There is vocal skepticism about the usefulness of DEI officers, principles, and practices both in Canada, the country from which we write, and even more strongly in the US. In this article, we challenge this suspicion of DEI by advancing that critical DEI and anti-racist communication practices are strong assets to resolving disputes in what is referred to as Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs). In fact, we advance that DEI, when grounded in critical race, equity-informed practice, is an indispensable form of dispute resolution in institutions of all kinds. However, we use the public university as a particular example of how PWIs can benefit from DEI as a dispute resolution approach. We both know the context of the university firsthand. Currently, we both work at PWIs. Christopher is an Associate Vice-President of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Anti-Racism; and Cheryl is a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Black Expressive Culture and Creativity. We are both Black. We have experienced acts of intimidation, demeaning behavior, and discriminatory treatment. However, given the unionized environment of the university, we are often unable to speak publicly about our experiences for fear of reprisal. We are somewhat confined in our ability to write in detail based on our personal experience. So, while this article is not personal, it does arise in part from our experiences, as well as from research and our observations working in and with provincial (state-level) government, private corporations, and the legal sector.
In 2004, the Harvard Law School Human Rights Program published an interdisciplinary discussion on the role of the university in the Human Rights Movement. In his introductory remarks, Ugandan lawyer and academic Joe Oloka-Onyango said, “we have to consider the university as violator…. It was intended at first as an exclusive and elitist institution. The university produced the elites for a system intent on destroying existing systems and cultural practices that dared to run counter to the colonial design.” He continued: “We need to ask ourselves how friendly and sensitive we are, whether we have, for example, gender parity, but whether we include those who might speak against the grain.” As Oloka-Onyango suggests, gender and racial parity are human rights that even the most liberal-leaning PWIs struggle to practice consistently. Some PWIs may brand themselves as “progressive,” as honoring human rights, but are in fact speaking to, and not speaking with, the marginalized gendered or racial Other. How can we say that PWIs, some of which may have DEI programs, are not doing all they can to honor basic human rights?
In 2002, renowned political scientist and African Studies scholar Shelby F. Lewis argued that “[e]ducational systems reflect the values and practices of the larger society. If the larger society is sexist, racist, and based on economic, cultural, and historical inequalities, it is unrealistic to expect educational systems to be devoid of these inequities.” We all know that inequity breeds conflict. DEI is not only a program but an approach designed to address the inherent conflicts in PWIs. However, DEI is not being used as it has been designed. Unbeknownst to most, even within Canada, corporatized, legalized, and performative equity, diversity, and inclusion, its accepted “tools for reform,” and its communication practices are not being used to promote human rights but are instead being used to maintain the status quo. The problem is that PWIs rarely unpack how they have historically and ideologically ascribed to oppressive tenets that work against parity.
While the term PWI circulates in common parlance in some circles, many may not know the formal definition, which should be kept in mind. University of Idaho management and leadership scholars Russell S. Thacker and Sydney Freeman Jr. define the PWI as an “institution of higher learning in which Whites have historically accounted for 50 percent or more of the student enrollment [despite increasingly diverse student bodies].” PWIs “tend to be contexts rife with race-related stressors such as seeing few other Black students in one’s classes or on campus and experiencing discrimination.” Race-related stressors are not unique to students, however. Faculty of color face unique challenges at PWIs, from receiving less respect from their students compared to White faculty, having to prove their credibility to their students, and having their students interpret constructive criticism from the faculty as personal attacks. We contend that problems arise in these definitions of PWIs because there is rarely an opportunity to employ and capitalize on anti-colonial and post-colonial practices that can mediate and mitigate conflict. It is common upon entering a university campus to see a land acknowledgment indicating that the university sits on ancestral land of a specific tribe and thanking the tribe for its stewardship of the land. A DEI and equity-informed communication approach, where we prioritize Indigenous restorative justice practices, would go a long way to move PWIs beyond this obligatory land acknowledgment to adopting an ethics of care model.
