In Defense of DEI: Where are the College & University Presidents?

In my book, “From Protest to President,” I describe the first time I saw the inside of a president’s office. As a college senior in 1967, I served as founding president of the Illinois State University Black Student Association. I led a takeover of the president’s office and issued our demands for more diversity, equity, and inclusion. We initiated programs and a consciousness that changed the culture of higher education that continues to evolve to this day.

Though the culture has evolved, the current attacks on DEI in Florida and across the country are startling. Recently, I was approached by the PEN America group to sign a statement from former presidents defending academic freedom in teaching, research, and academic discourse. I was told that the appeal was to former presidents because sitting presidents were afraid to speak out.

I am distressed about the continuing and pointed attacks on the fundamentally American concept of diversity, equity, and inclusion. For most of our nation’s history our motto has been E pluribus Unum: “from many: one.” We even printed it on our money. Demagogues are always threatened by ideas that challenge their ideology and status. However, my frustration is not directed at them. I am disappointed by the deafening silence of the leadership of the higher education community and especially, the presidents.

Colleges and universities are more than institutions. They are communities defined by a common value proposition subscribed to by its members. Among the most precious values held by the Academy are the unrestrained pursuit of truth, the objective transmission of knowledge, and the maintenance of the institution as a neutral marketplace for the free and civil exchange of ideas. It is the responsibility and obligation of the presidents to articulate and defend those core values, which define and sustain our institutions’ unique responsibility to the broader society.

I am certainly aware that the academic presidency is under siege. We are experiencing the highest turnover rate and shortest tenure of presidents in our history. The instability this has created has caused an all-time low in public regard for higher education. The explanation for the turnover is attributed to the toxicity of our politics which has created unprecedented difficulty in leading institutions of higher education. Well, I don’t buy that. Of course these are challenging times, but these jobs have always been difficult. Before the current siege from politicians, there was fearmongering by unfairly labeling people as communists, while also advocating banning books, censoring courses, curricula, and blacklisting faculty, authors, and entertainers.

In the late ’60s and ’70s, student unrest shut down campuses, buildings were burning, and students at Kent State, Jackson State, and Southern University were killed. The ’80s and ’90s saw the massive disinvestment in federal financial aid, shifts from grants to loans, and radical reduction in state support for higher education. However, we still did not experience the turnover in leadership that is occurring today. While the current environment is toxic, and requires contemporary responses, to say it is worse than before is simply not true.

I believe that the problem lies in the fact that too many governing boards and campuses have lost sight of the nature of the presidency, and they do not appreciate the experience, attributes, and temperament required to successfully lead our institutions. The gap between the capacity of many of our leaders and the requirements of the office has created the turnover and resultant instability, and the paucity of visionary presidents willing to speak out.

If we truly believe in diversity, then we must understand that diversity goes beyond demographics, gender, and ethnicity. It also means diversity of ideas and perspectives. The attacks on the Academy as a neutral open marketplace of diverse ideas and perspectives have not been limited to one governor and his acolytes. Some of the attacks come from the DEI community itself: students shouting down speakers they don’t agree with, cancel culture, attempts to shield students from speech and ideas that “trigger” them or make them uncomfortable. These things represent as great a threat to the Academy as the censorship and revisionist history of the far right. If you value diversity, then you have to value exposing students to people and ideas that are different from theirs — even if they are made uncomfortable. Pursuit of truth is aspirational for all of us, but some truths are distressing and sometimes even painful. An education that never challenges and pushes students out of their comfort zone isn’t worth having.

While presidents should not participate in partisan politics, they should defend DEI when they can. Presidents must defend academic freedom as should faculty, scholars, journalists, and leaders in other sectors. However, academic freedom, like all freedoms, has boundaries. You cannot yell fire in a crowded theater, you cannot incite a crowd to violence, and you cannot call for genocide against anyone. Words or deeds that threaten violence against Jews, Muslims, Blacks, Asians, the LGBTQ community, scholars, authors, or anyone else cannot be tolerated within an academic community.

There is some good news. Higher education today is more diverse than it has ever been, and the overwhelming majority of colleges are not abandoning the aspiration of achieving DEI. Fortunately, we still have presidents who understand that their responsibility is not to preside but to lead and speak out. We just need a lot more of them.