BBSA Response to Stanford GSB Action Plan for Racial Equity

On Sunday, July 26th, the Stanford GSB community received an email from the Deans, entitled Stanford GSB Action Plan for Racial Equity. Within this message, Dean Levin and Dean Soule provided a plan to tackle racial inequity within and beyond the GSB.

In the months leading up to this plan, Black students have made great efforts to incite positive change while simultaneously attempting to heal ourselves in a period of increased trauma, stress, and grief. We worked behind the scenes with the administration to address the systemic inequities the GSB has upheld.

In June 2020, the members of the Black community prepared a detailed set of recommendations that we presented to and reviewed with the administration. In it, we demonstrated the gross and sustained underrepresentation of Black students, tenured faculty, and staff. Only 3% of students, 2% of professoriate faculty, and 4% of staff at the GSB identify as Black. These shortcomings are unacceptable and the lack of action to date is clear. We challenged the GSB to do better and start to live up to its vision of changing lives, organizations, and the world.

We are dissatisfied and disappointed with the Stanford GSB Action Plan for Racial Equity. The plan proposed by the administration is an affront to our community’s willingness to collaborate. We have done our duty as students and student leaders. In fact, we have gone far beyond our duty. Yet, again we find ourselves educating the administration on why this plan fails to drive real change.

The problems of racial inequity are fundamental to and at the core of the GSB. They were not “revealed” after the brutal murders of George Floyd and many others, but were simply brought to light once again. The GSB, rather than leading its community by rejecting inequitable systems of power, waited for societal signals to make a difference — the opposite of proactive leadership and innovation. We are deeply concerned that the plan put forth continues this trend of inaction, inefficacy, and anti-Blackness.

1. An Absence of Quantifiable Targets or Deadlines to Enact Sustainable Change

At the GSB, we learn about the importance of having clear measurable goals in order to drive effective change. Yet, this plan does not include any tangible or specific metrics.

The administration’s plan calls for increasing Black representation amongst students and non-tenured teaching faculty. However, it does not propose a clear plan as to how or when these efforts will commence. It also disregards the need to support representation amongst tenured faculty. Tenured-track professors create new courses, shape the curriculum, and conduct research that add to the business literature. The GSB says they will increase the representation of URM PhDs by “partnering” with the PhD Project but does not specify what this partnership will entail or hopes to accomplish.

The only method focused on increasing the number of underrepresented MBAs is the BOLD Fellows Program, a scholarship granted to students who’ve encountered financial hardship. Notice that although this is a “near-term priority”, the initiative lacks teeth — it fails to include metrics, a timeline, or a specific commitment to the Black community or any other underrepresented community, much like many of the other initiatives in this plan.

How can we hold the administration accountable without clear, measurable goals?

2. Avoidance of Centering Communities Systematically Hurt by Previous Inaction

Launching a racial equity plan generally implies a commitment to programming and resources for particular races and groups who have been previously maligned by inequities. The plan put forth does its best, in many sections, to obscure or avoid specifying the particular groups towards whom various initiatives are targeted (ex: the BOLD Fellows scholarship criteria), using euphemistic language like “financial hardship” without any true specificity.

To launch a racial equity plan, as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement, and fail to be specific about the groups for whom the plans and initiatives are targeted reflects a continued trend to obscure intent and reallocate resources from historically impacted communities. We urge the administration to be specific. If the racial equity plan is meant to address historical inequities faced by the Black community, say so.

3. Over-reliance on the Uncompensated Labor of Black Community Members

This plan relies on the efforts of the Black community to: identify Black case study protagonists, find Black guest speakers and lecturers, increase recruitment of Black students to the program, and more. What it lacks are defined and specific commitments from the administration to allocate staff or financial resources to lead these efforts. People of color already play a disproportionate role in advancing diversity and inclusion. The reality is that this plan requires Black students to continue to provide uncompensated labor with no guarantee that the resources we produce will be used, or that the administration is committed to making meaningful change. Despite our continued partnership, the GSB has a longstanding history of disregarding the input of its Black students.

We, as members of the Black community, are exhausted. We provided our labor by giving detailed recommendations, reviewed the plan currently set forth (meeting a strict 48-hour deadline after which our feedback was unacknowledged and unincorporated), and articulated directly to Deans Soule and Levin the plan’s shortcomings prior to its announcement to the broader community. We challenge the administration to listen to its community and meet a minimum bar of accountability, transparency, and efficacy. The GSB purports to train the world’s future business leaders — if it fails to equip them with the tools to create a just and equitable future, it is culpable for future inequities.

We want the administration to put forth the same amount of effort and dedication to Black equality at the GSB that its Black community has done for decades. We want the administration to respond with measurable and impactful actions for which they can truly be held accountable.

We, members of the Black community, are not satisfied or pacified. We expect and deserve meaningful change. Though we will continue to collaborate with the administration, we cannot and will not let up until the action plan meets the standard of excellence that this institution should be held accountable to. Current students and allies, we ask that you, alongside us, pressure the administration to address the holes in their announced plan by setting quantifiable targets for which they can be held accountable, allocating real financial and human resources, and defining methods for measuring impact on the Black community. The time for action is long overdue.

In solidarity,

The Stanford Black Business Student Association (BBSA)