CFP: DEI in Business: Restatement or Reorientation?
Submission deadline: January 31, 2025
Conference date(s):
April 4, 2025
Conference Venue:
Department of Legal Studies and Business Ethics, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia,
United States
Topic areas
Details
CALL FOR PROPOSALS :
Workshop on DEI in Business: Restatement or Reorientation?
Proposal deadline: January 31, 2025
Workshop: April 4, 2025
We are pleased to announce an academic workshop on DEI in Business: Restatement of Ideals, which will be held on Friday, April 4, 2024 at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The workshop aims to foster in-progress scholarship and connect an interdisciplinary community of scholars working on legal and ethical issues related to equality and opportunity in business.
Over the past year, business commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and legal programs aiming at preventing discrimination and redressing historical injustices have come under attack. Some have interpreted this year’s electoral results as a sentiment shift that challenges the assumptions and commitments that underly DEI policies. How should scholars respond to such challenges? Should DEI scholarship and practice resist pressures to change focus, or is it time to update our beliefs and aims? Should DEI policies be distinguished from or allied with political goals that arguably have broader or non-partisan appeal, such as social mobility, meritocracy, trust, civility, or civic unity? To what degree are the criticisms of DEI themselves rooted in inequalities of wealth, status, or access that have been neglected or misunderstood?
These prompts should be interpreted generously. We seek scholarly interventions that not only focus on particular policy and ethical questions, but also stand back in order to introspect about the rhetorical, political, and epistemic strategies and goals that the current moment calls for.
This will be a pre-read workshop, and participants commit to submitting their papers on time and reading each others’ papers in preparation for discussion.
We invite scholars to submit a title, abstract, and CV to [email protected]. Full papers—which may be at any stage of development prior to publication, including early-stage work —will be due on March 14.
The Wharton School will provide some funding for accommodations and travel support for participants, especially early career scholars.
Program Committee: Stephanie Creary (Management), Brian Feinstein (LGST), Fareeda Griffith
(CEO), Julian Jonker (LGST), Amanda Shanor (LGST)