Erez Levin’s Post

States have passed a wave of anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion laws for their public colleges recently.* How are colleges responding? Erin Gretzinger and Maggie Hicks surveyed every public college in Florida and Texas, two- and four-year, to find out: https://lnkd.in/dubfg7hX This story was an enormous amount of work for Maggie, Erin, their editors, and The Chronicle of Higher Education's visuals folks. I'm so glad they did it. It captures a critical moment in the history of higher education in this country. *To be exact, since last year, 28 states have introduced at least 81 bills, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education's freshly updated tracker: https://lnkd.in/eeJPrNM7

I applaud the authors for encouraging constructive engagement across difference, when students are ready. And I agree sometimes many of us give students too little credit for their ability to manage emotion during tough circumstances. They make good suggestions about strategies for connecting students to the world beyond their own backgrounds and the often limited scope of their campuses. But they also fall prey to their own critique: "Trafficking in simplistic frameworks that erase or obscure complexity does a real disservice to our students." "Class matters, despite being conspicuously absent from conventional DEI frameworks." The extent to which socioeconomic standing is included in DEI efforts depends on how programs are structured, not conjectured projects of DEI that dictate that only certain differences matter, e.g., race, gender, or sexuality. In some institutions, programs for first generation and low-income students sit squarely within their DEI units. In others, they are tied to other functional areas of the college or university. In ours, the programs are not in our Office for Diversity and Inclusion, but are considered part of InclusiveVT, our decentralized inclusion structure. "These frameworks of social change seldom, if ever, benefit the minorities they purportedly care about. Rather, they further tokenization by helping only the elites of minority communities gain a place at the table. Those who are genuinely vulnerable and disadvantaged remain marginalized." I have not yet read Musa al-Gharbi's book which they cite for this assertion, so they may faithfully replicate his argument. Regardless, an assertion that DEI frameworks ignore the realities of socioeconomic inequality seems to obscure complexity a bit in its generality. And there's no dearth of hubris in language like "genuinely vulnerable and disadvantaged." "Finally, we have a responsibility to teach students that there are no instant fixes to social and political problems, an attitude that has been encouraged by campus DEI offices’ drive-thru diversity-training version of social justice." Such an impression might occur to some students who complete a pre-enrollment online diversity training. I rarely have met anyone working in DEI who thinks that students should be introduced to the complex topics that way. Rather, the goal is to encourage reflection about diversity and inclusion in as many ways as possible, ideally shedding light on the systemic roots of social justice issues. I spent 19 years teaching courses on social inequality, race, and identity. Students would tell you that I always stressed the complexity and nuance of human experience. Having stepped over to working in diversity and inclusion, I work with colleagues who are no less committed to those elements. Adding the DEI bogeyman diminished an otherwise insightful argument. Perhaps they have done a disservice to their readers. https://lnkd.in/e3ZuPVZB

From article: A high school teacher and two students sued Arkansas on Monday over the state's ban on critical race theory and “indoctrination” in public schools, asking a federal judge to strike down the restrictions as unconstitutional. The lawsuit by the teacher and students from Little Rock Central High School, site of the historic 1957 racial desegregation crisis, stems from the state's decision last year that an Advanced Placement course on African American Studies would not count toward state credit. The lawsuit argues the restrictions, which were among a number of education changes that Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed into law last year, violate free speech protections under the First Amendment and the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. “It absolutely chills free speech” and “discriminates on the basis of race,” the lawsuit said. “Indeed, defendants’ brazen attack on full classroom participation for all students in 2024 is reminiscent of the state’s brazen attack on full classroom participation for all students in 1957,” the lawsuit said. Arkansas and other Republican-led states in recent years have placed restrictions on how race is taught in the classroom, including prohibitions on critical race theory, an academic framework dating to the 1970s that centers on the idea that racism is embedded in the nation’s institutions. The theory is not a fixture of K-12 education, and Arkansas' ban does not define what would be considered critical race theory or prohibited "indoctrination.” Tennessee educators filed a similar lawsuit last year challenging that state's sweeping bans on teaching certain concepts of race, gender and bias in classroom. Arkansas' restrictions mirror an executive order Sanders signed on her first day in office last year. The Republican governor defended the law and criticized the lawsuit. “In the state of Arkansas, we will not indoctrinate our kids and teach them to hate America or each other,” Sanders said in a statement. “It’s sad the radical left continues to lie and play political games with our kids’ futures.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis blocked high schools in his state from teaching the AP African American Studies course. The College Board released the latest updated framework for the course in December, months after initial revisions prompted criticism the nonprofit was bowing to conservative backlash to the class." https://lnkd.in/g6aMjp3z #curriculum #arkansas

