On Thursday, March 21, Rutgers University professor Stacy Hawkins, a professor of law, appeared for a panel at Harvard University in which she defended Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts. Professor Hawkins’ comments came during the panel’s discussion on what role the DEI bureaucracy should play on university campuses, and if it clashes with academic freedom.
The Harvard Crimson, reporting on the panel, hosted by Harvard’s Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics, noted that all of the academics involved in the panel agreed with the idea that protecting diversity, particularly in higher education, is important. However, though they agreed with that, they were at loggerheads over whether DEI goals and bureaucracy clash with academic freedom on university campuses.
The debate began, the Crimson reports, with a history professor at Carleton College, Amna Khalid. She referred to the DEI bureaucracy and efforts as “DEI, Inc.” Continuing, Professor Khalid then went on to argue that “diversity is a customer service issue, education is the product, and students are customers.”
Not done, she went on to argue that the notion of “harm,” as it’s understood and enforced by college campuses, is ludicrous given what professors intend and teach. She said, “It’s underscored by the notion of harm and that students somehow need to be protected from harm, as if we entered our classrooms dying to harm our students.”
It was at that point, the Crimson reports, that Professor Hawkins counter-attacked and tried to push back on Khalid’s harsh criticisms of DEI efforts. Doing so, Professor Hawkins argued that it is contradictory to claim to be pursuing and supporting DEI initiatives while also opposing the “operationalization and the professionalization of diversity.”
Explaining that point, Hawkins claimed that diversity has been long desired by institutions but most are yet to actually achieve diversity. She said, “We have wanted diversity, we have wanted equality in this country — in our institutions — for a very long time, and we have not managed to succeed in achieving it.”
Continuing, she argued that the lack of “accountability” was a reason they were unable to achieve their diversity goals, saying, “And one of the problems is that there was not sufficient structure and accountability around that goal.” She then claimed, “And so, without the structure and accountability that Jeannie and Amna and, I guess, Ilya as well are complaining about, we would have no ability to make meaningful progress.”
Another panelist argued that DEI initiatives often stop students from addressing important questions in the classroom or taking controversial stances, even if only in theoretical arguments. She went on to say that students have to be taught that taking those stances is not in violation of school policy, saying, “What they’re doing with cases like that is dismissing them off the bat because of academic freedom, and saying this does not actually violate the rules of our school, it does not violate anti-discrimination policies, it does not violate any rules by which people are bound.”
The panel comes amidst a broad conservative effort to push back on DEI initiatives. Florida, for example, recently rooted DEI out of its public universities, with Governor DeSantis claiming that Florida is where DEI goes to die. Similarly, Elon Musk sparred with former CNN host Don Lemon in an interview, arguing that DEI poses a major threat to the medical profession.
Watch a clip from the interview between Musk and Lemon below:
Featured image credit: Rutgers Law
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