Statement from ESMT Town Hall on inclusion and anti-racism
Like many international schools, ESMT Berlin has been engaging in discussions on inclusion, racism, and anti-discrimination. On June 9, 2020, ESMT President Jörg Rocholl invited students, faculty, staff, and administrators to participate in an extraordinary online Town Hall to cement the school's commitment to building an inclusive learning environment that explicitly counters racial biases and discrimination of any kind. Joined by more than 200 members of the ESMT community, the Town Hall detailed current efforts – a recent campus climate survey of Master's in Management students, the hiring of staff for the Equal4Europe initiative, the strengthening of the code of conduct – and also gave voice to new commitments, including authority and support in the efforts of the Inclusive Leadership Roundtable.
Below, we share with you President Rocholl's statement to the ESMT community in the hopes to engage more stakeholders and to ensure we fully live up to our claim to empower people to create a better tomorrow.
Members of the ethnic minorities of our ESMT community and in particular members of our black community have reached out to us in recent days and expressed their pain, their loneliness, and their feeling of being left behind – and they have asked what ESMT stands for these days.
Let me provide you with very clear answers:
1) ESMT condemns any racism and discrimination to the utmost extent. As a place with professors, students, and staff from all over the world, we strongly believe in diversity, in the enrichment of ourselves by the various backgrounds and views others bring to the table, and the invaluable merits that enlightenment and rule of law have brought to humankind.
2) In particular, we express with full passion: Black lives matter
3) As part of the ESMT community, you are not alone. We stand together to achieve inclusion by combatting racism, discrimination, and intolerance everywhere — in the US, in Europe, in Germany, and in our own community.
Thank you to the members of the ESMT community for the open discussion at the Townhall today. We look forward to working together more closely with you and the ESMT Inclusive Leadership Roundtable.
