Choose your words carefully and avoid acronyms. Surround yourself with allies who can get the work done when a target is on your back. Keep up with proposed legislation. Fortify your data. Scrub your résumés. And, above all, keep yourself physically and mentally healthy for a battle that may only get worse.
For campus diversity officers whose work and livelihoods have been under attack for more than a year, the annual meeting of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE) last week offered a chance to brainstorm and commiserate. The gathering in Seattle drew a record attendance of about 1,150 people.
Many came to the event feeling isolated and frustrated and left saying they felt more energized and slightly more optimistic. Still, the pressures they’re facing back home are daunting. As of this week, at least 80 bills that would curtail at least some aspects of campuses’ diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts have been introduced in 28 states and the U.S. Congress. Nine have become law. Many would eliminate the jobs and staffs of the people attending.
Paulette Granberry Russell, president and chief executive of NADOHE, set the stage for discussion. “How do we approach what we do strategically because some of us are exhausted and we are running to catch up,” she said. “We should not be in this race, but we are. We took a lot for granted. We took for granted that we were doing the right thing.”
DEI officers oversee a broad portfolio of efforts aimed at making sure that all students, faculty, and staff are supported and treated fairly. They’re often the first responders when diversity-related controversies spring up and the ones expected to craft strategies for recruiting students, faculty, and staff from underrepresented backgrounds. Slightly more than half of the 261 chief diversity officers surveyed by NADOHE in a report released last year are Black or African American and nearly two-thirds are women. Nearly a third of them had annual operating budgets of $39,000 or less, and 44 percent of them had between zero and two full-time-equivalent employees reporting directly to them.
It’s hard to create inclusive change when people are afraid to talk to you.
Their roles have evolved and greatly expanded as an outgrowth of multicultural-affairs positions of the 1960s and ’70s. Since the 2020 murder of George Floyd by police, NADOHE’s membership has more than tripled.
The backlash in recent years is a sign of what many in the profession feared would happen coming out of a period of intense focus on racial injustice, when DEI officers were elevated to cabinet-level positions and promised more money and influence. In many cases, the expectations continued to pile on, but without the budgets and influence they felt they needed.
“We know that that kind of concession is temporary because it’s coming out of guilt,” said Pedro Noguera, dean of the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California. “It wasn’t the sea change that we needed.”
The conference, which spanned four days and was titled “How We Persist,” included panels on how to continue diversity work when DEI offices are threatened or shut down, the importance of free speech and civil discourse, and strategies for staying motivated and energized during turbulent times. Here are a few takeaways from the panelists:
Take Care of Yourself
A study by the National Center for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan, in partnership with NADOHE, found that many chief diversity officers were feeling isolated, ignored, and discouraged.
“People told us ‘I’m seen as the person people don’t want to talk to on campus. I haven’t talked to my president or supervisor in months,’” said Jeffrey Grim, an assistant professor at George Mason University who helped oversee the study.
“It’s hard to create inclusive change when people are afraid to talk to you” because you might be viewed as a DEI advocate, he said.
The people who responded to the poll said they coped best by setting clear boundaries between their personal and professional lives, relying on faith, particularly among Black administrators, spending more time with family and friends, and taking steps to protect their physical and emotional health through activities like meditation, hiking, or reading.
But it’s not only the chief diversity officers who should be worrying about their physical and mental health, Grim said. College presidents and other university leaders need to be looking out for the welfare of those key staff members, as well.
Work With Colleagues and Those Outside the Institution
Now, more than ever, DEI officers say they need to be able to count on allies. Students and faculty members are often called on to help at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, which has hundreds of people in DEI roles.
Faculty receive training in communications and are encouraged to write opinion pieces for local newspapers. The provost meets regularly with students and helps activists understand the most effective and efficient ways to push for change. When change is coming from the faculty or students, and not from a central DEI office, it’s less likely to attract controversy, said Tabbye M. Chavous, vice provost for equity and inclusion and chief diversity officer.
Often, the most effective advocates are those who aren’t in the line of fire. Michael H. Gavin, president of Delta College, a two-year institution in Michigan, described his efforts to coordinate presidents to support DEI through a group called Education for All, which now has around 175 members, mostly community-college presidents.
“I have all the privileges my friends in Florida and Texas don’t, and because of that, I have an onus on me to speak,” he said. For a president in a state with strict DEI bans, standing up for diversity can cost someone a job.
“If I fall on the sword by making a statement, who’s taking my place in DeSantis’s Florida?” Gavin asked.
Attendees were also encouraged to collaborate with community members, alumni, and national associations like NADOHE. Make yourselves visible, but not too visible. Push back, but don’t make yourselves a target. Don’t assume that people who claim to support you are really your allies.
They have their cheering squad. Where’s ours?
The latter referred to news that a conservative media group, Accuracy in Media, was conducting sting operations in which undercover reporters claiming to support DEI secretly recorded student-support workers saying they’re trying to continue the work, despite bans in their state. The interactions, blasted on social media in February, led to the suspension of at least one Texas DEI administrator.
Improve Communication
Many attendees said they felt their profession was losing the war against disinformation about what they do. Opponents have accused diversity programs of discriminating against white and Asian students and indoctrinating students with liberal ideas. They’re divisive, expensive, and don’t work, critics have argued. Even some moderate-leaning academics have grown skeptical about the effectiveness of diversity programming, which some opponents have tried to tie to a rise in campus antisemitism.
