Teaching at the Intersections: Autoethnography, Linguistic Justice, and Radical Belonging Part 1 & 2
April 3, 2025
Dear Colleagues: How should we be leading higher education today? With boldness, wisdom and courage.
April 15, 2025Critical Leadership for Civil Rights in Higher Education: The Experiences of Chief Diversity Officers Navigating Anti-DEI Action
A new report from the National Center for Institutional Diversity (NCID) at the University of Michigan shines a light on the experiences of Chief Diversity Officers (CDOs) in states facing challenges to programs intended to support marginalized students, and provides recommendations for how higher education leaders can support CDOs and institutional efforts to ensure all students, faculty, and staff can be successful. As leaders who manage administrative, student service, and academic units, CDOs have been tasked with upholding civil rights on college and university campuses, and their work has come under increasing scrutiny and attack in recent years.
The report, titled Critical Leadership for Civil Rights in Higher Education: The Experiences of Chief Diversity Officers Navigating Anti-DEI Action, presents the results of a study conducted by researchers on the CASCaDE (Change Agents Shaping Campus Diversity and Equity) project from the NCID. The study interviewed 40 CDOs across 15 states facing anti-DEI action. Along with presenting empirical results, this report also presents definitions and representations of DEI programs and initiatives.
The report highlights how institutions and CDOs respond, navigate, and are impacted by such actions. The report finds that CDOs implemented three main organizational approaches in response: strategic inaction, proaction, and reaction. These approaches were deliberate actions taken to understand and address the political context, campus culture, and stakeholder needs while continuing to ensure all university stakeholders are supported. The report also reveals the personal implications of anti-DEI efforts on CDOs including threats to career stability, stifled speech, and mental and physical health difficulties. Many CDOs implemented coping mechanisms — ranging from setting personal boundaries to exercising to leaning on their faith — to address the physical and mental stress.
From these findings, the researchers created a list of seven strategies on how higher education executives, leaders, faculty, and staff can support CDOs as they navigate legal mandates and increased pressure to end programs supporting minority and historically disenfranchised groups. The recommendations offer opportunities for learning, reflection, and action that are critical not only for supporting CDOs but also for upholding civil rights across college and university campuses.
"Chief diversity officers are highly skilled professionals with years of training and advanced degrees that they use to improve experiences and outcomes for all students, staff, and faculty," says NCID director Elizabeth R. Cole, University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor of Psychology and Women's and Gender Studies. "Our research shows that CDOs are using their expertise to respond strategically to current political attacks and continue supporting their universities. At the same time, having to respond so quickly in order to lead their institutions through uncertainty places an incredible burden on CDOs and results in a range of personal and professional strains."
“This report, created by NCID, offers a necessary and urgent lens into the personal and professional toll that anti-DEI action is having on Chief Diversity Officers (CDOs),” says Paulette Granberry Russell, J.D., President and CEO of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE). “NADOHE is proud to have supported the development of the study and to elevate the voices of our colleagues whose experiences are often silenced or politicized. Now more than ever, higher education leaders must affirm their values, advocate against anticipatory over-compliance, and build coalitions that protect both people and purpose. Diversity, equity, and inclusion work is not ancillary or discriminatory—it is central to the mission of inclusive excellence in higher education.”
Paulette Granberry Russell, J.D., President and CEO of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE), detailed the contents and significance of the findings. She said, “This report, produced by NCID, offers a necessary and urgent lens into the personal and professional toll that anti-DEI action is having on Chief Diversity Officers—leaders who serve as the stewards of civil rights and equity in higher education. NADOHE is proud to have supported the development of the study and to elevate the voices of our colleagues whose experiences are often silenced or politicized. The findings confirm what many of us have witnessed firsthand: CDOs are navigating hostile environments marked by misinformation about their work, legal uncertainty, and mounting personal sacrifice. Now more than ever, higher education leaders must affirm their values, advocate against anticipatory over-compliance with policy pronouncements that erroneously characterize diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives as unlawful, and build coalitions that protect both people and purpose. Diversity, equity, and inclusion work is not ancillary or discriminatory—it is central to the mission of inclusive excellence in higher education.”
Critical Leadership for Civil Rights in Higher Education is part of the CASCaDE project, which seeks to support higher education change agents — leaders in both formal and informal roles — in transforming institutional cultures, structures, policies, and practices to support the success of students, staff, and faculty.
The report’s recommendations follow the transformational structure laid out by the THESIS Model, published by CASCaDE in 2023, wherein transformation requires learning, reflection, and action across three empowerment domains.
Read the report here.