I’ve been using an inclusion rider since April 2019. Its purpose is to move from lamenting the lack of diversity at educational conferences and other professional development to actually making change happen. I wish I could say that I always realized this was needed or something I could do, but truthfully I was comfortable in my privilege and naively neglected opportunities to improve things.
If there are multiple keynote presenters, featured speakers, or panelists (“the speakers”), at least 50% of the speakers must be people of color and at least 50% of the speakers must identify as women or non-binary. Otherwise, I reserve the right to withdraw commitment without penalty.
My hope for sharing my inclusion rider and the reactions that I’ve gotten to it from organizations is that it will publicize and normalize using inclusion riders in education so that professional development organizers proactively diversify their speaker lineups.
I did not speak at this event.
They went on to describe that the other featured speakers were 60% women and 40% people of color. I felt like that was close enough so I waived the rider and spoke at this event.
I provided them with people I highly recommended but I ultimately was not able to speak at this conference and don’t remember what the lineup looked like.
I then explained that I would need to be on hold until they knew more. About two weeks later they emailed again with a featured speaker lineup that, including me, would be 66% speakers of color and 50% women. Multiple featured speakers were people I recommended. I was thrilled with this result and spoke at this event.
I was going back and forth about how to respond to this. Ultimately, I said yes and spoke at this event. While the final lineup did not meet the threshold in the rider, it was closer than it had been in previous years.
Later on, when social media came out, some of it featured essentially all white speakers. After reaching out to them, future social media was more diverse. I did wind up speaking at this conference, but in retrospect, I would have handled this differently.
This was by far my most satisfying no I’ve ever received. While I did not speak at this event, I definitely hope to work with this organization in the future.
Originally it was going to be me and one other woman keynote. Ultimately, it was me and a woman of color. This event has yet to happen.
So I changed how I picked sessions and prioritized speakers I’d never seen speak before, especially speakers of color and those that identified as women and non-binary. The results of this choice hit me quickly: there were freaking amazing speakers I’d missed out on for years because I was stuck in my silo.
What made it worse was that because I had never seen them speak, when people would ask me for speaker recommendations for their conference, I inevitably recommended the same white guys. I perpetuated this cycle where people with opportunities got more opportunities and people without opportunities continued to struggle. When we’re excluding certain demographics, we’re lying to ourselves if we think that our old system was solely about who could do the best job.
Update 12/8/22
One point I’m now better understanding thanks to feedback on this blog post is how does someone using an inclusion rider determine which attributes are included or not?
Really interesting to read this, Robert.
Genuine question-
What about diversity of religion, age etc? How do you decide which type of diversity matters?
— Michaela Epstein (@mic_epstein) December 8, 2022
I’m realizing that I’ve been including attributes that are easier to determine without asking and not necessarily the attributes that matters most. This will be something I hope to figure out better over time.
For example, something I’ve been working on recently is going beyond equitable representation to ensure keynotes and featured speakers are receiving equal pay. I’ve come to realize that I often ask for more money than speakers of color and people who identify as women or non-binary. This would not feel fair to me if I was receiving less money.
So, I’ve begun doing something about it and worked with two organizations to ensure that all keynotes/featured speakers get paid equally. So far this has meant that I wind up getting paid up to 50% less than I normally charge. In return other speakers have received double or triple what they’d normally make. Again, I don’t have this fully figured out and I’m sure I’ll make some changes over time, but these are the kinds of things we need to be talking about.
What do you think? What am I missing? What am I wrong about? What could I do a better job with? Please let me know in the comments.
As an African American educator of many years, I am excited to see your public acknowledgement and willingness to address the issue in a direct manner. We have much work to do with especially in diversifying our teacher ranks to reflect the students we serve. Again thank you
Thanks Willie. You said it well. When our speaker lineups don’t match the communities they serve, something is wrong and needs to be corrected.
Thank you for this post, Robert. I think what moves me most is that you didn’t have to do any of these things, and you certainly didn’t have to publicly describe your actions. It is clear that these things are important to you now, and I am here for all of it.
Thank you, Marian. It isn’t perfect but hopefully together we can brainstorm some improvements.
Wonderful post. I’ve been impressed with your rider clause and am glad to hear about some of the responses you have. More positive than I would have expected, definitely. I hope others are doing similar riders.
