DEI’s Ideological Conflict
Whether you’re wondering if DEI needs to die, or are a champion for the movement, we have to face the truth.
DEI is stuck in an ideological conflict.
Last week a lawsuit was filed against Arizona State University, by a conservative think tank on behalf of an ASU professor of philosophy and religious studies. The lawsuit claims that ASU violated the law when they required Professor Anderson to complete a virtual DEI training course called “Inclusive Communities”. According to Inside Higher Ed., this training consists of several modules covering a variety of topics related to gender identity, race, sexuality, White supremacy, etc., and a quiz.
The article (which you can find here) points out that this lawsuit is representative of just one of many efforts to dismantle DEI efforts using various legal maneuvers.
On March 24th, during a panel at Harvard University, scholars debated over the effectiveness of DEI programs in Higher Education. Although most of them agreed it was important to protect DEI efforts in higher education, three out of four panelists felt that the social code that has become synonymous with the culture of DEI suppressed academic freedom.
Essentially, those who agree with this position argued that DEI has created an atmosphere where it is socially unacceptable to express conservative viewpoints or explore counter-arguments to liberal views, even as a practice of scholarly inquiry.
In a long tradition of class debate activities, one professor at Harvard University, who also participated in the panel, assigned students to argue opposing viewpoints on various contemporary legal issues. According to the Harvard Crimson article that covered the panel, students from the class complained to the DEI Office saying that they were harmed by having to listen to opposing viewpoints regarding a case about the criminalization of same-sex intimacy.
Another panelist pointed out that environments that encourage censorship, including self-censorship “… subvert the classical liberal principles of the academic mission of open inquiry and truth-seeking and knowledge creation and research and debating ideas”.
I would actually go a step further and say that any environment that restricts or discourages respectful debate, critique, or exploration of anything, especially in spaces like classrooms, workplaces, and social media serves to push those conversations to private corners where they become dangerous.
Dangerous because of echo chambers, but more importantly because of the vulnerability that comes from feeling unseen, unheard, and having unanswered questions. It’s a prime psychological playground for radicalization and manipulation.
When I was in middle school in the early 90’s no one wanted us to talk about sex and adult life in ways that weren’t shameful or authoritative. So what did we do… we gathered in hallways, passed around terrible advice, spread inaccurate information, and then I had a baby in 9th grade.
What I’m saying is that the uncomfortable questions are being asked and the conversations are happening. If we can’t have them in public, in diverse spaces they will happen in homogenous ones.
I have always understood that my job as a DEI facilitator isn’t to tell people what to think, or what to say, or to argue about definitions of words.
It’s to frame, contextualize, explore, provide data, facilitate dialogue, identify connections, point out the things we might not be seeing, and ask the hard questions that people in the room don’t want to ask.
To build a skill around entering a space where there might not be one right answer and using questions as a way of getting us closer to a few good ideas.
So here’s my hard questions right now.
Are we putting our own ideas through our own filters?
Here are a few of them:
- Does the work respect the self-determination of others?
- Does the work position a “right” way of being or thinking?
- Does the work create space for connection, exploration, and curiosity without using shame, humiliation, or other forms of violent communication?
- Does it encourage or discourage character judgments or identity-based stereotyping?
- What are the unintended consequences?
These questions are part of the standard lexicon for DEI facilitators because they help create effective environments for exploration and learning, and emotional and psychological safety.
These questions help us stay focused on the goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion, which are about improving life outcomes and creating a world where those outcomes are no longer predictable by race and zip code.
It’s about creating workplaces that are representative of the diversity of the world so that we can leverage the kinds of collective wisdom that can only be tapped when we have a diversity of thought, lived experience, education, and collaboration.
It’s about ensuring that our schools, workplaces, and communities are set up for people to feel safe so that they can learn, contribute, and challenge ideas so that we can all thrive.
It’s not about compliance or quotas, or creating nicer White people. And it’s certainly not about having the right answer on a quiz.
But creating that world is an effort that needs to engage our entire social ecosystem.
It’s about fixing our systems, the policies, and the procedures.
It’s about accepting the truth of our history, and the repairing of the generational impact of that history.
But it’s also about examining our ideas and improving our ability to communicate, explore, and critique them.
It’s also about improving the interpersonal relationships with the people we love, the people we work with, and the people who live across the street, at the store, and maybe even the people on the internet.
It’s in ourselves and how we interpret who the world tells us that we are, and what we believe as a result of that.
What I’ve come to believe in over 20 years of doing this work is that improving the nature of relationships and interactions between people is the beginning of resolving any other conflict, including the most contentious.
And so that is where I will continue to start.
Trudi Lebron is a writer, speaker, PhD Candidate in social psychology, and forever teen mom. She is the author of The Antiracist Business Book, and founder of The Institute for Equity-Centered Coaching/ Through her writing, mentorship, and coaching, Trudi inspires conversations that confront our ideas of who we are, and how we live, lead, and shape the world around us.