Soapbox time. Been thinking some more about the complexities of equity and justice. 1. There are many types of fairness, and it is usually not possible to achieve all of them at the same time. E.g. for college admissions it is mathematically impossible to achieve the following at the same time. 1) Equal probability of acceptance for all races 2) Equal probability of acceptance for all races *conditional on factors other than race* 3) Equal rates between races for accepting "bad students" (who fail to graduate) and rejecting "good students" (who could have gratuated if admitted) 2. Acting fairly is not the same as acting to promote fairness. While sailing in a storm, you can't make your ship stay in place simply by refusing to steer it in any particular direction. We *have* to act with a bias that counteracts the biases that we want to eliminate. 3. There is a crazy amount of factors that we might want to be "fair" about - gender, race, immigrant status, disability, income, etc. They are socially constructed and intersectional. E.g. the same person can be seen as a different race and face different biases depending on where you ask. And a system may be not too gender-biased and not too race-biased, but still be very biased against black women. 4. Optimizing for fairness is one choice among many. For example, there's no reason why treating everyone equally vs. maximizing innovation vs. minimizing poverty would lead to the same school admission policy. 5. Our policy is only one part of a complex and changing system with feedback loops: - A national college admissions policy will lead people to make different choices where to apply, and it will even change the nation's demographics over time. - A policy for today's crisis may look absurd and extreme when tomorrow the crisis is over. - A policy may seem great on paper, but cause backlash, resulting in overturning many other policies. This is all to say that I think it is not useful to treat anything related to equity and justice as having a "right answer" - whatever choice we make, we must keep asking "to what end?", "is it working?", and "is this still the right problem to solve?". E.g. we shouldn't be deciding whether to do affirmative action (and how) or not because it is "right" or "wrong" - we should be deciding based on what we think will achieve useful outcomes, e.g. reduced income inequality and crime - and then keep checking whether it does, and tune the policy accordingly. P.S. Possible objection: one might argue that our systems are so complex that the "practical" approach is infeasible and we just need to establish a simple, defensible ideology, and stick to it. If the ideology is popular rather than divisive, then this has the advantage of passing policies faster and having more buy-in for them => more stability and efficient implementation. I think this view has a lot of merit, but I still have hope in our ability to be practical in many cases.

For MIT's incoming class of 2028, about 16 percent of students are Black, Hispanic, Native American and Pacific Islander, compared with about 25 percent in recent years. There are similar declines at other universities. There's a lot of finger pointing in this article. But like most systemic inequities, there is not one person or institution to blame. This is absolutely a disastrous consequence of the Affirmative Action ban. It's also the result of institutions failing to dismantle structural racism in recruiting, and the need for state and federal policymakers to work together to promote racial equity through college affordability. This is also the result of longstanding barriers in K-12, that #shutout bright and eager students of color from accessing rigorous STEM courses. We have to do better. Learn more in this report from EdTrust: https://lnkd.in/e_XH6FSP

College campuses have become battlegrounds in America’s culture wars, with diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the center of the debate. In at least 20 states, Republican lawmakers are pushing to limit or even ban DEI initiatives at public universities. For the latest episode of our podcast "College Uncovered," I went to North Carolina, where rollbacks in DEI are raising concerns. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, some students fear these changes could make campus less welcoming for certain people. Conservative students worry about a chilling effect on free speech. Off campus, voters are questioning whether taxpayer dollars should fund DEI programs at all. Even among supporters of diversity and inclusion, some progressive and independent academics concede that some elements of DEI could discourage discussion of controversial topics for fear of offending some students. Harvard Law School professor Jeannie Suk Gersen argues that while DEI programs were well-intentioned, they’ve gone off course. Plus, GBH senior investigative reporter Phillip W.d. Martin joins the podcast to trace the historical roots of DEI policies and explain what these nationwide efforts to scale them back mean for today’s students and their families. Listen and learn wherever you get your podcasts: https://lnkd.in/egeZkhgS The Hechinger Report PRX #highered #DEI

From today's New York Times, a deeply-researched and comprehensive look at D.E.I. as practiced at the University of Michigan, "one of America's most prestigious public universities." From laudable beginnings to its not-too-distant death, D.E.I. may have been conceived for all the right reasons, but soon became an end unto itself thanks to those whose very purpose was in expanding the program with hundreds of D.E.I. hires and ever-increasing areas of real or imagined personal grievance. A few excerpts: "Many conservatives now favor abolishing D.E.I. programs entirely, viewing them as little more than mechanisms to enforce left-wing ideology. 'They’re not teaching or research functions,' said Jay P. Greene, co-author of the Heritage Foundation study of D.E.I. programs and a former professor at the University of Arkansas. 'They’re contrary to academic freedom.' "But even some liberal scholars believe D.E.I. looms too large. Amna Khalid, a historian at Carleton College in Minnesota, argues that modern D.E.I. is not, as some on the right hold, a triumph of critical theory or postcolonialism but of the corporatization of higher education, in which universities have tried to turn moral and political ideals into a system of formulas and dashboards. 'They want a managerial approach to difference,' Khalid said. 'They want no friction. But diversity inherently means friction.'” After the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre of Israelis, Daicia Price, D.E.I. director at the university's school of social work, scheduled an event for students to talk about Gaza. "The students who came were eager but uncertain, she said. It was as if they were trying to speak a new language. “Students were like: I think we do want to be able to talk with each other about these things in a way that’s effective,' Price said. 'We just don’t know how to. We’ve never seen it.'” Might be a good time to play Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On."

