About a year ago, as state legislatures grew interested in dismantling higher ed’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, a small group of college presidents started getting together to discuss what they could do about it.
The presidents shared how they were responding to lawmakers and organizations that opposed DEI, a term that critics were increasingly leveraging to condemn colleges’ identity-based offices, centers, and programs. The leaders brainstormed ways to improve messaging. They commiserated.
Now the group has a name, “Education for All,” and has grown to nearly 150 presidents, mostly at community colleges, said Michael H. Gavin, president of Delta College, a two-year institution in Michigan, who has taken on the role of chief facilitator.
The group has no formal or legal structure, and “joining” can simply mean signing up for email announcements, Gavin said. That’s intentional; college leaders are often reluctant to take positions publicly these days, and want to support diversity without drawing too much attention. Several higher-education associations with overlapping interests have lent their help, by providing virtual or physical meeting space or by offering expertise — including Achieving the Dream, which helps colleges develop student-success measures, and Campus Compact, a coalition of colleges seeking to improve civic and community engagement.
The group also has no specific strategic direction, Gavin said, but it is serving an important purpose at a challenging time for higher ed, by giving the presidents a place to share openly with their peers.
The push to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion measures on public-college campuses is now in its second full year and shows no signs of abating. The results of that effort have been slow but steady, with five states having enacted laws prohibiting public colleges from having diversity, equity, and inclusion offices or staff members; requiring diversity training; using diversity statements in hiring and promotion; or considering race, sex, ethnicity, or national origin in admissions or employment.
At least 16 states will consider similar bills during the current legislative season, according to a Chronicle analysis.
That the presidents’ group mostly represents community colleges — which enroll a higher share of students of color than four-year institutions do — is significant, its members say. Karen A. Stout, president of Achieving the Dream, said the recent attacks on DEI are “an attack on the students that community colleges serve.”
“Our country,” she said, “needs every one of the students in our community colleges to move through, get a credential of value, and contribute to the prosperity of the local community that they are in.”
‘We Take Everybody’
While administrative offices operating under the title of diversity, equity, and inclusion have been around for decades, their numbers, and attention to their work, have increased significantly since the advent of the Black Lives Matter movement and the response to the murder of George Floyd, in 2020.
Critics of those offices have sought to link a range of problems, either real or perceived, to DEI measures, including antisemitism amid the war between Israel and Hamas, a decline in academic standards, and limits on the free speech of conservative students and the academic freedom of conservative faculty members.
For community-college leaders, that vision of DEI is not what they see on their campuses. Stout and others point out that the work of improving outcomes for underrepresented students has always been central to their mission as open-access institutions.
“We take everybody, we want everybody, and we have a responsibility to do our very best to make sure all those students are successful,” said Stephanie J. Fujii, president of Arapahoe Community College, in Colorado.
While the political crusade to ban DEI has focused almost entirely on issues of race, Fujii said, constituents who are not familiar with the institutions, including lawmakers, may not understand that diversity on a community-college campus encompasses a much broader range of characteristics, such as whether a student is from a rural area, is a military veteran, is from a low-income family, or is a working adult or parent.
My community cares about my students, but they may not necessarily always understand my students.
“I’m located in an area that’s probably a little bit more conservative in the Denver metro area,” Fujii said, “and there’s no question in my mind, my community cares about my students, but they may not necessarily always understand my students.”
That’s the kind of messaging that the group’s presidents are sharing among themselves, said Fujii. “Part of what we’re also trying to do in Education for All is really explain to people, What does this work look like at the institution?” Fujii said. “And it’s not trying to infringe upon academic freedom of our faculty, it’s not this ‘woke’ agenda.”
To that end, Phi Theta Kappa, an international honor society, has helped produce several videos featuring students who explain how feeling included on campus is important to their academic success. The students in the video are all members of the society, whose chief executive, Lynn Tincher-Ladner, has been meeting with Education for All.
The Backlash
Beyond crafting strategies to counteract negative stereotypes about DEI, the primary function of Education for All is as a support group.
“Now, more than ever, we need each other, right?” said Bobbie Laur, president of Campus Compact. “People need peers, and they need colleagues,” she said, “and they need to know that there’s folks they can lean on for support, and that’s really what it was about.”
Carrying out the new state laws and governors’ orders restricting DEI is only part of the problem facing college presidents. Some leaders have been subjected to a broad social and political backlash for measures that they emphasize are meant to ensure student success.
During the recent campaign to oust Harvard’s Claudine Gay, conservative activists acknowledged that the attacks on the university’s first Black woman president were intended to undermine DEI across higher education.
The college presidents and association leaders who spoke with The Chronicle said they recognized that they, too, could draw scrutiny from their own elected officials and even board members who may object to DEI programs.
“Everyone wants to tell you how to do your job,” said Fujii, at Arapahoe Community College. “Everyone thinks they know how to do your job, and you carry the weight and the responsibility for your college, for your employees, for your communities.”
The work of supporting students must go on, she said, and will at most colleges. But it could be a lot harder.
