[AISWorld] A Message and an Invitation from SIG Social Inclusion

[Carter, Michelle]

Dear Friends and Colleagues,



The Information Systems (IS) community's concerns about US travel restrictions, politicizing the AIS, censorship, and fear for personal safety, have our attention. We've been following the discussions on AISWorld, social media, and the statement from AIS President, Jason Thatcher<http://aisnet.org/news/328790/A-Message-to-the-Members-of-AIS.htm>.


In his statement, Jason Thatcher called attention to SIG Social Inclusion (SIG-SI). We appreciate his advocacy and affirm our commitment to helping the AIS build and sustain an inclusive, diverse, global community of IS scholars. We also want to introduce ourselves more fully.


SIG-SI works to overcome barriers that prevent us all from doing what we want to do, need to do, and what we do best, as scholars. SIG-SI provides a means to promote research, pedagogy, and outreach on all aspects of social inclusion in the IS field.


To this end, in addition to SIG-SI minitracks, we will host professional development symposia at AMCIS 2017 and a research workshop post-ICIS 2017. This is an expansion of SIG-SI programming and it's necessary for two reasons. First, travel restrictions may preclude many from entering or leaving the United States to attend conferences. Thus, events at both AMCIS and ICIS represent more than geographic convenience or cost savings; they may be the only way for some to reconnect with colleagues at an AIS conference. Moving forward, we need help to expand SIG-SI's activities to ECIS, PACIS, and other AIS-affiliated conferences and to grow our membership and leadership team to include more members from Regions 2 and 3.



Second, our program expansion is necessary in light of the current global political climate. Social inclusion issues are often thought of as the domain of women, LGBTQ peoples, people of color, people with disabilities, or other underrepresented groups. While SIG-SI continues to attend to such issues, we recognize that social exclusion has systemic implications; exclusion affects every single person reading this-regardless of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, ability, or values. Thus, in addition to program expansion, SIG-SI will create a task force to:



*         Identify barriers to IS scholars' full participation in the AIS community

*         Develop mechanisms for alerting the AIS to issues that limit people's participation

*         Assist the AIS in developing services and/or policies to promote social inclusion


Should you find yourself moved to work toward social inclusion and support the full participation of all members in the AIS community, we invite you to join <https://aisnet.org/store/ViewProduct.aspx?ID=1277187> us. Volunteer for our task force, help expand our reach, and tell your stories via the SIG-SI Facebook<https://www.facebook.com/groups/622577167952624/> or LinkedIn<https://www.linkedin.com/groups/7057891> groups. Irrespective of your research or teaching interests, we hope you will become a member of SIG-SI<https://aisnet.org/store/ViewProduct.aspx?ID=1277187>. Help us to support our AIS community in its initiatives to enable better scholarship, more effective pedagogy, and in strengthening our global IS community.


Sincerely,


Michelle Carter, Jaime Windeler, Adriane Randolph, and Eileen Trauth

SIG-SI Executive Board


For more information on SIG-SI:


Michelle Carter, President (michelle.carter at wsu.edu<mailto:michelle.carter at wsu.edu>)

Jaime Windeler, Secretary (jaime.windeler at uc.edu<mailto:jaime.windeler at uc.edu>)

Adriane Randolph, Treasurer (arandolph at kennesaw.edu<mailto:arandolph at kennesaw.edu>)

Eileen Trauth, Past-President (etrauth at ist.psu.edu<mailto:etrauth at ist.psu.edu>)