The Belonging Gap: How BIPOC Professors Navigate An Anti-DEI Landscape
Twenty states, including Texas, proposed legislation that would ban aspects of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at state-funded universities. Faculty, staff and students from historically marginalized communities as well as individuals whose work is centered around diversity, equity and inclusion are concerned for the future of higher education and college campuses.
By Jordyn Harrell
When Darryl Dickson-Carr, one of the 13 tenured Black professors at Southern Methodist University, thinks about the moment he felt belonging on campus, he remembers The Table. Tucked into the back portion of the Umphrey Lee Dining Hall, the Faculty Dining Room featured linen tablecloths, privacy and a space where Black faculty members met informally for a shared lunch. The Table began to meet up on a regular basis after Maria Dixon Hall, a professor in corporate communications and public affairs, sent weekly evites. Discussions at The Table were usually about everyday things–sports, television shows and current events. But every so often, between those conversations, the faculty members offered each other encouragement and mentorship. “The feeling I experienced when I knew that I was going to have lunch with supportive colleagues was one of the most important things in terms of my adjustment to being a faculty member at SMU, wanting to stay and really appreciating and enjoying working at SMU,” says Dickson-Carr, who joined the English department in 2006. He teaches African American literature, and much of his research explores African American satire, including the books “Spoofing the Modern: Satire in the Harlem Renaissance” and “African American Satire: The Sacredly Profane Novel.”
His research, the courses he teaches, and even his identity in the context of the current political climate create distress and the sense he is under attack. “When you turn on the news every morning and hear about people attacking the work of people who do the kind you do, even if nobody at (SMU) is saying or doing the same thing, you can’t divorce yourself from what the rest of the world is,” says Dickson-Carr. “It’s important that any university, even if the university is not perpetuating those problems, reassures people that ‘yes, you are welcome, valued and we need your voice.” Earlier this year, Florida’s rejection of the A.P. African American Studies Class, prompted Henry Louis Gates Jr., the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard to write an opinion piece for The New York Times titled Who’s Afraid of Black History.
Based on the DEI legislation tracker created by The Chronicle of Higher Education, 20 states have introduced legislation meant to restrict efforts to improve diversity, equity and inclusion on college campuses. These bills are an attempt to impact the kind of research and scholarship faculty can pursue as well as student curriculum. Texas introduced seven bills since December 2022, including House Bill 1 which received final legislative approval but has since been sent back for amendments. “The kinds of efforts opposing DEI that are happening at public universities implicitly put pressure on private universities to do the same,” says Dickson-Carr. “The greatest mistake SMU could make is to succumb to that pressure.”
Although only a bill in North Dakota out of the total 34 bills proposed by these 20 states has been signed into law, the impact of the anti-DEI movement is clear. Adrienne Lu, senior reporter at The Chronicle, says some states adopted some of the measures prohibiting DEI initiatives without legislation. These efforts also create a reluctance in higher-education administrators to talk. “Some people would say the intent of some of this legislation is to cause a chilling effect,” Lu says. “And if that’s the case, people being afraid to talk to us and to the press could be seen as a sign that it’s working.”
But the initiatives also attracted many willing to speak up. The National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE) provides support and resources for their members, many of whom lead DEI-related work in higher education. In January, NADOHE’s president Paulette Granberry Russell began issuing statements when it became more evident that these anti-DEI initiatives were intensifying. “Some of this is purely political, and it’s an attempt to politicize, but also weaponize diversity, equity, and inclusion,” Granberry Russell says. “The legislation is suggesting there are opportunities being provided (to certain communities) in the absence of merit.” She says merit being narrowly defined — alongside both the changes in college demographics and the acknowledgement that campuses have historically struggled to create a more equitable and inclusive environment — makes the status quo uncomfortable. On April 17, the Black Student Association at University of Texas at Arlington — one of the public universities who suspended new DEI policies after Abbott’s February memo declared the use of DEI initiatives violated federal and state employment laws — released a statement opposing state legislation.
Students have often been the catalysts that led college campuses to create a more equitable and inclusive environment. After the Black League of Afro-American College Students (BLAACS) demanded the university hire more Black faculty and admit more Black students, SMU hired its first Black administrator and faculty members in 1969. Decades later, SMU still faced challenges in creating a more equitable and inclusive environment for students from marginalized communities. In 2020, after the protests in response to the murder of George Floyd, Black SMU students revived the 2015 Twitter hashtag #BlackAtSMU to share their experiences being racially discriminated against on campus. That same year Black Unity Form was founded by students who partnered with Black alumni, faculty, and staff with an updated list of demands, including an increase in Black faculty, to the administration to make the campus more equitable and foster a more welcoming environment for Black students. That work mirrors many other student-led protests such as those at Syracuse University and at Dartmouth College that asked for an increase in BIPOC faculty and for a more inclusive campus climate.
