\n<\/p>\n
The journal Dear Higher Ed <\/em>aims to provide a space for discussions about DEI as some campuses disinvest.\u00a0<\/p>\n Photo illustration by Justin Morrison\/Inside Higher Ed | Liz Leyden and urfinguss\/iStock\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Campus DEI officers and researchers who study inequities in higher education say they\u2019re watching decades of their work disappear as colleges respond to federal and state bans on diversity, equity and inclusion policies and programs by scrubbing evidence of their programs, research and milestones from campus websites.<\/p>\n But two former diversity professionals and an anthropology professor have made it their mission to preserve what they can of their colleagues\u2019 efforts. The group founded a journal, called Dear Higher Ed: Letters from the Social Justice Mountain<\/em>, to collect insights, experiences, research and best practices from faculty and higher ed staff currently or formerly engaged in DEI work on their campuses.<\/p>\n The project started with two diversity professionals at Virginia Tech who wanted to document their coworkers\u2019 experiences as potential fodder for a book as state DEI bans proliferated. Menah Pratt and Michele Deramo, who worked in Virginia Tech\u2019s DEI office at the time, invited their colleagues to write letters to higher ed. But they quickly realized they wanted to include voices from other institutions as Pratt met coworkers invested in DEI nationally and internationally on a fellowship with the American Council on Education at the University of Minnesota.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat was the impetus for me is, when I came to Tech, I read 2,000 pages of reports,\u201d Pratt said. \u201cThere was a historical record of 20 years of work that had been happening at Virginia Tech around diversity,\u201d full of relevant data and best practices. \u201cAnd then I thought, \u2018Wow, these [reports] are gone from public view.\u2019 They\u2019re gone from so many institutions across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n Pratt wanted to \u201cstart capturing some of those voices, those experiences, the strategies, the perspectives\u201d that might otherwise be lost.<\/p>\n Plans for a book grew into a full-fledged journal, hosted by University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing and affiliated with a nonprofit called Scholarly Platforms for Advancing Research and Knowledge, or SPARK. Pratt and Deramo\u2014who shifted to other roles at Virginia Tech after its DEI office closed last year\u2014edited and released Dear Higher Ed<\/em>\u2019s first volume in 2024. They later brought on Rhode Island College anthropology professor M. Gabriela Torres, and the three of them put out two more issues last year and an open call for submissions for 2026. <\/p>\n The journal\u2019s articles range widely. Some are deeply personal narratives, others detail higher ed\u2019s historic inequities or highlight research and pedagogy tools. One piece, framed by an analysis of Beyonce lyrics, discusses the value of Black women\u2019s voices in the academy. A professor emeritus wrote about how he used his Sicilian family background to open up conversations about race and whiteness with students in his classroom. Others expressed pain at how higher ed had retreated from DEI work and their fears for the aftermath.<\/p>\n \u201cDear Higher Education, I revere you,” one author wrote, “but I am so mad at you.\u201d <\/p>\n The hope is to offer a place where higher ed staff and scholars who care about diversity work can share critiques of higher ed, vent their frustrations, pour over its fraught history and delve into where it needs to improve, Deramo said. But it\u2019s also about \u201cwhy transformation is possible.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted to get people to try to envision, \u2018What\u2019s an alternative? What can higher education be?\u2019\u201d Deramo said.<\/p>\n Torres hopes the journal reaches academics still interested in these areas of practice and research \u201cthat higher ed has divested from and want ideas as to how to continue the work.\u201d<\/p>\n She argued campuses have poured resources into DEI and, in doing so, \u201cimproved the lives of so many students.\u201d Those resources might have dried up, but the work can\u2019t be \u201cabandoned,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n She also wants to create a home for homeless research as federal agencies and campuses cut funds for projects related to gender and race. Torres researches sexual violence and said she\u2019s increasingly pursued partnerships in Europe and Canada to continue her work.<\/p>\n Scholars who study anything perceived as DEI-related now feel like \u201cI can\u2019t talk about my research, I can\u2019t talk about my values,\u201d she said. But Dear Higher Ed <\/em>is meant to be a \u201cspace of creativity\u201d and \u201cpossibility\u201d where they can freely share their thoughts and findings, and their expertise is prized. <\/p>\n The editors can personally relate. <\/p>\n \u201cI am someone whose position was dissolved,\u201d Deramo said. \u201cI was someone whose expertise, whose thought leadership, was set aside. But I\u2019m not going to set it aside.\u201d<\/p>\n The journal also includes some international voices, Pratt noted, because even if the U.S. has backed away from diversity research and practices, that work is continuing in other places, and scholars can learn from each other across borders.<\/p>\n The editors recognize that what they\u2019re asking authors to do\u2014write often deeply personal stories about a now lightning-rod issue on a public platform\u2014isn\u2019t easy. With rare exceptions, they prefer authors put their name on their work, if possible.<\/p>\n Writing for Dear Higher Ed <\/em>requires \u201ccourage\u201d because \u201cif everything is anonymous, then you don\u2019t have anything,\u201d Pratt said. \u201cAt some point, you just have to believe that your words out in the world, with your background and all your identities, are more important than the silence.\u201d<\/p>\n For Pratt, the journal has been \u201ca little ray of hope,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re just sitting here silently suffering,\u201d Pratt said. \u201cAnd I think to have a small little platform that says, \u2018this work is not going away,\u2019 or \u2018your work is still important,\u2019 or \u2018what you did was important,\u2019\u00a0\u2026 \u2018these values still matter\u2019\u201d offers \u201cthat little glimmer of hope.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The journal Dear Higher Ed aims to provide a space for discussions about DEI as some campuses disinvest.\u00a0 Photo illustration by Justin Morrison\/Inside Higher Ed | Liz Leyden and urfinguss\/iStock\/Getty Images Campus DEI officers and researchers who study inequities in higher education say they\u2019re watching decades of their work disappear as colleges respond to federal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42870,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[2274,456,9816,3141,10614],"class_list":{"0":"post-42869","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-dei","9":"tag-home","10":"tag-homeless","11":"tag-research","12":"tag-strategies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42869","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=42869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}A \u2018Little Ray of Hope\u2019<\/h2>\n