Higher education, which has been slower than corporate America in expanding its efforts beyond student enrollment to include staff and program diversity, got a stunning reminder this fall of the work still to be done.
The reminder came in the form of widespread student demonstrations for better institutional leadership on diversity issues. The marches, rallies, meetings with institutional officials, and threats of student class and athletic activity boycotts echoed student protests of half a century ago.
Then, college students played a big role in the 1950s and 1960s in the waves of peaceful, non-violent demonstrations aimed at pushing government and civilian leaders to make good on the promise to outlaw racial segregation and discrimination across the board, from schools to housing to employment.
Much of that protest was fueled by the pace of response by education and government leaders to the “all deliberate speed” mandate in the historic 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education outlawing so-called “separate but equal” local laws preventing racial integration of public education.
Now, society may consider itself legally light years beyond the era of legalized racial segregation. Still, today’s demonstrations reflect a sense among many current students that vestiges of many past practices persist and are reflected in the absence of urgency to address discriminatory practices and embrace inclusion at every turn.
“There’s a movement across the country,” says Dr. Benjamin Reese, vice president of the Office of Institutional Equity at Duke University and Duke University Health System and national president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE), reflecting on recent developments around diversity and the University of Missouri. “Many who have never had a chief diversity officer (CDO) are beginning to recognize having a CDO is necessary but not sufficient.
