Concrete Strategies for Leading in Our Political Context

Dr. Mike Gavin, President of Delta College (MI)

Dr. Stephanie J. Fujii, President of Arapahoe Community College (CO)

Julie White, Chancellor of Peirce Colleges (WA)

Some Distinctions to Have in Your Mind

• Leading a culture in your college vs. Having to Comply
• Ensuring your commitment to mission/institutional autonomy vs. making sacrifices without needing to
• Over-reaching and over-complying vs. understanding what is actually required
• Believing there are work-arounds vs. understanding what is destroyed in a single moment will take decades to re-build

DEI as Central to Mission of Community Colleges

Open Access

• Equitable Access AND Outcomes

Most Diverse Student Body

Focus on Outcomes & Student Success: Need to Close Achievement Gaps

• Know exists & continue

Responsibility & Accountability as our “Community’s College”

Need to learn from our unfiltered history as a nation to promote understanding and inclusion of differences

Exist as Democratic & Pluralistic entities

Equality vs. Equity

Anti-DEI is Anti-Democracy

• Inserting race into the conversation is necessary; it is imperative to discuss DEI and Academic Freedom in an historical context that is structural and systemic, not individualized.
• Denies Pluralism. And pluralism (state of society in which members of diverse ethnic, racial, religious, or social groups maintain and develop their traditional culture or special interest within the confines of a common civilization) in integral to the vibrancy ofour democracy.
• Limits learning via a prescribed set of “standards” which forbid the teaching of long held historical facts.
• Inhibits higher education’s ability to facilitate increased economic & social mobility for our communities.
• Seeks to reduce, limit & deny citizen’s civil rights.
• Denies one’s identity and distance people of color, women, and LGBTQ people from a whitewashed, idealized, imagined future of America.
• Segregate people of color, women, Muslim, and LGBTQ people from mainstreamed amenities and opportunities of citizenship, higher education, or the good life that results from it.
• Limit black and brown immigrants’ entry to America and higher education.

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How do We Work Collectively with the Diverse Contexts We Sit

• Do not judge those who are in seats you do not sit.
• Remember, nobody is safe.
• Can we collectively work to defend higher education as an institution by utilizing the voices of those who are ‘safer’ in strategic ways?
• Recognize that the national election promises to have rhetoric if not bills that will impact ALL of our students.

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Paradox of our Moment: MUST Defend our Institutions, Each other, and the Idea of Higher Education

Defend our institutions and students against anti-educational and risk losing funding and/or support for our institutions.

OR

Find workarounds until an election unseats the politicians engaging in problematic rhetoric and policy—but it may never happen.

Equity is about Systems; it is not about Moments

But houses exactly like the houses of our past yet dominated the landscape, boys exactly like the boys we once had been found themselves smothering in these houses, came down into the streets for light and air and found themselves encircled by disaster. Some escaped the trap, most didn't. Those who got out always left something of themselves behind, as some animals amputate a leg and leave it in the trap.

“Sonny’s Blues” James Baldwin

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National Landscape and Context�(If federal approach takes the shape of Dobbs)�

Four Contexts that Characterize our Institutions:

• States where legislation has passed and limited DEI.
• States where legislation is impending or did not pass but will most likely pass in the future.
• States where a flip in state legislatures is possible leading to anti-DEI legislation.
• States that are relatively safe from broad anti-DEI policies.

National Landscape

Causes of Anti-DEI Movement

Higher Education is at the Nexus of the Battle for the National Identity

Funding for Anti-DEI is Long-Term and �Big Money is Not Going Anywhere

• Heritage Foundation funds research on playbooks for anti-DEI.
• TurningPoint USA, which has attacked scholars of DEI for decades, funds and works with many organizations to consider how to disrupt campus focus on DEI.
• Edward Blum, who almost single-handedly funded anti-affirmative action legislation for decades continues to fund anti-DEI legislation.
• Chris Rufo, the architect of the recent thinking of the anti-DEI movement has a non-profit focused on national, state, and local anti-DEI movements.

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What if Scenarios with Template (education4allhub.com

• Create a team of legal counsel and a scholar with critical race theory to inform president/policy
• Recognize chaos is the game
• Kyle Rittenhouse as a speaker, eg
• Budgets are where much of the work of dismantling higher ed is now focused
• What if scenarios with the resources on our website:
• What if mandates come down to eliminate any office or position or course that is associated with DEI? Can those impacted think of a solution?
• Read the bills: do you know what ‘inherently’ means in the law vs. academics
• Ensure you know what constitutes ‘legal’ DEI and ‘illegal DEI’ (the latter usually is not even done on campus and equates to violating Civil Rights

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Distinctions between Federal and State

