At Gathering of DEI Officers, Fear, Anger, Joy, and Solidarity

Shortly after 6 p.m. last Thursday, applause and a few yelps slipped past the closed doors of the Harborside Ballroom on the third floor of the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront. Inside, several hundred diversity, equity, and inclusion officers from colleges across America were caught in the crosscurrents of fear, anger, joy, and solidarity.

It was the second day of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (Nadohe) conference, and DEI officers were listening to their colleagues from Florida and Texas offer firsthand accounts of those states’ legislative attempts to ban DEI work on college campuses. The session was entitled, “The Narrative Has Been Hijacked, Now What?”

As hotel staff prepared charcuterie and chilled drinks for an end-of-the-day reception, DEI officers convened in the special session, which was closed to the media.

“We wanted to give our members a chance to speak freely without fear of repercussions,” said Paulette Granberry Russell, the president of Nadohe.

The applause that spilled out into the lobby came halfway through the evening sessions, breaking out, according to several Nadohe members in attendance, when it was suggested the group take a more aggressive stance in fighting the bills in 19 states that, if passed, would eliminate or severely hobble diversity, equity, and inclusion work on college campuses.

In that brief moment, the DEI officers gathered in Baltimore felt powerful.

“It was unifying,” said Sherrene Delong, coordinator of DEI events and programming at Northern Virginia Community College.

For the last few years, conservative politicians have attacked diversity, equity, and inclusion offices at public colleges.

In 19 states this year, conservatives have proposed pieces of legislation that would, in a variety of ways, impact DEI work on college campuses, according to a Chronicle analysis. Some would ban hiring preferences for faculty and admissions; some would prohibit schools from making faculty and staff sign diversity statements before being hired; other bills would ban diversity training programs, or ban diversity, equity, and inclusion offices altogether.

Conservative politicians believe colleges have become incubators of liberal ideologues who try to indoctrinate students. DEI offices, in their estimates, are the nerve centers for campus liberalism, where faculty are trained how to properly use pronouns, where students are taught antiracism and critical race theory, and where recruitment of faculty and student admissions are filtered to — in their estimates — advantage candidates of color to the disadvantage of white people.

“For several states in particular, the fight over DEI is a matter of people’s livelihood,” said Sophia Agtarap, director of diversity, equity, and inclusion for the Washington State Board for Technical and Community Colleges.

DEI offices act as first responders when racial hostilities boil over on a campus. They can offer trainings and organize programming in response to these incidents. The offices also work with the administration in recruiting a diverse faculty and administration, and with the admissions offices in opening access to minority students.

Track DEI legislation and its affect on college campuses

• Explore maps, read descriptions, and check the status of bills in states where lawmakers are seeking to restrict colleges’ DEI efforts.
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• Visit The Assault on DEI for related stories.

And while the legislative attacks are currently limited to the states where DEI bills have been introduced, the threat feels real to diversity, equity, and inclusion workers across the country. One man, who requested anonymity for fear of losing his job, said he worried that lawmakers in his home state of Pennsylvania might look to take cues from neighboring Ohio and propose some legislative attack against diversity work on campuses as a way to win over conservative voters.

The threats posed by the current wave of DEI legislation cast a pall over the conference. Usually a time to gather and honor the work of their colleagues at other colleges, the 2023 gathering — which stretched over four days from April 12-15 and was attended by more than 1,100 registrants, double its 2019 conference attendance — was as much about commiserating as it was about celebrating.

Over the course of the conference, diversity offers shared their experiences and what they learned doing the work of making a campus culture more inclusive. In one session, diversity officers were faced with a made-up scenario where an anti-Asian hate message went viral on the internet, and gamed out a response. The session was meant to represent a typical scenario faced on a college campus.

“These are people who are doing work that they have given their lifetime to. The risks associated with [diversity, equity, and inclusion work] makes it taxing and stressful,” Granberry Russell said. “Now you add on top of that a threat to your livelihood, they are rightfully concerned.”

Even those inside the ballroom during the heated Thursday session were cagey about commenting on DEI, proposed bans and some of the details of the closed session. “I don’t think I should say any more,” Delong told The Chronicle before adding she didn’t want to comment further on DEI at the conference.

Granberry Russell took the reins as president of Nadohe in March 2020, just as Covid-19 began to sweep across the country and force public life to shutter. The organization still held its conference that year, albeit a smaller affair with less than one-fifth of the attendees who came to Baltimore in April. Two months into her term, George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis by a police officer, Derek Chauvin. In the higher-education community, Floyd’s death, captured on camera, ignited mass campus protests, efforts to overhaul mission statements, and, in some cases, apologies from college officials for past racist behaviors and policies.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion were words spilling out the mouths of college administrators, corporate leaders, and sports-league executives. Everyone seemed to want to get in on the business of resolving racial disparities.

Nadohe’s membership has tripled since July 2020, according to a spokesperson.

Yet, Granberry Russell’s instincts told her the moment would fade.

“One of the points that I made in talking to senior administrators, it was my purpose ... that we not squander this moment,” said Granberry Russell, who spent more than 21 years as the chief diversity officer at her alma mater, Michigan State University. “It was a recognition on my part that we are living in a moment of time that will most likely at some point, we begin to retreat from.”

By 2021 a fatigue set in within the higher-education institutions which had been so publicly fighting for racial equity in the wake of Floyd’s murder, according to Granberry Russell. Many of the universities who made very vocal commitments to the racial reckoning have gone silent in Granberry Russell’s estimates.

“Where are those voices that in 2020 spoke of their commitment then?” Granberry Russell said. “The kind of righteousness that was being displayed then, you’re not seeing that now.”

On Friday, word spread across the conference that Florida had pulled most of the language applying to diversity, equity, and inclusion offices from Florida HB 999, and its complementary bill in the state senate, which would have banned funding for any project that “espouse diversity, equity, and inclusion or Critical Race Theory rhetoric.” The newest iteration of the bill only bans the teaching of “divisive” subjects, such as the role race and racism played in shaping American history.

And while many at the conference were optimistic, saying the news marked a minor win in the fight, Granberry Russell was a bit more measured.

“They are going to focus their attack on the curriculum,” she said.

She worried that could still leave DEI offices vulnerable to attacks on programming that might be interpreted as teaching people about race.

Granberry Russell and her staff plan to develop a toolkit for DEI offices to help them continue to do the work even as they face political threats. The same kit could even offer advice on how to effectively lobby lawmakers to build more support for the programs. Nadohe doesn’t have a timeline for when the toolkit will be ready.