The opposition “had an effective narrative because they have the sound bites,” Granberry Russell said. “They have their cheering squad. Where’s ours? We need a broader audience. It can’t just be us talking to each other.”
Higher education loves nuance, one speaker noted, but rapid-fire battles played out over social media cry out for more succinct, easily digestible explanations.
Explain your work using concrete examples and avoiding acronyms, speakers advised. Explain that diversity is about more than race and gender. DEI covers veterans, low-income, rural, and disabled students, working to make sure everyone has a chance to succeed. They should also point out, speakers said, that the offices help ensure that colleges are complying with federal antidiscrimination laws.
Emphasize that colleges that are struggling to maintain enrollments need to recruit and retain students of color, given the nation’s rapidly changing demographics, Noguera, of USC, advised.
“If these institutions don’t find a way to recruit a more diverse student population, they will go out of business,” he said. DEI professionals have the insights and experience to help their colleges do that. The danger? That colleges will “shoot the messenger.”
“This is where subtlety and strategy is going to be so important,” Noguera said. “If we’re not nuanced in the way we go about this, if we’re not careful, we will find we are targeted and we are not around for long.” His advice? “Don’t become a lightning rod.”
DEI professionals should avoid slogans that confuse and obscure what they’re doing. They should “avoid being language police,” he said. Don’t fight over whether or not it’s appropriate to refer to people as Latinx. “Let’s not get into battles over small stuff that prevents us from dealing with the bigger issues.”
And when someone unfairly attacks the work that you do, “sometimes the direct assault, the direct response is not the wise response, especially if you might get your butt kicked,” Noguera said. “Especially if you still need that job.”
Find Areas of Common Ground
Critics often argue that DEI offices suppress speech by policing language that might offend members of disadvantaged groups. Several speakers suggested that advocates speak out about the importance of free speech, and of listening to people with opposing viewpoints, even if they make you uncomfortable.
“Diversity also means diversity of ideas and perspectives,” said George A. Pruitt, president emeritus of Thomas Edison State University, in Trenton, N.J. While threats from the right get the most attention, he said, diversity efforts are also set back, he believes, “by students shouting down speakers they don’t agree with, cancel culture, and attempts to shield students from speech and ideas that trigger them or make them feel uncomfortable.”
Find points you can agree on with people who are skeptical about DEI, he said. Encourage campus discussions and civil discourse.
But don’t assume that people who say they’re your allies will really have your back, said Derald Wing Sue, a professor of psychology and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College.
“I don’t fear the white supremacists,” he said. “I don’t fear the Klan or the Proud Boys as much as I fear those people who tend to say they are allies and do not know that they harbor racial biases.”
Don’t Give Up More Than You Have To
When diversity efforts are under attack, there’s a danger of giving in too early and giving up too much, some speakers said.
At the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Chavous sees the general counsel as more of a partner than an obstacle. “I can say, ‘Here’s what we want to do. Tell me how I can do it in a way that won’t land me in jail,’” she said. “As long as we’re being compliant with the law, let’s get as close as we can to the line without crossing it.”
Just because it’s contested doesn’t mean you have to run from it.
Damon A. Williams is a diversity consultant and a senior scholar at Wisconsin’s Equity and Inclusion Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
“If we start folding down and moving away from diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging” when it’s not required, “it will move like wildfire across our institutions,” he said. “Just because it’s contested doesn’t mean you have to run from it.”
Sometimes, though, there’s nowhere to run.
On Thursday, Marsha McGriff went ahead with her scheduled appearance on a panel titled “The Future of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Higher Ed.” Two weeks before, the University of Florida’s president, Ben Sasse, had announced he was disbanding the university’s DEI office and firing her, along with the dozen other staff members. She’d taken over the job of chief diversity officer and senior adviser to the president in December 2021. It was too early to say what she was going to do next, she said, as friends and colleagues hugged her, gave her a standing ovation, and thanked her for coming. She urged her colleagues who still had their jobs to consider “how we future-proof the work.”
“We need to help our leadership see the areas that will be impacted with the erasure of DEI,” she said. These include accreditation challenges, compliance with federal antidiscrimination laws, faculty members’ ability to secure research grants, and compliance concerns for athletics. Getting rid of DEI will also affect work-force readiness for students whose potential employers expect cultural competence and empathy, she said.
The challenges in Florida go beyond DEI, she pointed out. In January, sociology was removed as a core-course option for students, causing some professors to fear that their disciplines may be next. “This was an attack on higher education all along,” McGriff said. “DEI was the low-hanging fruit.”
A report released on Wednesday by a group of researchers, including Shaun Harper, founder and executive director of USC’s Race and Equity Center, and Walter M. Kimbrough, the former president of two historically Black colleges, seeks to arm DEI proponents with arguments they can use against the critics. It lists eight “DEI myths,” including the claim that the work is divisive and puts people into categories of privileged and oppressed. The report counters these critiques with responses from people in the field.
As the conference was wrapping up, Erick Valentine, associate dean of equity, diversity, and inclusion at Tulane University’s Freeman School of Business, called the convening “bittersweet.”
“The sweetness is that I’ve found a community,” he said. The bitter, he said, is that the same struggles that keep him up at night are happening in a growing number of states.
