Beyond Statements Toward Action: Maintaining the Antiracist Promise During the Anti-DEI Movement

In 2020, after the horrific murder of George Floyd, the world responded with declarations condemning racial violence and oppressive systems. Similarly, many university administrators, including education deans, disseminated statements illustrating their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Four years later, the pendulum has shifted.  Republican legislators have waged anti-DEI movements, claiming myths that DEI efforts are ineffective, violate free speech, and are discriminatory towards white students. The Chronicle of Higher Education has even instituted a DEI Legislation Tracker to track anti-DEI higher education policies. 

Dr. Annice FisherGiven the “DEI backlash,” how have schools and colleges of education maintained their long-standing DEI commitments?  Inspired by a moral imperative to reshape our school free of racism, American University’s School of Education (AU SOE) community embarked on becoming an “antiracist” learning community in 2020.  In 2024, we maintain our commitment and are poised to continue to “push back” on the current anti-DEI rhetoric and policies. Utilizing a social-ecological change model, we still pursue a multidimensional approach comprising policy change at the individual, interpersonal, community, and organizational levels. We reported our initial work in Diverse Issues In Higher Education in 2022.

As AU SOE’s Antiracist Pedagogy Scholar and Dean, we’ve learned much about sustaining organizational change amid polarization.  Below we offer six lessons learned.

1. “Walk” the Antiracist Vision

A recent Google search of “2020 diversity and antiracist statements for schools and colleges of education” returned a healthy list of statements.  However, most statements lacked concrete action plans for creating inclusive and antiracist learning settings. Sociologists Winn and Ziff (2022) claim that despite institutions’ best intentions, “a statement of words will not bend institutional structure. Only specific, concrete actions have the potential to produce change.” McNair et al. (2020) refer to this phenomenon as a “failure to turn equity talk into equity walk.”

At AU SOE, we have attempted to “walk the talk.” As a first step, we created a collective antiracism vision and used it to guide our actions.  We’ve integrated antiracism and DEI into every school process, including all academic programming. Today, our antiracism actions are posted on our website.

2. Positionalities Matter