SMU faculty trends show that by 2022 the university hired six more Black faculty members. Although faculty of color still makes up less than a fourth of SMU’s faculty, the amount of faculty of color increased from 19.43% to 23.55% between 2020 to 2022. That diversity in the classroom plays a key role in educating students who will solve 21st century problems, says Maria Dixon Hall, the initiator of The Table. Although meals at The Table have fizzled out due to scheduling conflicts, Dixon Hall is just as intentional in fostering a welcoming environment for faculty in her position as SMU’s chief diversity officer and senior advisor to the university’s president. She was appointed to this new position in 2016 after asking President R. Gerald Turner if she could step down from the President’s Commission on Race — a committee that discussed issues people of color faced on campus. “I got frustrated and said we’re really not moving the dial…we’re not really helping race relations on campus, nor are we bringing about the kind of recruitment and retention we want,” Dixon Hall said. “I was being kind of flip when I told (Turner) if you gave me six faculty members and half a year, I probably come up with a better program than we have now.” Turner did take her up on it. She and the Diversity Committee identified the framework of cultural intelligence and created training to minimize personal biases, including “Searching Intelligence,” which is mandatory for the faculty hiring process.
Alyssa Bleyle, SMU senior from Arizona majoring in English and public policy, agrees that there is value in having professors who identify differently from you. Because of her English major, Bleyle believes she received more exposure to faculty members who are women or people of color compared to other majors. “Even though social media and the Internet are connecting our world even more, being taught face-to-face by someone who’s from a different background from you — whether it’s gender, religion or race — gives us more perspective,” Bleyle says. Because of her limited knowledge about queer literature she took a course with Professor Paul Johnson Edwards, who taught African American and queer literature at SMU from 2020 to 2022. Edwards cultivated a welcoming environment for discussion and introduced text the students weren’t familiar with. “Most of us never heard of (“Passing”), but Dr. Edwards spent a lot of time on that book,” Bleyle says. “It was such a powerful storyline on a variety of levels, and I don’t know if I would have picked that up on my own.”
Sense of belonging is an important factor for recruiting and retaining both students and professors of color in higher education. Creating a sense of belonging for faculty, staff and students needs to be addressed from all sides of a campus experience, says Granberry Russell. The responsibility does not fall solely on DEI offices and administrators. Jacquelyn Thomas, a marketing professor who joined SMU in 2008, describes belonging as a feeling. “There are two obvious aspects of my diversity: my gender and ethnicity,” says Thomas, who identifies as a Black woman. “Sense of belonging, to me, is how people around me make me feel when I am overtly different.” These overt differences may cause people to not be able to relate to her or may cause people to have opinions on what they think she wants or is capable of, she says. Belonging is about being supported, she says as she reflects on the few white male colleagues she’s had who made an effort to understand these aspects and to speak up on her behalf. For her, it also means the university encouraging faculty members’ research goals, valuing their voice, and supporting them financially.
Belonging starts at the recruitment process, says Karen Thomas, journalism professor and SMU diversity officer for the Meadows School of the Arts. “You have to be mindful that yes, this is a great university, but we’re also selling Texas and we’re also selling Dallas in a way,” she says. Because the anti-DEI state legislations often target curriculum, it raises the concern of whether this is the right environment for a faculty member to teach. Faculty members are now left asking themselves if they can pursue the area of interest and research focused on certain communities who are now being identified as devices or work that should not be engaged in on college campuses. Granberry Russell says the fight to protect higher education needs allies, including corporate and nonprofit sectors. Students, faculty, and staff who feel threatened need to feel supported by their universities. “It’s essential that the institutions and the leadership of those institutions reach into the community and let them know of the steps that they’re going to take to protect and stand by its values,” Granberry Russell says.
As Dickson-Carr sits in his office with dozens of books squashed together on the shelves of three white bookcases and his desk cluttered with loose papers and books, he shares why space plays a critical role in faculty belonging. “The reason why The Table was so valuable is that it was one of those ways that (Black faculty) felt welcome,” he says. “We had a space to make ourselves feel welcome.” Faculty need to be welcome where they are because without some form of support, there’s less of a reason for them to stick around.
