I believe in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI). I am not calling for its end, or making an argument against its relevance. I respect the field, I have friends who are EDI leaders, and I have dedicated my career to advancing these principles in the study of archives, theatre and performance, media and advertising. It’s because I do this work that I know critiques like this one are desperately needed.

Equity (EO) and Human Rights Offices (HRO), which have become commonplace in Canadian universities, need to do more than collect data, organize events and panels. It’s not to say that these actions are not important; but rather, there is much needed work that these offices could be doing to challenge the very governance of the university itself. To understand where I am coming from, let’s start with a brief history of the establishment of these offices, what they do, and why I believe an EO and HRO need to rethink their approach to EDI and their overall strategy for creating more EDI on our university campuses.

When did universities establish EOs and HROs?

In the 1990s, many schools established race relations and/or anti-racism initiatives that were largely in response to pervasive anti-Black racism on university campuses. By the early 2000s, higher education, along with federal, provincial and city-level governments, began to formalize these initiatives into offices rooted in an ethos that there are fundamental rights that need to be protected, preserved and promoted. Governments and educational institutions adopted a legal approach (following the establishment of Human Rights Bills throughout the 1940s-1970s) to combat discrimination and harassment, which meant hiring lawyers to work in newly established EOs, HROs and/or Anti-Racism taskforces.

The legalization of human rights became integrated into the language of EDI mandates, commitments, and mission statements. Meaning, EDI principles and policies were created which provided important language but the unanticipated impact of this legalization is that collaborative, community-based approaches to eradicating discrimination and harassment have been ignored. People cease to think of EDI as something that is open to debate but rather it has become something that is enforced. Any critiques are seen as threatening to the mission, not possibilities to keep reimagining a more equitable university.

As employment descriptions were updated to reflect the new language on EDI, universities began to create their own institutional commitments to EDI with specific focus on underrepresented or “equity-deserving” groups. Since the 2010s, EDI or EDID (the second “D” for Decolonization) or EDIA (“A” for Accessibility) has become standard language in official university strategic plans, policies, procedures, and value statements. Canada’s largest funding agency, Social Sciences Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), even gives instructions on how researchers can apply best practices in “EDI” in their work.

What does Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion stand for?

According to Canadian-universities.net, about 44% of post-secondary schools have an EO or HRO (combined or operating separately) as part of their administrative structure. The EO typically work most closely with the university’s executive branch (president, provost, vice-provost, and deans) to advance EDI initiatives as part of the institution’s strategic plan, or they organize events related to historically underrepresented or “equity-deserving” groups. The HRO provides what is often described as “confidential services,” wherein they aim to empower individuals during investigation processes involving an issue related to harassment and/or discrimination on the basis of race, citizenship, sex, gender identity, age, marital status, or disability. In these instances, the HRO also aims to facilitate or negotiate solutions.

Equity is best understood as a process of achieving justice by recognizing barriers that hinder individuals from accessing equal opportunities on campus (Clancy & Goastellec, 2007). It also involves broader efforts in teaching and student engagement to recognize and dismantle cultural, linguistic, and racial hierarchies (Brennan & Naidoo, 2008). Diversity is often celebrated in universities because it purports to encourage multiple perspectives (Turner, 2013). In practice, it is an institutional project that is often expressed numerically in terms of student, staff and faculty demographics (Ford & Patterson, 2019). Finally, inclusion has primarily been framed as institutional respect for, acknowledgement of, and support for students so that they do not experience marginalization through stigma, bias, discrimination or harassment (Morgado et al., 2016).

Despite their semantic differences, the term “EDI” groups these concepts together. While we can debate this grouping, as I recently did in a conversation on Linkedin related to “BIPOC” (Black Indigenous People of Colour), I understand its heuristic use – in top-level communication we often need to simplify concepts down to their commonalities with an understanding that an acronym reflects a shared desire for EDI. The acronym LGBTQIA2 (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (or sometimes questioning), intersexual, asexual and two-spirited) and its many variations reflects a similar desire.

With regard to the student body, it is important to note that international students are often not disaggregated in EDI data. As Buckner, Chan, Kim (2022) write in their article, “Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion on Canadian Universities: Where do international students fit in?”

Overlooking international students in EDI initiatives has important implications for students and institutions alike. The rise of anti-Asian sentiments in these cities during the pandemic illuminates that diversity is not always welcome (Guo & Guo, 2017; Scott et al., 2015). While we understand that the EDI framework is a work in progress, universities should have clearer direction of how EDI can address the multidimensional nature of the student body. Recoupling the rhetoric of EDI as a campus-wide commitment with international students’ reality could start with more conscious efforts to conceptualize international students within the umbrella of EDI, particularly in domains of recruitment and tuition. This will likely require the purposeful broadening of current definitions and conceptualizations of EDI (p. 52).

Why do EOs and HROs Need Rethinking?

There are three EDI areas for which I believe an EO and HRO needs rethinking, and the overall approach to fostering EDI reimagined.

1. Moving Beyond Demographic Metrics

Universities Canada’s 2022 survey on EDI focused on three metrics 1) structural changes, 2) policies and practices, and 3) campus culture. It outlined the role EDI plays in the strategic planning and long-term vision of universities, as evidenced by the fact that 89% of institutions have explicit reference to EDI in their strategic plans, up from 77% in 2019; 88% have a campus wide definition of EDI, up from 55% in 2019, and 83% of institutions have an EDI action plan in development or already implemented, up from 70% in 2019.

