The officers and Steering Committee of the American Society for the History of Rhetoric acknowledge and support the efforts of NCA (and many of its divisions) and RSA to examine assumptions about and change protocols governing the ways scholars and scholarship gain official recognition.
We also acknowledge and support those scholars in our discipline who have long been striving for more diverse and inclusive institutions within and without the academy. We know there is lots of work to do. For our part, we pledge to better orient ASHR’s practices, programming, spaces, and pages around matters and realities of equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Our founding and continuing mission is to promote the study of rhetoric in all periods, languages, and cultural contexts, and we hope to help make the history of rhetoric a more diverse and inclusive sub-field within Communication and Rhetorical Studies.