\n<\/p>\n
Paulette Granberry Russell is stepping down as president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education after a dramatic and unpredictable five years at the helm.<\/p>\n
She represented campus diversity professionals amid the national racial reckoning that accompanied the Black Lives Matter movement, and then through the dizzying years that followed as anti-DEI laws swept the country. She also spent 22 years as a diversity professional at Michigan State University. <\/p>\n
Granberry Russell told Inside Higher Ed <\/em>she never planned to stay at NADOHE longer than five years, so she\u2019s ready to move on and facilitate a \u201csmooth transition and handoff.\u201d <\/p>\n But what a tenure it\u2019s been. <\/p>\n She spoke with Inside Higher Ed <\/em>about how she navigated the headwinds facing diversity professionals and the future of diversity, equity and inclusion work on campuses. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n Q: Over the course of your term, from 2020 to 2025, the landscape for diversity professionals in higher education radically shifted. What has it been like for you to represent DEI professionals then and now?<\/strong><\/p>\n A: <\/strong>When I came into the role, my goals were to do a few things, which, not only were intended to build on our past successes, but also [to] develop new initiatives that would enhance a few areas, [including] increasing our membership but also providing our support for them. It included, for example, enhancing our industry influence but also sustainability of the organization.<\/p>\n I came into the role in March of 2020, and what happened in March of 2020? The pandemic, which altered much of what was going on in higher education and how we were doing our work, whether that was remotely, but also with threats in terms of both student experiences but also student support. And then in May of 2020, the murder of George Floyd, and all of the ways in which our institutions were reacting and responding and certain commitments were made to enhance antiracism efforts on our campuses.<\/p>\n When I think about my first few months, it was something very different than what I anticipated. And I\u2019m certain that\u2019s true for higher education as well. I lived in this state of shifting priorities, having to think about ways to best support members who were having to adjust to significant shifts on their campuses. We were also dealing with significant challenges around freedom of speech and disruption on our campuses prior to these more recent experiences.<\/p>\n And the politics are very different. When you shift from an environment of enhanced commitment built on an understanding that our campuses had to deal with issues around race and expanding opportunities more broadly across identity to now pushback\u2014it was causing quite a shift in equilibrium. And that\u2019s true for our members as well as the organization. And because of the evolution of diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education historically, as painful as a lot of this was, I believe we were better prepared than we understood ourselves to be.<\/p>\n Q: You touched on how you started at NADOHE in this moment in 2020, when campuses made commitments and investments in thinking about race and racial inequities, and now campuses are rolling back so much of those efforts in response to anti-DEI legislation. How did these policy shifts change NADOHE\u2019s work and change your work as its leader? How did you have to pivot?<\/strong><\/p>\n A: <\/strong>Our successes, I think, resulted in some of the pushback. The pushback was evolving. Expanding on opportunities [created by diversity initiatives] beyond race, so that people understood that diversity was more inclusive than they initially understood it to be\u2014we did not do as good a job as we could have and should have.<\/p>\n But [we] are beginning to do [it] now, in broadening people\u2019s understanding that diversity is and should be interpreted very broadly. I think that the narrative was hijacked, meaning it was easy to unfortunately define diversity narrowly on the basis of race, gender and sexuality. And others used that narrative to create fear and apprehension that somehow others were being advantaged, versus understanding that we all have benefited from the ways in which we were adjusting our efforts on campus to broaden access, to broaden opportunities, to increase equitable outcomes, understanding that [it\u2019s] not one-size-fits-all, and we had to tailor and adjust our efforts to accommodate the broad range of interests and identities that presented on our campuses and have always presented on our campuses. What we failed to do well was messaging both the communities impacted by our work and the work that was being done to expand opportunities as well.<\/p>\n Q: How did the backlash shift your priorities, if at all?