GSI Values Statement

The Office of Global Strategy and Initiatives (GSI) embraces diversity, equity, inclusion, and access as essential to our core mission to promote Emory University’s global engagement. Our team stands together against intolerance, prejudice, and racism. The foundational and systemic racism that afflicts our society violates the humanity of Black and Indigenous people and People of Color (BIPOC). Racism in all its forms is a global problem, a violation of human rights, and antithetical to Emory University’s mission to create, preserve, teach, and apply knowledge in the service of humanity. 

As an office, we are dedicated to the values of international education including intercultural understanding, inviting and embracing diverse perspectives, and welcoming students and scholars from diverse racial, ethnic, educational, cultural, geo-political, and socio-economic backgrounds. Indeed, in an increasingly interconnected world, education is one of the most powerful tools to combat prejudice and racism on our campus, in our country, and in the world. We believe that through international education and forging partnerships across the globe, our work has the potential to disrupt and help dismantle prejudice, racism, and intolerance.  

The stain of racism is embedded in academic systems and structures. We acknowledge that our institution is not immune and that we as members of its body are complicit when we do not actively work against the inertia of systemic injustices. As an office, we will work closely with and apply the ideas and initiatives from Emory University’s Office and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to incorporate these values into our work and decision-making processes. Specifically, we commit to: 

• elevating these values to be incorporated into our guiding document, the global strategy, and ensure that it promotes opportunities to champion and collaborate with BIPOC communities in Atlanta and around the world; and  
• prioritizing internal training for our staff as part of an ongoing pledge to create a workplace dedicated to equity, inclusion, and cross-cultural education, and to promote equality, act ethically, and oppose racism in our efforts at home and around the world. 

These commitments are merely our first steps to becoming more transparent, accountable, and active, and we will continue to explore new ways that our local and global work can reflect our values of diversity, equity, inclusion, and access. It is our ardent desire that through individual self-reflection and collective re-evaluation, we can exhibit the anti-racist ideals that we hope to see reflected in our own community and in places all over the world.