Diversity & Inclusion

The Berman Institute (BI) Inclusion, Diversity, Anti-Racism, and Equity (IDARE) Committee is charged with providing leadership on the integration of inclusion, diversity, anti-racism, and equity principles throughout the BI and its programs.

The BI IDARE Committee is committed to helping the BI engage in critical conversations about racism and other forms of oppression, exploring the ways such dynamics play out within our community, identifying what is required to align our actions with our values, and making clear, actionable recommendations for change and accountability to foster and build a strong, diverse community of scholars, staff, trainees, and students in which each member feels they belong and can thrive.

The BI also has an Anti-Racism Reading Group, the focus of which is not inward, on institution of the BI, but rather outward, on the broader intellectual community of which the BI is a part. The Reading Group is oriented towards questions of the role of inclusion, diversity, anti-racism, and equity in the field of bioethics and our scholarship.

The work of the IDARE committee, an inward-facing effort, and the Anti-Racism Reading Group, an outward-focused conversation about the discipline of bioethics, are fundamentally interconnected. As professional and emerging bioethicists, we are tasked with identifying and responding to the moral concerns that arise across diverse fields of study: medicine, biotechnology, public health and more. The committee believes that we cannot rightfully lay claim to expertise on creating an ethical and just society without engaging directly with the ways that we, as an institution, uphold its unethical and unjust features. Thus, it is our imperative to begin this long overdue work.

If you have a question, comment or feedback for the BI IDARE Committee, please email bi-idare@jhu.edu.

Our Work

The work of the IDARE Committee will never be complete. We continuously and iteratively establish goals and work to achieve them, but our ultimate purpose is to incorporate IDARE values into the mission and vision of the Berman Institute itself and into bioethics as a discipline. Though the multiple catastrophic events of 2020 served as our catalyst, we are not a special interest group. Rather, we exist to hold our institution, discipline and, importantly, ourselves, accountable to these values in perpetuity. Our structure and our independence ensure that this work will continue well beyond this moment.

The committee members represent all groups that comprise the immediate Berman Institute community—faculty, administrative staff, research staff, postdoctoral fellows, and students.

We meet regularly to advance and assess our goals related to inclusion, diversity, anti-racism, and equity in the BI as a research institution, an employer, an educating and training facility, a subunit of the Johns Hopkins University, and a member of the broader Baltimore community.