• Federal vs. state funding matters
• Performance vs. actual legal impact
• “As states follow the Trump administration’s road map in their own legislatures, they also learn from one another’s lessons learned in court.”—Mike Gavin; Truthout
• As a sector, we speak for each other, but can do so with strategy
• Southern CA presidents are in different seats than OH/FL presidents. Education4All can assist with that strategy

Dear Colleague Letter

• Your institution is very likely in compliance with civil rights law and therefore take care not to cause panic or have a knee-jerk reaction to the letter.
• Letter requires us to cease all efforts to circumvent prohibitions on the use of race by relying on proxies or other indirect means to accomplish such ends;
• Most of the claims in the Dear Colleague letter are erroneous. Complaints will be made no matter what. However, be sure that a practitioner and legal counsel are reading the letter’s claims prior to making changes.
• cease all reliance on third-party contractors, clearinghouses, or aggregators that are being used by institutions in an effort to circumvent prohibited uses of race.
• Without additional guidance from OCR, it is unclear what this directive means. However, clarification will be needed to ensure that institutions are not ‘circumventing prohibited uses of race.’

Guidance on Dear Colleague summary from Ed4All

• The political sphere should not be intervening into curriculum and
• Our work has never been outside of Civil Rights law nor ‘racially hostile,’ even though perverse claims have made that case.
• The letter also lists criterion used to judge any programming that would be deemed outside of the law.  Ironically, these criterion seem to be the very sort that justify and require equity work in the first place. 
• That aside, the criterion are listed below: A non-exhaustive list may include (1) whether members of a particular race were treated differently than similarly situated students of other races; (2) the historical background or administrative history of the policy or decision; (3) whether there was a departure from normal procedures in making the policy or decision; (4) whether there was a pattern regarding policies or decisions towards members of a particular race; (5) statistics demonstrating a pattern of the policy or decision having a greater impact on members of a particular race; and (6) whether the school was aware of or could foresee the effect of the policy or decision on members of a particular race.”

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Guidance on Dear Colleague summary from Ed4All

Ultimately, this letter only validates that there was no need to make any drastic changes at our institutions because of it. I would encourage you to read this letter with a mindset that you are already in compliance with the directives, despite any claims made within it, and find any areas where you have questions and raise those with just a few on campus if at all necessary. The thinking and template regarding initial inquiries on our resource page will hold with any inquiries regarding the Dear Colleague letter and/or Executive Orders.  They will also pertain to many state requirements that are being created, although states are reaching further than they have in the past.

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Ohio—Recommend Performance Metrics Based on DEI

Kentucky

North Carolina--

“It is a Class 1 misdemeanor for a person to knowingly and willfully violate this 13 section. 14 (h) An employee of a State agency may bring a civil action for damages to the employee 15 resulting from violation of this section. The civil action may be brought in the county where the employee resides or in which all or a substantial part of the acts or omissions giving rise to the action occurred.”

But there are Solutions or Pathways Forward

Voting and higher education matters

Frameworks to Consider—By Liliana Garces

5 Actions to consider now

1. Re-imagining our institutions to keep up with the quick pace of legislation and political interference that are meant to discredit higher education in general.
2. Recognizing that our hallmark tradition of academic freedom is being weaponized against us.
3. Showcasing and demanding attention to the role of higher education writ large requires understanding of the different kinds of institutions America has.
4. Understanding the anti-DEI contexts in which we work.
5. Avoiding platitudes to make us feel better in the moment leads to long-term disenfranchisement.

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What we Need: Johnsonian-type Coalition on Higher Education with a charge that:�

1. Situates higher education as aligned with the American ideals of developing a more perfect union and that provides access and achievement for all; this includes unapologetic, visionary commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion;
2. Establishes an education system where all belong on campus and in the curriculum;
3. Considers the power of each higher education institution type as defined by the Carnegie Classification, from community colleges to Ivy Leagues;
4. Places primacy on ensuring institutional autonomy; and
5. Considers education as a fundamental right of all those residing within American borders.

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Education and Legislation Intersect

By 2035, through collaboration, Education4All will facilitate collaboration to situate our sector to ensure that:�

• Higher Education is a right for all
• Leaders are equipped with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to ensure all citizens are welcome into the academic community by:

o Providing deep, timely, and time-sensitive training on context-specific tools to lead through anti-DEI; anti-Academic Freedom and anti-Institutional Autonomy legislation and cultures

• o Developing and deploying frameworks of collaboration for cultures internal to institutions and outside of them to strengthen mission.
• Develops and deploy a powerful framework of student success that unites higher education, community, and private sector toward a common goal of democracy.
• Reimagines the discourse and pushes for cultural and policy sectors to align funding with new definitions of ‘elite institution.’

Scorecard Continued: Higher Ed and Impact

A Score Card for Education being a Right—Draft State Policy in Terms of Funding