Black Lives Matter

Eastern Academy of Management, Inc. (EAM) is an organization of management educators from around the globe that celebrates our differences in race, culture, gender, gender identity and expression, religion, and sexual orientation. We promote learning and educational experiences, including those focused on truth and justice.

EAM stands explicitly against racial injustice. Illegal, unlawful arrests, and the killing of Black men and women without justification is an everyday reality that we will not ignore. As higher education leaders, we are distressed by the failure of our society, including our own institutions, to address the barriers and discrimination that Black members of society face in ways both large and small in every aspect of their lives. It is time for us to come together as a country to deal with a deeply troubling past by striving for a fair and inclusive present that can deliver us into a just future.

As higher education leaders, we understand the impact of a deeply rooted past of racial bias in our country and how that past has led to an unjust present. As a professional association, we face challenges in our recruitment, retention, and advancement processes. We acknowledge that we collectively and individually have the power and the responsibility to make the necessary changes. Black graduate students and faculty are dramatically underrepresented in our profession at all levels (master’s and doctoral students, as well as assistant, associate, and full professors). Only when we take significant action towards becoming an inclusive and equitable society based in respect will we become a diverse society that thrives. We feel that it is incumbent upon us to speak out at this moment of collective action, and more importantly to listen actively and with compassion to those who experience these challenges. We seek to recognize areas where we are complicit in contributing to racism and consistently seek to correct ourselves and our organizations.

 Our EAM Commitment: “Walk our Talk”

• We envision and commit to advocating for social justice, so that all black men and women can breathe, work, study, and live without fear. As educators, we must “walk our talk”. We must commit to our values and align our words and actions with our beliefs to eradicate the systemic bias that perpetuates horrific inequality, suspicion, prejudice, and hate threatening black lives.   

• We value inclusion and equity.We will work tirelessly for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) cause in higher education spaces. Specifically, we commit to equity and inclusion in Black student and faculty recruitment, retention, and advancement systems and processes. We commit to creating safe spaces, free from fear, in which Black involvement, leadership, and intellectual works are celebrated, not minimized, not made invisible, nor disrespected.

• We value Black communities for who they are and what they have to offer. Black lives and communities are an integral part of the American system, and as such are entitled to claim the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

• We value eradicating structural bias.We will speak out against hate, implicit bias, and stereotypical assumptions in eliminating the silence, invisible barriers, and micro-aggressions that perpetuate oppression in our educational systems.

Thank you to Marcia Robinson, Jeff Moretz, David Ford, Olugbenga Adeyinka, Yolanda Christophe, Tejinder Billing, Samina Saifuddin, Mariana Lebrón, and 41 additional members for their work developing the authentic truth inherent in this statement by gathering living stories over 48 hours during the EAM 2020 annual conference for consideration by our EAM community through a formal call to action at the annual business meeting.

As EAM, we commit to an ongoing plan of action beginning with dialogues in Fall 2020 to understand and develop a safe space within our association. Everyone is welcome. If you have questions, information to share, suggestions, ideas, and/or would like to be part of this movement, a grassroots process of systemic change, please email Mariana Lebrón, EAM Treasurer, at mlebron@towson.edu.

 Approved: June 26, 2020

During the annual business meeting of the 2020 EAM Conference on Friday, June 26, 2020, EAM voted in affirmation to approve this statement as a formalized call to action, for this statement to be immediately placed prominently on our professional association website and included in all marketing materials, to be accepted as a living statement to be updated, revised, and reviewed annually and throughout the year, and for EAM to immediately begin a process of systemic change to address issues of inclusion and inequity experienced due to race, culture, gender, gender identity and expression, religion, and sexual orientation..