For example, in Ontario, through the use of a healing circle, Indigenous justice brings parties directly affected by an issue together, and they are treated with respect, compassion and inclusivity; this restorative justice encourages meaningful engagement and accountability. British Columbia Gladue principles, which call on judges to take into consideration the individual circumstances of the person before them in court to determine a fit and fair sentence, provide another example of the use of an ethics of care model.
We can attest that the university, as a representation of the PWI, maintains a top-down bureaucratic and corporate structure akin to other institutions (e.g. hierarchical decision-making concentrated in the hands of a few). These are spaces that reinforce the “liberal racial order.” Historian Barrington Walker notes that laws, those that are the foundations of a “democratic” and “civil” society in nation-states such as Canada and the US, do not historically racially “[codify] white supremacy.” However, “[a] constant presence and power of illiberal views of racial difference meant that the law in Canada did support racial discrimination in Canada – but passively so – upholding the individual’s right to discriminatory treatment against minorities.” PWIs subsequently engage in oppressive legal and public relations battles under the co-opted auspices of DEI (e.g. blanket statements of “we denounce discrimination in all its forms”).
In No Study Without Struggle: Confronting Settler Colonialism in Higher Education author Leigh Patel states that “[u]nderstanding settler colonialism as an ongoing structure provides a more robust route to understanding how various populations experience distinct but deeply connected forms of marginalization from formal institutions in the United States.” This definition is extended to include how PWIs often do not recognize how accepted, or traditional, mediation practices (e.g. immediately adopting an “us” vs “them” stance, engaging in a zero-sum game of “winners” and “losers,” or involving in-house or external legal counsel) can reinforce the silencing of diverse voices and ostracize divergent alternative dispute resolution practices, which would include consultation with anti-racist and anti-oppressive communication experts or simply encouraging mediated conversations to resolve conflict.
It is important to think about how we engage with, and accept, performative DEI communication practices. At best, in PWIs where DEI remains, they have acquiesced to the “santa-clausification” of DEI. Meaning they have removed the radical elements of change embedded within the core tenets of DEI to make it palatable to the voices and actions of the majority. This process in which DEI has been used, and we would argue designed, is to placate the socio-economic mobility of marginalized bodies while maintaining the oppressive status quo of the PWI.
On the one hand, DEI has become a façade designed to appease “non-Whites” with the promise of safety and mobility, but, on the other hand, it simultaneously creates antagonisms with those who believe their power is being removed by those who do not deserve it. At American institutions, attacks on “DEI hires,” the undermining of “DEI-focused” legislation, including affirmative action in university admissions, and dozens of state-level bills designed to remove or severely curtail “DEI-related” policies reflect the contradictory nature of the supposed “color-blind” merit-based approach to education. We must revisit the evolving politicization of DEI, the tenets of which are based on the post-World War II human and civil rights movements. DEI must include critical race theory (CRT) analysis that understands that “inclusion” was designed to consolidate power among the ruling elite and maintain the status quo. DEI and dispute resolution communication practices, as commonly understood, must be examined with a CRT lens.
The leadership at PWIs has used the language and tenets of DEI not as a means of ADR, but to silence and destabilize attempts at resolving structural, institutional, and interpersonal conflicts. This is why PWIs continue to face ongoing, and seemingly impossible to resolve, disputes. The power-consolidating DEI initiatives, those designed to provide the veil of progress, that do not address systemic or structural inequities, are deeply rooted in history. However, upon close reading, particularly with a CRT lens, those initiatives, laws, and policies were designed to maintain the status quo of colonial dominant structures.
