Diversity
IDSS values the diversity among our students, faculty, postdocs, and staff, and strives to create a community where each member is valued and feels that they belong. The range of cultures, backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences of the individuals within IDSS is essential for pursuing our mission of addressing major societal problems using innovative, holistic, data-driven approaches. As a unit focused on improving society, we care deeply about the overall well-being of our students and community members, including their mental and physical health.
MIT Strategic Action Plan
MIT released the strategic action plan for belonging, achievement, and composition in September 2022. The plan provides an MIT-wide framework for fostering diversity and a sense of belonging across MIT, while allowing individual departments, labs, and offices to define and tailor their own efforts in this regard. The strategic action plan informs efforts at IDSS.
IDSS DEI Committee
The IDSS DEI Committee identifies opportunities and pursues actions to increase diversity and inclusion within the institute.
This rotating committee, which is chaired by Professor Jessika Trancik and includes members from faculty, postdocs, students, and staff, works in partnership with the IDSS community and IDSS leadership. It solicits and welcomes feedback from all community members and works to support a wide range of efforts within IDSS to foster diversity, equity and inclusion, recognizing that real progress will require participation across the unit and in all aspects of our work (research, teaching, and service). The IDSS DEI Committee aims to make progress on implementing specific action items inspired by the MIT Strategic Action Plan.
The DEI Committee members for 2024 are Jessika Trancik (committee chair), Ari Feinberg (postdoc), Beth Milnes (staff), Rameen Hayat Malik (TPP-student, TPSS’s DE&I Liaison), Talla Babou (SES-student), Fotini Christia (faculty), Grant Ruan (postdoc), Michelle Carmichael (staff), and Kasey Tenggren (staff).
Each year, the IDSS DEI Committee prioritizes three areas. Currently, these areas are:
1) Data collection: Collect, analyze, and manage data to help the committee reflect on its efforts and select future priority areas.
2) Recruitment: Continue, improve, and expand current recruitment efforts aiming at diversifying the pool of talents applying for IDSS programs.
3) Community engagement: Increase capacity and awareness of the experiences, challenges and commitments of all IDSS community members, and leverage institutional knowledge to create an inclusive environment.
Research Initiative on Combating Systemic Racism
IDSS is well positioned to conduct data- and policy-driven research on structural racism. In 2021, IDSS launched the Research Initiative on Combatting Systemic Racism (ICSR). ICSR aims to launch and coordinate cross-disciplinary research on how to identify and overcome racially discriminatory processes across a range of American institutions and policy domains. The effort brings together faculty and researchers from all five schools and the Schwarzman College of Computing at MIT, as well as external partner institutions.
Students play an integral role in the execution of ICSR. Each research team includes graduate students from SES, TPP, and other MIT departments, as well as undergraduate students through UROP positions.
In AY 2021-2022, MLK Visiting Professor S. Craig Watkins was a key contributor to the initiative. Professor Watkins visited IDSS from UT Austin where he is the Ernest A. Sharpe Centennial Professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the Founding Director of the Institute for Media Innovation. He engaged in creating the cross-disciplinary research agenda on systemic racism, bias in AI, and the role of big data in enabling deep structural changes during his time at IDSS. Specifically, Professor Watkins contributed to the Initiative’s Housing vertical by hosting a panel on “Home Ownership, Lending Discrimination & Technology” as part of the Beyond Fairness symposium.
ICSR will continue to build our expertise and forge connections to researchers studying racial disparities, and establish a community of researchers working in this area within IDSS, the Schwarzman College of Computing, and MIT and beyond.
