Statements

We face a climate emergency recognized in declarations by the Government of Canada, the City of Vancouver and communities throughout Canada and the world. The School of Information at the University of British Columbia stands in solidarity with the millions of people worldwide demanding action on the climate crisis.

We commit to encouraging and enabling our faculty, staff and students to participate in calls to action. Together, we are taking steps to respond to this crisis through our research, teaching, learning, and academic and community service.

As an information school, we will leverage our interdisciplinary skills and knowledge and our academic and professional networks to address societal challenges arising from the climate crisis.

We at UBC School of Information dedicate ourselves to creating a school climate of equity and mutual respect, with particular attention to the needs of all marginalized and under-represented groups of people. As we are situated on the unceded, traditional and ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm peoples, the experience of Indigenous (First Nations, Métis and Inuit) students, staff, faculty, and community members is essential to the school climate we envision.

We are committed to the university’s Statement on Respectful Environment and the Faculty of Arts strategic goals for inclusive excellence. Furthermore, as we at the iSchool explore the intersection of people, technology, and information, we have a fundamental responsibility to be inclusive of the diversity of all people in our public and professions. This responsibility requires improving and repairing relations with all communities previously excluded from decision-making and leadership in research and the professions.

Creating a diverse, inclusive, and equitable school for students of all backgrounds and identities is vital, given that our alumni are leaders in libraries, archives, and information institutions locally and around the world. For example, libraries and archives are explicitly named in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Calls to Action (69, 70). It is imperative that our graduates are prepared to meet these and related calls (e.g., 62, 63 on education) in their work.

Information specialists play a crucial role in providing equitable access to information, supporting information literacy, and making governance and history transparent to the public. They also must manage the risks of information systems harming vulnerable groups, including violating rights to representation, privacy, autonomy, and self-determination. This work is not exempt from disruptions from the climate crisis or precarious employment and happens alongside struggles for ethical hiring practices and working conditions in the professions.

In cooperation with professional associations and our alumni, the UBC School of Information has a vital role in shifting information work practices toward justice. We commit ourselves to combat intersecting forms of oppression, including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, and transphobia—both within our school and in the information systems we study and design.

The equity and diversity committee at the school was created in 2019 to collect, respond to, and address student concerns about the internal climate of the school and the retention and support of students of colour.

The committee works to promote and create equitable policies and practices within the school. Act as a contact point for issues across the school, facilitate internal professional development that supports a diverse student body, and consult with other committees in recruitment, admissions, hiring, curriculum, and event planning. The committee includes faculty, staff, PhD students, and master's students.

The School of Information is deeply saddened to learn of the discovery of unmarked graves at a growing number of Residential Schools in Canada:

• 215 at Kamloops, British Columbia (May 2020);
• 751 at Marieval, Saskatchewan (June 2021);
• 182 at St Eugene’s Mission School near Cranbrook, British Columbia (July 2021);
• 93 at St. Joseph’s Residential School, Williams Lake, British Columbia (January 2022).

The events across Canada surface the ongoing traumatic harm of the residential school system for those in the iSchool community who are intergenerational survivors of this colonial system. Supports and resources are available. Our thoughts are with the families, the communities, residential school survivors, intergenerational survivors, and all who mourn.

As a school whose students will be the next generations of librarians and archivists, we acknowledge the importance of the goals connecting these professions, as identified by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: the right of Indigenous Peoples to know the truth about the violations that happened in residential schools; making records accessible publicly; and supporting the creation of materials for public education. The discoveries across Canada reiterate that UBC iSchool and other Information Schools in Canada have the responsibility to instill these goals in their students and the professions they are part of. We stand in unity with the Indigenous People of Canada.

Faculty members within the School of Information (iSchool) are issuing the following statement on the Free Palestine student encampment at UBC’s MacInnes Field. The statement does not represent the views of UBC, or any of its departments or other constituent units, including the iSchool. Faculty members issuing this statement recognize that there are or may be dissenting viewpoints within the unit.

As iSchool faculty, we deeply value and support all students’ right to free expression and peaceful protest. We commend how UBC students apply their skills in support of peace, and to deepen their knowledge about the complex history of the region and its peoples.

We are proud of and humbled by our students and those who put librarians’ and archivists’ skills and values into practice in the encampment, including fostering an environment for shared and self-directed learning and for archiving encampment materials. They engage with a tradition of library and archives activism that interacts with peoples’ rights to access to information, privacy, intellectual freedom, and having their cultural memory preserved in historical records.

We ask UBC to respect the encampment as a non-violent form of protest and not to intervene. Protest actions are inherently disruptive. We urge the university to accommodate this disruption as a healthy part of our community and democratic culture. We urge the university to maintain a caring, trusting, and respectful dialogue with students on the issues they raise.

iSchool faculty members have a variety of views; the points we do agree on are therefore all the more meaningful. We want the university to remain open to the encampment and maintain a dialogue with students. We support students’ free speech rights and do not want the camp dismantled, or to see students punished. We would see calling the police as counter to UBC’s culture of respect and the right of all people in Canada to peaceful protest in a free and democratic society.