https://lnkd.in/dmaMDWmt Trump’s Win Is a Wake-Up Call for Educators. Here’s Why By Frederick M. Hess Education Week November 13, 2024 So, what does this all mean for educators and those in education trying to find their way forward? First, there’s an extraordinary opportunity here for those in and around K–12 to reset the zeitgeist in a way that reflects shared values and turns down the heat. Second, while racial identity played a much reduced role in voting, education loomed large.  Third, don’t use shame as a cudgel in debates over library books, youth sports, trans identification, social and emotional learning, and other parental concerns.  Fourth, I think the tension is elegantly captured by the controversies around American history. But I want to end on a more positive note. The great opportunity here is that I tend to think lots of the toxic stuff that’s so evident in schools isn’t actually very popular. I think Trump’s 2016 victory and then the 2020 murder of George Floyd—combined with the pandemic—created a sense that educators needed to do something. And a lot of this stuff flooded in, promoted by the ed. school professoriate, funders, consultants, and advocates who inhabit a very particular bubble. As the shock of those events has receded, schools have nonetheless been burdened with the consequences of a lot of decisions made at a very peculiar moment. This is a chance to reexamine those decisions with fresh eyes and proceed accordingly. I hope we seize it.

Public education was "saved" according to Brown vs. Board of Education, the 1954 decision that declared segregated education unconstitutional. What is not widely recognized is the reasoning of the Court and, had it been more in line with the Constitution, as opposed to the Court's then idea of social science, an activist court tool, it would have been a stronger declaration. "The Brown decision effectively overturned Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which declared that “separate but equal” facilities were permissible and became the legal basis for racial segregation for more than 50 years. How a court reaches a decision can be as important as the decision itself, and the problem we’re still grappling with seven decades later is the reasoning the justices used in Brown. Instead of declaring that Plessy was an incorrect reading of the Constitution, [Chief Justice] Warren invoked “modern authority,” or social-science research not available when Plessy was decided, to argue that segregated schools were inherently unequal in academic outcomes. In other words, the prior decision was wrong owing to new developments." The idea that segregated schools were inherently unequal was simply wrong. In fact, there was plenty of evidence (literally within a few miles of the Court's building) that all-black education was succeeding - dramatically - in Dunbar High School. "Warren’s claim that segregated schools produced inferior educational results was wrong when he wrote it in 1954. That year, an all-black high school within walking distance of the Supreme Court building sent a higher percentage of students to college than any white public high school in Washington. The same institution, Dunbar High, also had been known to outperform white high schools on standardized tests both locally and across the country. If the Supreme Court was correct in its assessment of racially separate learning facilities, how could Dunbar High School exist?" And the evidence continues. " What we do know is that efforts since the Brown ruling to integrate public schools have done more to sustain academic achievement gaps than to narrow them. Charter schools, which concentrate in low-income minority neighborhoods to offer education alternatives, are resisted on grounds that they perpetuate racial segregation. That many charter students outperform their peers in traditional public schools is an afterthought. In some of the best public schools in the country, a majority of the students are black and Hispanic, which is also true of some of the worst public schools in the country. Clearly, the defining feature of a successful school isn’t its racial makeup, yet education policy continues to emphasize racial balance in the classroom. That there’s so much focus on what a school looks like demographically, instead of how it performs, is one of the unfortunate legacies of Brown v. Board of Education."

Update📣 “Erasing Bias from the Classroom” has a release date. Stay tuned. In the meantime, check out why this topic is so important… *** The Imperative for Inclusivity: Why Bias Eradication Matters (excerpt from the book 📖) Maya Angelou’s words, “When you know better, do better,” remind us of our responsibility to learn from the past. Yet, our society—and particularly our education systems—often falls short. Decades after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the rise of movements for equality, today’s headlines reveal troubling setbacks. From Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill and anti-trans legislation to New Jersey’s stark school segregation, biases continue to shape the experiences of students in profound ways. Even educational standards, such as those suggesting enslaved people “benefited” from their oppression, demonstrate how deeply prejudice can infiltrate our classrooms. This persistence of bias in schools is more than a failure to “do better”; it’s a disservice to future generations. Classrooms are microcosms of society, shaping how students see themselves and others. If we don’t address biases—whether implicit or systemic—we reinforce inequities that hinder learning, limit opportunities, and perpetuate division. “Erasing Bias from the Classroom” makes the case for urgent change, offering educators and leaders the tools to create inclusive environments where every student can thrive. Knowing better is no longer enough—it's time to act. These actions are not limited to those involved in education but to everyone. Everyone’s actions create a ripple effect that can affect our students.