Creating Change as an Ally
Karl Dunkle Werner, Gabe Englander, Scott Kaplan, and Derek Wolfson.
Please note that these resources do not necessarily reflect the views of WEB. The intention is to hold an inclusive space for ongoing discourse. We thank the authors for sharing suggestions gathered from their interactions with students and faculty who have had identity-specific experiences in academia that obstruct their productivity. We welcome any feedback, additional contributions, comments, or questions on these issues. Please feel free to e-mail the authors or WEB directly.
We asked a dozen women and minority graduate students and faculty in ARE, Econ, and Haas at UC Berkeley about their experiences and suggestions for wannabe allies. We found a number of themes emerged and have created resources pages for each of the following:
Having good intentions is necessary but not nearly sufficient. Economics and economists need to do more. While representation of women and minorities in other fields has climbed, econ has been flat, and some women we interviewed even found the culture to be getting worse. These trends aren’t acceptable. Some of the recommendations below are simple; most are a challenge. They aren’t perfect, don’t apply in all situations, and sometimes contradict each other. But they do reflect the way we and our interviewees think about our environment, and we hope they contribute to a broader change in the culture of economics.
We learned a great deal in the process of compiling these resources, and we hope writing about the process both exports some of that knowledge and encourages other men to engage in similar work. We’re all going to make mistakes, but we’re keeping this conversation open so we can learn and improve. Please join us in these conversations!
We’d like to extend our profound thanks to all of the people we interviewed, to our classmates in ARE, Econ, and Haas, and to WEB.
