Where campus DEI efforts have misstepped — and where they might head next
With the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on race-conscious admissions in June, and several states considering whether to banish diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, higher-education leaders this year are reconfiguring how they tackle issues of race and racism.
For people of color, the stakes are high. Native American and Black enrollment have declined drastically in recent years, and faculty ranks are still overwhelmingly white.
At issue are both the legality and efficacy of common DEI practices, including diversity statements, diversity training, the hiring of DEI officers, and race-conscious admissions and retention efforts.
In The Review, scholars for the last several months have been debating where DEI should go from here. As part of those debates, some have started by pointing out the many flaws with the way higher-ed leaders tend to discuss diversity, equity, and inclusion.
In an essay titled “Diversity, Defanged,” Evelyn Alsultany points out that the influence of the term “diversity” “grew in the 1980s and 1990s as an alternative to ‘affirmative action,’ which suggested in part a post-civil-rights approach to rectifying enduring inequality. However, over time, and perhaps through overuse, ‘diversity’ has become a heavily loaded buzzword whose meaning depends very much on who is using it and how.”
“‘Feel good politics’ and ‘modest efforts’ may have broadened political support for the concept of diversity and thus benefited a wide range of marginalized groups on campuses over the past couple decades,” Alsultany writes. “But that has come at the cost of making diversity objectives and meanings increasingly unclear.”
And in the essay “Higher Ed’s DEI Lip Service,” Ariana González Stokas says that during her stint as a DEI officer, “it became quickly apparent that one could work on diversity so long as one did not too dramatically unsettle the institution’s traditions and seek to reassemble them, or to open up the arteries of inequity and dig around to find what needed to be abolished.”
She continues: “I have come to realize that despite the best efforts of highly competent people, diversity efforts often function as a decorative shield. A defining feature of what we call diversity work has always been the institutional exploitation of ‘difference’ for the benefit of the institution — to symbolize its antiracist commitments and to protect against lawsuits.”
In a recent Review essay, Eboo Patel says the debate over DEI on college campuses is dominated by political extremists and, because of that, many faculty members and administrators have disengaged from the work.
“Diversity work is too essential to the American project to forfeit to those on the far left or far right,” Patel argues. “We need to find a way for ‘the exhausted majority’ to re-engage.” He suggests that colleges model their diversity training after Kwame Anthony Appiah‘s research and work.
“The categories that interest Appiah are not oppressed and oppressor, marginalized and privileged, white supremacist and ally,” writes Patel. “In fact, those words barely even appear in his books. Rather, he is interested in the particularities of being Ghanaian and English, Ashanti and Amish, Muslim and Maronite. He does not presume to call you either powerful or vulnerable based on the color of your skin, the shape of your genitals, the people you sleep with, or the nation where you were born. He assumes all identities have deep dignity and great contributions to make.”
Readers took issue with several elements of the essay.
In a letter to the editor, Tyrone Forman, a professor of Black studies and sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, pointed out that Patel’s essay “says very little about diversity and nothing about equity.”
“Considering the recent Supreme Court decision that is likely to hamstring efforts to maintain racial diversity on campus, Patel’s narrow focus on questions of inclusion rather than diversity and equity seems misdirected,” Forman wrote. “My concern is that Patel’s argument against current DEI efforts shifts focus away from reforming systems, structures, and practices that have produced small but important gains in expanding access and promoting equity.”
We’re continuing to write about this evolving story. Do you have story ideas? Reach out to me at: daarel.burnette@chronicle.com.
What I’m reading:
- JoAnne Epps’s “history with Temple stretches way back,” Susan Snyder and Valerie Russ write in an obituary of Temple’s interim president, who died last week after collapsing on stage during a ceremony. “Her mother once worked as a secretary for the school and she, herself, at 16, was a cashier at the Temple bookstore. Her academic career includes 31 years at the law school, the last eight as its dean before becoming provost, a position she held until August 2021, when” Jason Wingard, then the president, “moved her out as part of a larger shift in top administrators.”
- In a series of letters to state governors, U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Thomas J. Vilsack highlight a $12.6-billion gap between Historically Black College and University land-grant institutions and majority-white ones, created by a century-old loophole in the law.
- “Sailing is about escape,” Penelope Green writes in an obituary of Bill Pinkney, the first Black sailor to circumnavigate the globe alone by the arduous southern route. “Mr. Pinkney wrote in his book, ‘escape from the bonds of conformity, racism, and lack of respect because of one’s background. It can be the means of achieving a goal, but sometimes it can be a source of discovering alternatives to your conventional path.’ He added: ‘This is because the sea does not care who you are, what your race or gender is, how much wealth or power you have, or even what flag or political system you embrace. The sea treats everyone the same.’”
