Introducing the New Allyship Programs!

We are excited to welcome you back to campus! We want to start the new academic year by introducing who we are to you once again and our new initiatives! While doing that, we hope you will grasp how you can help our efforts for advocacy and allyship on campus. The Advocates & Allies for Equity (A&A) strives to reduce inequity and bias at Indiana University Bloomington, focusing on gender and its intersection with other minoritized identities. We also seek to reduce the burden of this work on our minoritized colleagues, and to that end, the leadership team is largely composed of men who acknowledge their privilege and use it to affect change. Our goals include fostering an inclusive climate and promoting equity in hiring and retaining faculty, staff, postdocs, and graduate students. One unique effort A&A takes is creating a network of allies, particularly focusing on IUB men and educating them and ourselves about gender inequity and advocacy. In this regard, we are introducing programs such as Ally Tips Open Submission, Facilitation (unit/department-based dialogue on allyship for gender equity), and the Ally Pledge (action pledge).  

Learn more about our new programs and how you and your department can be part of our network of allies and advocates for gender equity on campus!

Who is Advocates & Allies for Equity?

The Advocates & Allies for Equity (A&A) aims to spread collaborative critical allyship on our campus.1 Critical allyship is about acknowledging unequal access to privileges and using one’s privilege in actionable ways to end the system built to give them greater privilege. Johnson and Smith suggest this allyship is action-based rather than expression-based, is a journey rather than a destination, is collaborative rather than occasional “benevolent actions” for others, and is decentering rather than a spotlight effect.2 

In other words, critical allyship is to become life-long co-conspirators for dismantling inequity.3  We design our workshops and other programs, with this purpose at the forefront, some focusing on the content and discussion of a target demographic (e.g., men-only workshops and Facilitation) and some more general. To encourage more men* on this journey for gender equity and reduce the burden of women,the men on our Advocates Leadership Team develop,  lead,  and  facilitate  the programs.

Facilitation: Collaborative Allyship  

Critical allyship is not a walk in the park. But walking that park with other allies can make your critical allyship journey less puzzling. For this reason, the A&A is launching the Facilitation program. Our trained Advocate Leaders will facilitate dialogue on gender equity for men* faculty/staff in your unit/department. Facilitation will offer a positive setting focused on men’s transformational learning so that they can collaboratively discover new ways of allyship by candidly sharing their reflections and challenges of allyship with other men. 

Request Facilitation for your unit/department for Spring 2025 by emailing us at aaequity@iu.edu. We will work with your department/unit to tailor the dialogue!  

*We welcome transgender and nonbinary people who feel comfortable in a setting focused on men’s transformational learning to participate.  

Ally Tips Open Submission: Collective Knowledge Building on Allyship 

A&A intends to create an inclusive climate at IUB and promote equity in recruiting and retaining faculty, staff, postdocs, and graduate students. To this end, we invite you to participate in collective efforts to enhance allyship on campus by submitting your Ally Tips. (Of course, you will get the acknowledgment for your Tips!)  

Here are some questions to form ideas for your Ally Tips submission: What does allyship look like to you as a faculty, administrator, staff, postdoc, or graduate student? What kind of allyship is most needed in your fields? What are the challenges of allyship, and what support is needed?  

Ally Pledge: Building An Accountable Community of Allies 

A&A is dedicated to building an accountable community of allies on campus and providing spaces where allies can share reflections. If you’d like to publicly declare as an ally, consider participating in our action-based Ally Pledge.

Through this pledge, we aim to:

  • encourage you to take concrete actions as an ally for equity and promote more action-based allyship on campus,  
  • create a public list of allies on our “See your local allies” page where individuals seeking allyship support can find you, and  
  • bring the allies together to share reflections and challenges (e.g., round table).  
Get these tips delivered to your mailbox!
We send these tips every Tuesday during the fall & spring semesters to our mailing list. If you are not already on our mailing list you can request to be added by completing the form below.

See our Archived Ally Tips

Learn more about Advocates and Allies for Equity