ETH-wide Conference: From Awareness to Action

Exchange between minority-lead associations and allies on bullying, harassment, and discrimination.

📅 Thursday, 24.09.2026 

📍Alumni Pavillon

🕐 08:30-17:30 (conference), 18:00-21:00 (public evening event)

👥 For minority and staff associations, ETH representative, allies and everyone else who is interested.

🤝 Register Now! https://forms.gle/QqYaUVj2VKFJVF6x7

Harassment, bullying, and discrimination still happen regularly in research groups at ETH or among staff and students. Different associations at ETH try to address these issues, e.g., by creating safe spaces, organizing awareness events, or actively building a dialogue with ETH. While our associations are in exchange with each other and collaborate on a project basis, we do not have a platform where we can address these structural problems and how to fight them on a regular basis, coordinate our actions, and discuss with representatives from ETH.  Therefore, we organize a conference day on September 24th to take the time to talk to each other, exchange ideas, discuss current problems that we face at ETH, and future actions we can take.

💬 Topics

• Implementing and monitoring  the ETH Diversity, Equality & Inclusion Framework
• Harassment: Prevention, Reporting and Awareness

For a more detailed description of the topic, see below. 

⚡Goals

• Highlighting the different/individual DEI associations at ETH and their work
• Discuss systemic issues related to DEI or power abuse at ETH, and exchange with representatives from ETH as well as external organizations on how to effectively address them.
• Discuss and formulate concrete actions that we can take. 

🗣️ Speakers

To be announced – stay tuned for more details!

📅 Preliminary program

💡Topics in more details
Implementing the ETH Diversity, Equality & Inclusion Framework

ETH Zurich has recently adopted a new Strategic Framework for Diversity, Equality & Inclusion (DEI), which establishes a shared institutional vision: fostering a culture of belonging in which all members feel respected, valued, and able to fully participate.

The framework defines key fields of action—leadership, teaching, research, and non-discrimination—while leaving departments responsible for selecting priorities and developing concrete measures adapted to their specific contexts.

This session focuses on the critical question of implementation: how is this institutional commitment translating into meaningful change in everyday academic life?

Drawing on the collective expertise of student and staff associations dedicated to DEI, we will evaluate how this framework impacts departments and minority-led organizations. By examining best practices and structural challenges at the departmental level, we aim to identify measures that are impactful, realistic, and sustainable. Additionally, we seek to re-evaluate our roles as associations and shape a proactive path, where we actively steward and support the realization of these goals.

Harassment: Prevention, Reporting and Awareness

Harassment is facilitated in academia by the strong power imbalance between professors and PhD students. Especially in male-dominated fields, minority-groups such as women or queer people are statistically more often the victim of such harassment. While structural aspects that facilitate harassment are hard to change, the consequences can be mitigated by raising awareness, having preventive measures in place and facilitating the reporting of incidents by the victims. In this session, we want to discuss the existing measures in-place, what is still missing and what we as associations can do to help prevent harassment.