I think including 2SLGBTQIAA+ in a rider is great, and difficult. Doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done, but how might affect closeted people, or trans/non-binary people who aren’t ready to be out, but are featured speakers? I know it’s a whataboutism, but as an out bisexual man married to a cis-gendered woman, being out doesn’t mean much beyond a flag in my classroom and a willingness to share my dating past in the right circumstances. I’m curious what others think because I’m sure there’s a good solution that doesn’t require people to check a box putting themselves to apply to speak.
Thank you for sharing that, Ethan. I didn’t know. As some people have pointed out on Twitter, two worthwhile questions to consider include:
– How do we decide what factors we account for? Race/ethnicity? Gender? Religion? (Dis)ability? LGBTQ+?
– How do we reconcile figuring out how people identify AND respect that this may not be information that they want to share?
A takeaway I’m having is that the factors I’ve included in my inclusion rider are more about ones I can more easily verify without asking, not necessarily the only ones that are important.
I appreciate the thought you’ve given and the modeling you are doing for others with this blog post. I agree with Ethan that the idea of disclosure is difficult, personal, and even dangerous for some folx re: 2SLGBTQIA+ people and dis/abled folx. When it comes to these “invisible” identities (though they are not invisible to some), I think shifting our thoughts to include elements of belonging, in addition to representation. So for example, the rider can include elements such as the presence of gender neutral bathrooms and the option to select pronouns at registration, ASL interpreters for at least all keynote and featured speakers, having masks available and strongly recommended (with exceptions for those who cannot mask for disability reasons of course), affinity spaces for BIPOC and 2SLGBTQIA+ identified folx, as well as disabled folx, making sure at least one session on the program is dedicated to inclusion of each of these identity groups, and other ideas that folx recommended in this document https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BfoqbJHqgIetbsQ3S_eNmGWvnZMBu6iLgJbUwsNL06s/edit or that I expressed as cause for distress in my blog post about NCTM LA https://www.thequeermathematicsteacher.com/uncategorized/where-do-we-go-from-here-reflecting-on-nctmla22-and-the-slow-violence-of-traumatic-math-spaces/. Obviously, this might be a lot to try to tackle as an individual, but they can be starting points for thinking about what we can all do to demand spaces that are safe and welcoming for all. That alone will begin to diversify who is in the room and even feels safe seeking out these opportunities.
I am so sorry that I somehow missed this comment. The suggestion to include “elements of belonging” is not something I had considered. I can see how that would definitely make it easier for those in attendance.
The document has lots of great ideas as well. It’s a slightly different angle as it’s focused on the attendees and would be more of an over conference rider than specifically that of the speakers. I’m going to think on this. If you had to pick the top requests you’d want to see, what would the top three to five be?
Where do disabled math educators fit in this picture?
That’s a great question I have not figured out. I would love any suggestions. Questions I wonder include:
– What percentage of the general population have a disability?
– What percentage of keynote/featured speakers have a disability?
– What would be the best way to determine this when setting up a conference so that it doesn’t require anyone to disclose something they don’t feel comfortable with?
I’m honestly not sure and am interested in any feedback.
Robert, I love your transparency about your learning. I wish more people felt comfortable being so transparent about their journey. Thanks for sharing the work you are doing and giving people something to think about.
Thanks for the kind words, Molly. It’s definitely a work in progress. My main goal is to normalize conversations like this so that we can have them more regularly.
This is such an amazing display of ally-ship, both the rider and the open and frank discussion of it.
One thing I was wondering, with zero authority and experience, is if changing the “identify as women or non-binary” could be changed (added?) to “non-cis-gendered.” I wonder if that is more inclusive—for instance of trans men. (It seems to me totally impressionistically and not grounded in data) that most ttans rights/trans awareness, trans week/month etc publicity leans very heavily on trans women who are strikingly feminine—often in a super-model kind of way (I am thinking specifically if the Comcast “It’s Trans awareness month!” graphic.). In any case, i wonder if people who know much more than me would think that non-cis-gendered would be more inclusive than just identify as women/non-binary.
Let me start by saying that I 100% support the trans community. And I’m in agreement with you that I’d like to refine my statement to be more inclusive, not less.
The big challenge I see is how to balance making the clause nearly universally understandable AND make it inclusive. For example, if we asked 100 people what “non-cis-gendered” meant, I don’t think we’d get a very high rate. This likely means that they’d just be signing something they don’t understand and are not sure how to implement.
But I don’t like just calling it a day there. I will keep thinking on phrasings to improve this.