<\/strong><\/p>\n A:<\/strong> When we think about the early challenges, some [opponents] would point to critical race theory. I don\u2019t know that they necessarily understood it very well, and [they] were having a difficult time messaging it. But it was easier to talk about diversity, because for many people, that conjures up issues around race, it harkens back to earlier views of affirmative action and I think it became an easier message to divide higher ed both internally as well as externally.<\/p>\n It was important for NADOHE to emphasize\u2014whether it was around academic freedom, First Amendment rights and freedom of speech and freedom of expression\u2014that diversity, equity and inclusion are embedded in those. Freedom of expression cannot be sanitized. Our research, for example, or our curriculum is going to touch on issues that may impact communities broadly\u2014and diverse, marginalized, underserved communities. And the work that we do in higher education as diversity leaders requires evidence-based research that informs our work. In the absence of that, you\u2019re guessing at strategies and interventions that will support all students.<\/p>\n This work is not going to go away. We\u2019re not going to go back to a time when opportunities were constrained, when fairness did not extend to certain communities. That\u2019s unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014Paulette Granberry Russell<\/p>\n And so, I don\u2019t know that it was as much a shift in our priorities as much as it was helping higher ed internally, as well as audiences outside of higher ed, to understand that access and opportunity are not limited to any one demographic or a few demographics. If there was a shift in priorities, it was hopefully helping broader audiences understand that there\u2019s nothing to fear, especially in the ways that diversity, equity, inclusion was being demonized. This work is not intended to grant preferential treatment to some and deny others opportunities.<\/p>\n Q: So, you found yourself having to do a lot of explaining about what\u2019s actually meant when people say \u201cDEI\u201d in a higher ed context.<\/strong><\/p>\n A: <\/strong>That\u2019s right. And it\u2019s also saying to folks, don\u2019t use the acronym. Because the acronym, unfortunately, supported a very narrow way of defining efforts.<\/p>\n Diversity is not defined narrowly. Equity is intended to reduce barriers that may result in differential impact, and those differential impacts are not limited to any one category. Inclusion doesn\u2019t happen just naturally. We know individuals feeling included allows them to be themselves but also allows them to be more successful. If I don\u2019t feel like I belong, what do I do? I tend to retreat, or I don\u2019t access the resources that are there, resources that may benefit me, resources that are accessible to all, with an understanding that, again, we\u2019re not monolithic. It is helping people differently understand, and hopefully better understand, that there are no threats here. Diversity on our campuses is a reality, period. And it\u2019s not going to change, certainly not as long as organizations like NADOHE are here to defend access and opportunities.<\/p>\n Changes in nomenclature happen. How we define our work, how we label our work, how we tag our work has always changed. If we think historically, going back 20, 30 years, we talked about affirmative action. We talked about multiculturalism. We talked about diversity. We talked about equal opportunity. We talk about fairness. We talk about equity. We talk about belonging. We talk about inclusion. Terminology evolves over time, given how the work itself evolves.<\/p>\n Q: As campuses close centers associated with DEI and get rid of diversity roles, what do you see as the next phase of the work? How do campus diversity professionals move forward from here? And what does the DEI movement look like now and into the future?<\/strong><\/p>\n A: <\/strong>At least for this moment in time, we need to more closely scrutinize the systems that have been designed that have resulted in barriers to success. And how do we redesign, or how do we begin to design systems that differently support our campuses?<\/p>\n There\u2019s no single office or individual that can do this work alone. Certainly, in my own career at an institution that was a large public land-grant with over 40,000 students at that time and 14,000 faculty and staff, there was no way that a person with two staff was going to be able to dramatically impact change. [Change comes from] working with others and understanding that it\u2019s going to take what I would call a whole institution approach, which means that our leadership, our policies, budget, people, culture have to be aligned. That also means that we have to take a look at the policies, practices, procedures that we have in place that may be having differential impacts, and how do we make adjustments in those? Not to grant preferential treatment, not to discriminate, but to say, can we design systems that work better?