09/18/2017

What Should You Say About a Sensitive Issue?

When crafting a response on a divisive issue, organizations must be careful

After violence flared in Charlottesville, Virginia, and as a handful of Confederate monuments were dismantled or defaced in other cities in the following weeks, the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC) found itself positioned squarely in the public debate about the fate of the controversial statues.

AIC “is dedicated to the preservation of the material evidence of our past so that we can learn from it today and understand it in the future” and therefore “cannot condone the vandalism or outright destruction of Confederate or other historic public memorials,” the organization’s board said in a position statement [PDF] issued September 6. But with the help of its Equity and Inclusion Working Group, AIC ensured that the statement addressed the debate’s broader context and the different meanings the statues hold for different communities.

It took two weeks of constant communication among the 16 board contributors involved in drafting the position statement, which was issued in response to concerns raised by AIC’s members. “This was not something that was light-handedly dashed off. This was very deliberate,” said AIC Board President Margaret Holben Ellis. “It took a lot of work.”

Please click here to read the complete article from Associations Now.