I can’t reconcile the idea that my university is racist with my experience

In a recent opinion piece in Times Higher Education, Samuel Abrams complained that requiring applicants for grants and jobs to pledge their loyalty to a certain understanding of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) is an imposition on academic freedom. He is right. But the problem runs even deeper. As National Association of Scholars Fellow John Sailer notes in another recent article, “the concepts of EDI have become guiding principles in higher education, valued as equal to or even more important than the basic function of the university: the rigorous pursuit of truth”.

You might think that such a drastic reformulation of mission would have been preceded by rigorous deliberation. According to Sailer, however, many of the EDI policies and provisions “happened by fiat, with little discussion”. Moreover, many professors who are privately critical of EDI declined to speak even anonymously to Sailer “for fear of professional consequences”.

Although I do not know how much deliberation went into my own university’s EDI adoption process, there certainly wasn’t much evidence of it in my own discipline. What discussion there was usually amounted to the most steadfast proponents of EDI – especially those whose scholarship centres on critical social justice – taking turns praising one another’s “labour”, while almost everyone else looked at their laptops.

EDI has become the hermetic province of a chosen or self-appointed few who, for reasons related to their “positionality”, are deemed more qualified or entitled to produce and comment on EDI efforts, policies and texts. Yet the starting point of EDI efforts should revolve around framing: how we use language to both represent EDI ideas and influence how they are perceived, particularly by sceptics. And as long as we all understand a given language, we can all engage in deliberation about it. Of course, identity and personal experience may play a role in that process, but they don’t seem essential to it.

In addition to impeding communication and persuasion, positionality – a version of the argument from authority fallacy – is patently contrary to the aspirations of higher education, including collegiality, critical thinking and open inquiry.

For all the national attention regularly commanded by the most egregious punishments for running afoul of EDI’s often confusing and unspoken scriptures, hundreds more tussles play out daily in universities across the country. While these incidents may not all take the same toll as being tarred and terminated, they clearly affect morale and thereby undermine the university’s ability to fulfil its mission.

As part of my department’s laudable commitment to equity and diversity, we developed three questions to be added to course evaluations. As an engaged faculty member who cares about how we represent ideas and how they represent us, I responded to the invitation to provide feedback.

One of the questions asked “how effectively did the course instructor…disrupt and address discriminatory/harmful behavior?” Although I had concerns about what constitutes “harmful behavior” and how students’ answers would be used, I focused on lower-hanging fruit and asked why we needed to include the word “disrupt” when “address” would accomplish the same goal in a less ideologically loaded way. No one responded to my comment on the document itself, but during a subsequent discussion someone said that we should keep “disrupt” because “we need it”. Another added that it was “important”. And that was the extent of the discussion.

More recently, we revised our anti-racism statement. This begins with two claims: “Racism exists and persists: Universities and departments perpetuate racial-ethnic hierarchy and racism” and “Language and writing prejudice is systemic: Standard Academic English and Standard Academic Writing reinforces anti-Blackness, anti-Indigenous, and anti-nonwhite ideologies”.

One of the more troubling characteristics of EDI-related proclamations is their reliance on rhetorical sleight of hand. No serious person would deny that “racism exists and persists”, but this is not equivalent to saying that “universities and departments perpetuate...racism”, and no examples are offered. Moreover, whatever the situation elsewhere, my own department is one of the most EDI-minded and conscientious on campus, and my university has spent millions growing its own EDI bureaucracy. I just can’t reconcile the idea that my university and department are racist with my experience of them.

I also had some questions about how standard academic English and writing might “reinforce racism”. I probably should have known better than to ask for evidence, but my training overcame my caution.

The response came about as close to calling me a racist as one can get without actually saying the words. Apparently, my request for evidence “fits the tenets of whiteness studies” and “smacks of a Western tradition” that, among other no-nos, “attempts to quantify experiences...into data sets”. I was then invited to read both recent and historical research. But while each recommended author has interesting things to say about racism in higher education and beyond, none appears to offer any quantifiable evidence to support their opinions, let alone the claims in my department’s anti-racism statement. 

So what, then, is an evidence-loving, critical-thinking, pro-humanist university professor (or department, or university) to do? Take a shadow boxer’s approach to eliminating racism, fighting an enemy I usually cannot see, throwing punches whose effectiveness I can’t measure?

I too want to create a more welcoming and inclusive campus and world. But outside a religious context, I can think of no other situation where reasonable people are asked (and agree!) to do so much without the benefit of cogent explanations, evidence and deliberation.

If higher education has any hope of retaining its value to society, it must prioritise open inquiry and a rigorous standard of evidence. EDI should be treated with the same curiosity and scepticism as anything else.

Maximilian Werner is associate professor in writing and rhetoric studies at the University of Utah.