What Happened to DEI?

Schools rushed in, then came the pushback

It’s not an impressive phenomenon. Seeking safety in the herd, responding to external and internal pressures (real and perceived), K-12 institutions announce program moves based on buzzwords and trending innovations— think Multiple Intelligences, Maker Spaces, Project Based Learning, Growth Mindset, Writing Across the Curriculum, Grit, Restorative Circles—often without a genuine understanding of the meaning or commitment embodied in their announcements. What occurred with DEI work may offer the saddest such example. At least so far.

Recall the painful and unsettling summer after George Floyd’s murder in May, 2020. Seems like ages ago now—but less than half a decade in the past. Schools and colleges published, through a Covid-19 cloud, hastily created diversity statements, as alumni and student groups crafted “Black@” social media pages to catalog instances of racist conduct going back generations, many on campuses that presumed they had actually been getting things pretty right. It really felt like a watershed moment, or at least a long-delayed, gut-wrenching, pushed-open door to progress.

Efforts to respond ranged across various school types, from the most philosophically progressive to hidebound, historically conservative—each in its own way, but all embracing an ethic of basic fairness and opportunity for students and families of all backgrounds, largely under the new-to-many banner of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Find me the school that completely ignored that moment. The urgency was everywhere, and it seemed to endorse such self-evident truths.

On came the initiatives—new positions, new offices, new classes, new awareness of who occupied seats at the table. I distinctly remember a dear and longtime colleague at our (thrice renamed) Office of Diversity and Community Life observing that he finally had company—when local the schools gathered—in that leadership role, in our mid-sized Southern city, after years of being “the only.” People were talking about healing generations of harm, about setting measurable, concrete goals to face directly the progress dreamed of but not realized since Civil Rights and Equal Rights times. Accountability was the watchword. And when we returned to in-person classes that autumn, setting down our masks, maybe real change would follow.

Students and their families (and their teachers) asked for and saw curricular reform, seeing their experience reflected more in the topics and materials present from kindergarten forward as we paid close attention to who had been historically overlooked or excluded—in both core course work and electives—and on honors/advanced class rosters. And maybe most consequentially, hiring practices came under sharp scrutiny at the overwhelmingly PWIs (predominantly White institutions) of the independent school world. Percentage quotients of women and people of color holding head of school and other administrative jobs gained enormous visibility, with some contemporaneous high profile appointments. The same held true for boards of trustees.

Then what happened? Our culture’s notoriously short attention span merged with a presumption of the Zero-Sum nature of allocation decisions, with underwhelming and disheartening results. We have a hard time, in this polarized era, imagining a positive-sum societal outcome in most instances. Daily realities revealed the transitory and weak nature of far too many DEI efforts, deepening rather than diminishing that polarization. Consider the last few years.

The Supreme Court ruled in a way that spoke definitively in June, 2023 about ongoing efforts to change the stubbornly low racial diversity numbers at selective colleges, ironically pitting one historically marginalized group against another. Major corporate entities, after leading with what seem in hindsight to have been performative investments (cue Bud Light mess), announced widespread divestments, accelerating after the November elections. Faculty turnover for teachers of color in presumably well-meaning independent schools exceeded that of their White peers. Reports of micro (and macro) aggressions based of race, religion, gender, and national origin wearied that group now known as diversity practitioners.

We saw other letters bolted on to the increasingly radioactive initialism, as DEI morphed to DEIB (Belonging), DEIJ (Justice), and DEIA (Accessibility), each expressing a dimension of what we really meant all along— as though inclusion and equity and diversity of representation were not compelling enough. Fearing the inherent criticism of the status quo in these reparative initiatives and the implied loss of opportunity embodied in their realization, the pushback followed.

The whole thing reminds me of the studies done on neighborhood composition and the phenomenon of tipping, from majority White to Nonwhite, in a nation that will become majority minority in our lifetimes. At what point, the question goes, do historic majorities grow uncomfortable with a decrease in their representation such that they react? It seems we’re finding out. Add some flashpoint moments, like those provided by a handful of trans athletes competing more openly, or by the tragedy of the Oct. 7 terrorist violence from Gaza and the reprisals that followed, or by the series of NAIS People of Color diversity conference speaker crises, and we see the reversal in full flower, the limits of our collective willingness to see diversity—of background, of identity, of perspective—as worthwhile.

Which brings us to today’s news, immediately post-Inauguration, of the Executive Order placing all Federal DEI program employees on leave, calling the work “dangerous, demeaning, and immoral.” Huh? This amplifies the message sent by 28 states (and counting) that have sponsored anti-DEI bills in the past two years. Remind me again what was so wrong with trying to right generations-old patterns of de facto and de jure discrimination and inequity, patterns that survived those Civil Rights efforts, here in Dr. King’s month, now a half-century since? It would seem that we face a very real possibility that the current promised wave of vengeance and retribution (in the name of meritocracy and color blindness, no less) could leave us measurably worse off than was the case before recent DEI efforts gained prominence.

I’m left wondering what independent schools will do as the DEI tailwind transforms even further into a strong headwind. How short will memories of promises made and priorities set, under duress, turn out to be? With public schools and public funding for diversity programs facing mounting pressure to pull back, will private schools step more intentionally into the breach, or will their efforts at inclusion and belonging recede with the cultural tide, as they embrace the next shiny issue (AI, perhaps) ? Will history record the backswing of the pendulum being longer than its original swing forward? What does that say about our sincerity of purpose in the first place?

Wondering what funding looks like for DEI programs at independent schools for next year, about how many of those offices have new names, about when the last report on key metrics for progress was issued, about how many job descriptions and titles will shift. And if you are among those frustrated by DEI-generated outcomes, is it because 1) you never thought they, being superfluous, were justified in the first place, 2) you take issue with the nuts and bolts articulation of the (otherwise reasonable) programs toward stated goals, or 3) you hold the view that those programs haven’t yet had adequate time or support to yield the desired results, given the magnitude of the challenge?

It would be so helpful to see the data on where people stand relative to that question in any given school community. Whose work is this, anyway, and what do we mean when we say it’s everyone’s to do? As with so many crucial issues, school vouchers among them, the schools with the greatest resource bases and marquee value bumper stickers names can probably do the most good by speaking up—assuming they are not settled into response 1) above. Here’s hoping that they will. Your sentiments welcome, maybe to help fuel a Part 2 of this message.