The University of Alberta's board of governors has officially removed explicit equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) language from its hiring policy, replacing it with a new framework focused on "access, community and belonging."
The policy change was approved Friday during a board meeting, marking a significant shift in how the institution approaches diversity in its recruitment practices.
University President and Vice-Chancellor Bill Flanagan addressed the change during an unrelated news conference Friday, defending the university's continued commitment to improving representation across campus.
"The board made a decision really embracing access, community and belonging as core values at the University of Alberta," Flanagan said.
According to Flanagan, the new terminology emerged from extensive consultations that were processed using artificial intelligence technology. The AI system analyzed feedback and produced a word cloud that identified the three most prominent themes.
"We took all of those consultations and fed them into some remarkable AI machine that produces a word cloud, and three words came to the very top, and it was access community and belonging," Flanagan explained.
Focus Shifts to Barrier Reduction
The president emphasized that "access" represents the university's commitment to removing obstacles that prevent people from joining or succeeding at the institution.
"When we talk about access, we're really talking about reducing barriers to access to the university, whatever those barriers might be — systemic barriers, cultural barriers — recognizing that there's still a lot of barriers for people, both students, faculty and staff to access the university and achieve success and realize their dreams," Flanagan said.
He stressed the importance of examining and addressing these barriers while building an inclusive campus environment.
"What we're really committing ourselves to is creating a community where everyone is welcome, everyone feels supported, recognizing that community is very diverse, and if you walk on our campus, you will see an enormous diversity of students, faculty and staff from around the world," Flanagan added.
The policy change comes as universities across Canada continue to navigate evolving approaches to diversity and inclusion in their operations and hiring practices.
This article is based on reporting from the Edmonton Journal. Read the original story here.