In “Straight Talk with Rick and Jal,” Harvard University’s Jal Mehta and I examine the reforms and enthusiasms that permeate education. In a field full of buzzwords, our goal is simple: Tell the truth, in plain English, about what’s being proposed and what it means for students, teachers, and parents. We may be wrong and we will frequently disagree, but we’ll try to be candid and ensure that you don’t need a Ph.D. in eduspeak to understand us. Today’s topic is diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); it is the first part of a two-part post, the second of which will be published later this week.
—Rick
Jal: Why is it so hard to find a healthy equilibrium on DEI? It emerged as a needed response to the well-documented history of racism and exclusion that have governed all aspects of American society. The idea, in schools and universities as well as corporations and hospitals, is that those spaces have historically excluded or marginalized people who differ from the dominant white male norm and that a readjustment is therefore in order. Accelerated by the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter Movement, these institutions have been rethinking various aspects of their structures and practices, which seems like a long-overdue development.
Some constructive steps have emerged from this reexamination, in ways large and small. Syllabi have diversified, as many teachers have recognized that the canon of relevant knowledge is much broader than they thought. Elite universities and private schools have realized that they need to teach the hidden curriculum that comes with power and privilege, encouraging students who haven’t spent time in elite spaces that it is OK—and often necessary—to ask for help, that building relationships with professors and teachers should be the norm, and that self-advocacy is critical for success in life. Educational institutions have rethought whose voices and ideas to elevate, which holidays to celebrate, and even what to name their buildings.
But then, in typical American fashion, we seem convinced that if some is good, more must be better. And then we see some of what has alienated the right in recent years: students self-censoring out of fear of being canceled by their peers, essay writing reimagined as a symptom of “white supremacy culture,” formerly benign words taken as microaggressions. It shouldn’t take a chastisement from President Obama that, to paraphrase, every older person isn’t going to know the right language in every situation, for us to realize that an endless fight over the policing of each other’s words serves no one.
And then, of course, the pendulum swung back the other way. Just as the left was at fault for its overreach, the right went overboard in its response. If you believed certain parts of the conservative press the past few years, you would have thought woke mobs were everywhere. Critical race theory became a bogeyman in education, even though there was almost no evidence it was being taught in K–12 schools. That only reenergized the left, and around and around we went. This vicious cycle remains with us today.
Have we lost all sanity? Why do we keep swinging the pendulum back and forth? What happened to common sense? Rick, what do you think?
Rick: You’ve done a terrific job framing the issue. We’re on the same page on much of this, though I suspect I’m more sympathetic to the pushback against DEI than you are. We agree that DEI set out to address real historic tensions. Making every learner feel welcome and included, expanding the canon, establishing norms of mutual respect, and teaching the skills and habits that were once reserved for those on the inside are all very good things.
And I think there are ways to do all of this that enjoy broad support. After all, whatever the extreme rhetoric from the talking heads on FOX and MSNBC, Americans of all stripes consistently favor fairness and teaching the good and bad of the American story. Heck, AEI’s Survey Center on American Life has reported that, among Republicans and Democrats alike, more than 4 in 5 agree that students should read “works by a racially diverse set of authors” and say social studies textbooks should discuss slave-owning by the Founders, the World War II internment of Japanese Americans, and the maltreatment of Native Americans. There’s a lot of common ground here.
But I’ve long thought the biggest problem is that the kinds of sensible priorities you flag have been drowned out by ideologues pursuing personal agendas. That’s how you got The Equity Collaborative teaching educators that “fostering independence,” “individual achievement,” “individual thinking,” and “self-expression” are racist hallmarks of “white individualism.” That’s how you got the KIPP charter schools abandoning their decades-old mantra of “Work hard, Be nice” because they deemed it a legacy of white supremacy culture, one that “support[ed] the illusion of meritocracy” and hindered efforts to “dismantle systemic racism.” That’s how you got the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture debuting an online guide for “Talking about Race” that cataloged troubling “aspects and assumptions” of “white culture,” including “hard work,” “self-reliance,” “be[ing] polite,” and timeliness.
That’s how you got PD workshops where teachers were taught that “Whiteness reproduces poverty, failing schools, high unemployment, school closings, and trauma for people of color” or urged to embrace “the disruption of Western nuclear family dynamics.” That’s how you got Democracy Prep coming down on a biracial student for refusing to label himself an oppressor, in a class where students were told, “Black prejudice does not affect the rights of white people” and “reverse racism doesn’t exist.” That’s how you got “privilege walks” and DEI loyalty oaths as a job requirement for aspiring chemistry professors. Whatever we may think of all this in 2024, my inbox was full of this stuff during the Trump years and the pandemic.
When anyone is urging schools to dismiss independence, individual thinking, hard work, and being nice in the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion, they’ve lost the plot. Worse still, in recent years, it got to the point that educators got bullied for pointing this out. Over the past five years, I’ve received scores of emails from educators who shared their frustrations about trainings or faculty meetings where they’d been ridiculed—or watched a colleague be ridiculed—for daring to raise concerns or push back.
That’s why I’ve supported efforts to check the nuttiness through legislation, muckraking journalism, democratic oversight. Of course, you’re right that there are times when this pushback loses the plot—when it’s no longer about principle but just grievance politics from the other side of the spectrum. When unhinged right-wingers object to students learning that the protesters opposing desegregation were white, it all devolves into mud wrestling among the terminally online outrage artists. And I’m wholly with you in denouncing that.
It strikes me that we need a clearer sense of the principles that can help us find that healthy equilibrium. You’re the Harvard professor. So how do we find it?
The second part of this conversation will be published later this week.
