SAA Council Explores Diversity and Inclusion Strategies, Adopts Statement Reaffirming Commitment to D&I

With review and revision of SAA’s Strategic Plan on the agenda and current events on everyone’s mind, the SAA Council devoted a half day during its November 14-16 meeting to a “deep dive” facilitated session on diversity, inclusion, and community involvement and then adopted “SAA Statement Reaffirming Our Commitment to the Importance of Diversity and Inclusion.” Several strategies and activities discussed during the session will be incorporated into the plan going forward.

In other actions, the Council:

• Approved an updated issue brief on the Freedom of Information Act.
• Approved minor revisions in SAA’s “Guidelines for a Graduate Program in Archival Studies.”
• Appointed Dennis Meissner to a four-year term as SAA’s representative to the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. 
• Adopted a revision of the Committee on Education description that includes a newly created Graduate Archival Education Subcommittee. The subcommittee will ensure that SAA is positioned to address critical issues associated with graduate archival education even as the Committee itself continues its focus on continuing education.  As noted in the description, due to resource limitations, SAA and the Graduate Archival Education Subcommittee do not address accreditation issues.
• Approved a plan for transition of member affinity groups to a new structure and adopted “section” as the name for all groups formerly known as a “section” or “roundtable.” The staff and Council liaisons will be reaching out to the groups (via the Leader List and individually) with more information in the coming months. Members may now sign up to belong to an unlimited number of groups and nonmembers may participate in the discussion lists of up to three groups.
• Reviewed and discussed the 2016 annual reports of all sections and roundtables as well as several appointed groups. Access the compiled section and roundtable annual reports here.

The Council agenda and meeting materials may be accessed here.

Complete minutes of the meeting will be posted to the SAA website once approved by the Council.