Dr. Sylvester James (Jim) Gates, Jr. received the Dr. John Hope Franklin Award presented by Diverse at this year's AABHE conference.
Many of the 400 or so attendees related stories about DEI crackdowns in their home states. They expressed frustrations about feeling hamstrung in their efforts to serve students from underrepresented groups and conceded that many of them had begun to self-censor.
Dr. Ivory A. Toldson, professor of counseling psychology at Howard University and recipient of AABHE’s Distinguished Cultural Award, urged attendees to “fiercely defend academic freedom.”
“When governments or donors or even our own fears pressure us to narrow the boundaries of acceptable discourse, we must resist,” Toldson said during the opening keynote speech.
That resistance can take on different forms, as evidenced in talks that several scholars gave urging attendees to be strategic in their responses to government efforts to curtail DEI.
Dr. Lover Chancler, an assistant professor of child and family development and director of The Center at the University of Central Missouri, urged those in attendance to refrain from voicing the idea that they’re doing the “same work” that they did under the old DEI regimes.
“Here’s what I’m going to caution you: Stop saying, ‘we’re doing the same work,’ because that got several people in Texas fired,” Chancler said. Instead, she said, program administrators should talk about how they are “reimagining how we are going to be supportive of our students at the university of whatever it’s called.”
