Diversity and Inclusion

The Anthropology department at the University of Oklahoma is committed to promoting diversity in the campus community and providing an inclusive space for all OU students, faculty, and staff, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, spiritual belief, geographic origin, abilities or disabilities, and socioeconomic status.

Anthropology as a discipline is uniquely positioned to promote understanding, awareness, and respect for cultural differences. These are values at the core of our discipline, which dedicates itself to the understanding of human cultural diversity across time and geographically, and also reflects one of the core values of the OU Office of University Community.

Diversity and inclusion are promoted through the variety of courses we teach. Many of these courses satisfy OU’s “Non-Western Culture” General Education requirement, reflecting our dedication to teaching OU students about the diversity of the world.

Anthropology as a discipline has also had a long history of de-naturalizing the biological construction of race, while simultaneously recognizing the power of race as a social construction. An innovative project sponsored by the American Anthropological Association (AAA) draws upon the four traditional sub-fields of anthropology to show how powerfully anthropology contributes to contemporary discussions of race. To learn more about race, please visit the AAA's Race: Are We So Different? project page, and the AAAstatement on race.

As a discipline, we also strive to promote gender equality. For information, see the Committee on Gender Equality in Anthropology (CoGEA) of the American Anthropological Association.