At its core, the university is an inherently conflict-based system. Administrators (presidents, provosts, deans) have strategic priorities; professors (tenured, non-tenured, adjunct) have different sets of teaching, research, and service priorities; and students (graduate and undergraduate, full-time and part-time) are bound by different sets of rights, duties, and obligations. There is often a disconnect between administrators’ duties, professors’ rights, and students’ responsibilities. There are policies and procedures that exist to both protect people from harm and to prevent said harm from taking place. However, the language used to define “harm” has been co-opted by administrators (who are overwhelmingly White) who have the power to interpret school policies as they understand them; not as they are understood legally.
For example, the Ontario Human Rights Code, to which university discrimination and harassment policies claim to adhere, defines discrimination as a “distinction, whether intentional or not, which is related to certain personal characteristics and which imposes a burden, disadvantage or limits access to opportunities in some way.”
Harassment, as a form of discrimination, is defined as “engaging in a course of vexatious comment or conduct that is known or ought reasonably to be known to be unwelcome.” And yet human rights offices have carte blanche authority to “interpret” these definitions to “fit” the allegations from a student complainant, without any burden of proof or responsibility to establish whether an allegation meets the Human Rights Code definitions of discrimination and harassment.
Internal university discrimination and harassment policies are approved by a board of governors (at PWIs, these boards are overwhelmingly White), and oversight falls under DEI offices who report to an administrator. At no time is a neutral third-party (not on retainer by the university) involved in the process. The language of the Human Rights Code is up to interpretation not by lawyers (a human rights law firm is retained during investigations) but by administrators who may have no legal training and zero expertise in dispute resolution or conflict mediation. From the outset, the process is concerned more with the university’s interests than that of the accused (often faculty) who is supported by a union. Internal grievance processes are almost always denied by the same administrators who refuse to make decisions prior the to an investigation (which may last years) by a law firm they have retained. For dispute resolution to have any validity, trust, and, most importantly, procedural fairness, there must be objectivity in the process of determining if a Human Rights Code violation has taken place. By adopting a CRT, equity-informed approach to the complaint process that focuses on mediated dispute resolution rather than the bureaucratic-legal “investigation” approach, the needs of people would return to the process over the needs of defending the institution at all costs.
Universities have increasingly adopted what The Fall of the Faculty author Benjamin Ginsberg has called“the neo-liberal all-administrative university” approach, a model of education that privileges economic-based relationships. This model treats students as customers – who are always right – and faculty as service providers rather than knowledge experts. When students file complaints against faculty to human rights offices embedded within DEI offices, the all-administrative university only seeks to punish faculty, especially racialized faculty, instead of trying to resolve the dispute using a restorative approach rooted in communication, understanding, and care.
At universities, the civil procedural process as it relates to dispute resolution is not collaborative. For example, if you are involved in civil or criminal litigation and you require a change or alteration in an aspect of the process, you must file a motion – a process that is fully transparent and unilaterally available to both defense and plaintiff counsel. Universities’ policies’ processes entirely privilege the complainant who has full authority to get coaching from a human rights officer on how to write their complaint; they have full authority to decide if a matter is investigated; and they can cancel or cause delay during an investigative process without providing any explanation to the accused (and their representative union).
For a dispute to be resolved, there needs to be trust and a shared understanding of responsibilities. Just as the field of dispute resolution “tends to be divided over our responsibility for fairness and justness in the mediation outcome,” universities need to get real and honest about their lack of fairness and justness in most internal investigative processes.
There is no hard or fast answer to the question of how to make human rights investigations fairer in the context of PWIs where DEI offices have become spaces of group-think bias and, sometimes, agents of control by administrators against racialized and Indigenous people who dare to question, challenge, or protest their actions. We contend that critical DEI and anti-racist communication practices, those that engage with the historical and contemporary tensions of the neo-liberal principles and power structures of DEI, can, and are, assets to resolving disputes. This practice must be grounded in critical race and equity-informed praxis, meaning that the historical intentions of DEI must be put into practice and not remain at the level of rhetoric, or it will continue to reinforce dominant oppressive structures and Eurocentric punishment frameworks.