<\/p>\n We\u2019re talking about a systems approach for structural change. When I say a systems approach, this is going to be far more extensive than I think many of us are prepared to do, but I think that it\u2019s the future. [In the past], unfortunately, we didn\u2019t [always] look at connections between the needs of our students, the capacity of faculty to meet those needs, the capacity of staff to meet those needs and connecting our students to potential employers. Things were very siloed. Things are still very siloed. We have to think about the life cycle of a student. And we do that, but it\u2019s not that we are always very deliberate in how we do it.<\/p>\n When I grew up as a child, the expectation was that I would go to college, but my family by all definitions was very low income. [When] I got to my undergraduate experience, there were no tools in the way that there are now. There were no interventions. There were no programs that I could access that connected me to all of the resources that would allow me to be successful. I was a low-income Black female who arrived on a campus with no prior experience, not knowing how to navigate the space, not knowing where the resources were, not knowing how to fund my education. I was a person with a dream and a family that really wanted me to be successful, but they didn\u2019t have the tools to provide that. It\u2019s a very different world we live in today.<\/p>\n [The goal is] helping that student understand where the resources are, and then helping faculty understand the differences of those students that come into your classroom, ways that you as faculty can support them, connecting those faculty with the advisory services that those students might need. We have to design [systems] in ways that reduce barriers, that acknowledge the differences that exist and with the goal of those individuals being successful [and] reducing the barriers for faculty to be successful.<\/p>\n Q: After leaving NADOHE, what\u2019s next for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n A: <\/strong>My entire trajectory, my entire life, I have always been this person who believed in fairness. I always believed in opportunities. I\u2019m always that person who fought for not only myself, but for others to be treated fairly, because I grew up in a family where my history included ancestors who were formerly enslaved.<\/p>\n At 16 years old, I decided I wanted to increase participation in voting. In 12th grade, I remember I had a speech class, and I was that person giving speeches on the slaughtering of baby seals. I was the person who was giving speeches on sexuality and treating people differently based on how they identified. I was that person who gave speeches on the Black Power movement, civil rights, Martin Luther King. And as I reflect now, as I\u00a0transition, I\u2019m not going to be any different than what I have always been. I\u00a0will find new ways to [apply] my experiences and my advocacy. Because I\u00a0have no choice. I realized that about myself.<\/p>\n My time with NADOHE has been to build on the successes of my predecessors. I believe that I have done that. I achieved the goals that I set out to achieve, both for myself and for the organization, whether that is increasing our membership, our influence within higher ed [and] beyond higher ed. We\u2019ve done that.<\/p>\n This work is not going to go away. We\u2019re not going to go back to a time when opportunities were constrained, when fairness did not extend to certain communities. We\u2019re not going back to a time when discrimination on the basis of identity was lawful, certainly in the context of race, gender, sexuality, sexual orientation. That\u2019s unacceptable. We\u2019re not going back.<\/p>\n My next move is, I\u2019m going to breathe. I\u2019m going to take a little bit of time for myself. But I know I will always find my way back to what I have always been committed to, that I want people to be treated fairly. I want people to have opportunities.<\/p>\n Q: Whoever takes over your position is going to face significant headwinds. What would be your advice to them?<\/strong><\/p>\n A: <\/strong>Bring your passion. Bring your commitment. Coming into this role, it\u2019s going to be exhausting, but you have to decide that there\u2019s no other way forward. Too many lives depend on it. This country, our democracy, depends on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Paulette Granberry Russell is stepping down as president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education after a dramatic and unpredictable five years at the helm. She represented campus diversity professionals amid the national racial reckoning that accompanied the Black Lives Matter movement, and then through the dizzying years that followed as anti-DEI<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32083,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[3772,4712,500,4490,10914,11364],"class_list":{"0":"post-32082","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-diversity","9":"tag-leading","10":"tag-nations","11":"tag-officers","12":"tag-tenure","13":"tag-tumultuous"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}