These facts and figures have little connection to the lived experiences of Black, Indigenous, LGBTQIA2, disabled faculty, students, and staff. It’s time to admit that the single-minded focus on EDI demographics as measured by an EO as the most significant metric to set goals and measure progress has failed to reflect the lived experiences of underrepresented groups.

2. Diversity, as defined, does not lead to better results

Universities Canada’s survey also noted that institutions require administrative structures and staffing to develop, implement and monitor EDI strategies and action plans, and it noted that 91% of universities surveyed have an EDI task force or are currently developing one, up from 78.5% in 2019.

Self-identification data from the survey shows “that university leadership is becoming more diverse,” as discussed in Part 2 of this Series on Education, the common argument in support of EDI claims that diversity in and of itself leads to superior results, such as making better decisions, avoiding group-think, or driving more innovation. However, if only one “equity-deserving” group is outperforming all others (White women), diversity has become marred by in-group bias around what/who actually counts as diversity.

3. An HO Investigation Often Lacks Procedural Fairness

Canadian-universities.net describes the HRO resolution process as involving three potential steps once a complaint is made:

Engagement with a complainant which involves them receiving clarification or coaching on how to proceed to resolve the matter themselves.
An informal resolution is brokered where the complainant does not proceed to an internal or external review. This option includes speaking informally with the person alleged to be responsible for the harassment or discrimination.
An internal or external investigation is conducted, and resolution is formed through any means that the EO, HRO, and/or Vice-Provost or Dean deems appropriate.

While each school is unique and the process might be slightly different, the general principles of an HRO investigation are deeply problematic.

By the time an HRO engages a Respondent — a timeline that can span from a few weeks to upwards of 8 months — the entire allegation is based on how a Complainant has described their experiences with discrimination and/or harassment. When a Respondent is served with the Notice of a Human Rights Claim, they are left to defend themselves. The entire process is adversarial toward Respondents, which creates a toxic environment. Why is the process designed to privilege the person who alleges discrimination and/or harassment?

Second, an HRO investigation process is so weighted towards the needs of a university administration (which have adopted bureaucratic, neoliberal approaches to conflict resolution) that the very underrepresented groups an HRO was created to protect can sometimes be the persons who are silenced and marginalized through these processes.

Human Rights Codes and HROs were important legislative/administrative branches when they were created. Because they are sometimes seen as “kumbaya offices” that are not academic or germane to the operations of higher education, today, few people pay attention to how an EO and/or HRO is managed. As most are headed by administrative leaders embedded within the university, questions must be asked: How can an EO and/or HRO ever function as unbiased, unmitigated, and equitable when they have a vested interest in the university’s overall governance? Did these offices ever have radical change as a stated goal, or has it been imposed onto them by activist-scholars? These are the kinds of questions an EO should encourage us to debate and discuss.

I’m sure we can all think of some examples where an EO or HRO is engaging in collaborative initiatives in aid of diverse university communities, not singularly administrators, but this critique is asking for a deeper level of analysis that goes beyond one or two examples to larger questions of who ensures fairness in an EO or HRO? Who reviews their practices and procedures? And, what role does the student/faculty community get to play in the creation and/or co-creation EDI on our campuses?

We Need a Campus Movement

Despite a decades-long commitment to EDI in my writing and research, a stellar record of teaching at the university-level (to diverse students), and the fact that I am a Black disabled woman from an immigrant family, I was still accused of harming a person. Given the climate on university campuses today, I accepted the situation.

What I will never accept is the power an EO and HRO has to ruin someone’s life. By not examining both sides of an issue upon intake — even before engaging an internal or external investigator — the entire process feels like an authoritative arm there to punish a Respondent, not an office there to determine facts based on evidence. The power these offices have to act like internal police makes anyone accused feel as if they are guilty of a crime. Even if an accused has been systematically harming another person, similar to our criminal and civil courts, they are still entitled to due process.

***

When I was 19 years old, I started my university career in the United States. Three years later, I transferred to the University of Windsor. The year was 1999. Folks found their “tribe” as we used to say, and for Black students, we had student associations that created community. They held meet ups, organized speaker events, and played a pivotal role in Windsor’s sports weekend (if you know, you know).

People (myself included) experienced discrimination and harassment in various forms and we turned to our student groups, trusted faculty, the community, and together we strategized ways to build solidarities on campus with others going through similar experiences. I felt empowered to speak up in class when someone was engaging in discriminatory behaviour because I had built community with others. They had my back, and I had theirs.

We didn’t have EDI. What we had was a politics of collective action and support. Today, we live in environment that is so dominated by a top-down approach to EDI that student associations often act as celebratory (rather than liberatory) units, and radical faculty are often censured, threatened, or pushed out of our institutions.

We need a campus-wide coalition that can bridge the gap between EDI and creating equitable and inclusive spaces where real change is seen and felt. An EO and HRO can be part of this shift, but until EDI becomes a political movement rather than strategic bullet points and demographic targets, these offices will increasing be the problem, not the change. It’s time they do more listening because the critiques are only growing louder.

Dr. Cheryl's Blog

Education Series Part 3 of 3: Equity and Human Rights Offices Need Rethinking