandemic and MITP’s new hybrid office structure. MITP’s leadership team subsequently finalized its EDI action plan, supplementing and significantly enhancing ongoing EDI initiatives and commitments at the Press.

We have decided to share our commitments and action roadmap publicly, in hopes that it will be of interest and useful to our peers (while acknowledging that there are significant operational and structural differences among organizations). At the same time, public auditing of our three-year implementation plan will help hold us accountable to these commitments.

We hope this is of use. Please feel free to reach out with any questions.

Contact Kate Silverman Wilson, Community and Resource Development Associate, The MIT Press | kswilson@mit.edu