Monks, Elephants, and DEI

If you saw the video of George Floyd being murdered in May 2020, you will never forget it. The shock and revulsion from that event brought new urgency to the Black Lives Matter movement and launched worldwide protests.

One of the many results of his murder was a scramble across the corporate world to institute anti-bias training and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts.

Colleges and universities, especially in the United States, had some of the most aggressive DEI implementations, including making DEI part of an expansive number of jobs, requiring job applicants to state their commitment to anti-racism efforts, anti-bias training classes, bias response teams, and more.

The efforts are aimed at addressing the long-term effects of systematic biases against people of color and members of the LGBTQ community.

There is a growing backlash, which was predicted, against DEI efforts in general and at colleges and universities in particular.

There is fierce debate in academic circles if the values of diversity should trump the values of academic freedom. This debate came into sharp focus when an adjunct art professor was fired from the private, nonprofit Hamline University in Minnesota after the Fall 2022 semester for showing a picture of the Prophet Muhammad, and a student complained.

The college president said that sometimes academic freedom needs to take a back seat to student sensitivity. The college's position on that matter evolved during the controversy.

A study released Feb. 28, 2023, by an activist group says some faculty are now afraid to speak freely on campus due to possible backlash for an unpopular opinion, especially around DEI issues. Although, some question the report’s reliability. 

I’ll let others debate DEI, but it does highlight a critical question: what is the purpose of a college or university?

How we answer these questions as a society and on individual campuses will impact how we look at DEI issues and how we choose to move forward in higher education.

The Elephant in the Room

As an undergraduate, I learned an ancient Buddhist parable that I’ve adjusted for today’s sensitivities.

Five blindfolded people that have never heard of nor previously encountered an elephant are asked to describe an elephant to others.

Each person touches a part of the (very tame) elephant. One person has the tail, one a leg, another the trunk, the fourth a tusk, and the last person feels the body.

Not knowing there are other parts of the elephant, each claims they have an accurate description of the animal. In some versions of the story, people fight over the matter.

This is often how we look at higher education. While we know different parts of a college or university exist, we claim our understanding or point of view is the accurate understanding and the one that should be defended.  

A parent paying tuition, a student putting themselves through school, a graduate student, tenured professor, researcher, dean, business, lawmaker, a student services employee, and others have differing views about what a college or university should be, what it should do, and whom it should serve.

There are a lot of interest groups that a university, especially a public research university, needs to serve.

While not articulated as such, many of the debates about higher education are about insisting that their description of the elephant is the proper one.

I’ll discuss three of the many parts of this beast.

Secular Monastery

In 2000, my former philosophy professor Raphael Sassower wrote the book A Sanctuary of Their Own. In it, he argues that higher education institutions should be a place where students and faculty should be able to pursue a life of the mind outside of the demands of the world at large.

That the rewards for the life of the mind are not “tangible goods.”

A religious monastery is where individuals develop their spiritual selves; the secular monastery can provide personal development without the religious context. 

Music, philosophy, art, history, poetry, literature, anthropology, theology, religious studies, political science, and a host of other subjects—are things that make us human, understand our place in the world, and help us understand our shared human condition. The marketplace doesn’t know what to do with this as it is not monetizable. 

The question some would have, is this something that taxpayers should support? Of course, we should.

Like national and state parks, museums, and concert halls, we set aside things outside the interest of commerce because they have an intrinsic value. It is worth it because we have made a value judgment that it is so.

There is a pragmatic reason for this education as well. I’ve worked with people from Mexico, Argentina, China, England, Scotland, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Jordon, Iraq, France, Ukraine, Spain, Sweden, Germany, Poland, France, Brazil, Russia, Israel, and others.

It was liberal arts classes that helped me understand my colleagues, bond, and develop good working relationships. An accounting or coding class can’t help you with that.

The raging debates within and about higher education often overlook an important part of what colleges and universities can and should provide students—a deeper and broader perspective on life and people.

In our increasingly interconnected world, this is an absolutely critical role for higher education to play.

The life of the mind also includes space for pure research, where there is no expected tangible market benefit from the research project—knowledge for knowledge’s sake. A challenge with research, there are always more things to explore than money to support the exploration.

Credential Farms

Many people outside of higher education will flatly tell you that the reason for a college or university degree is to get a good job. Getting a degree is transactional.

Full stop.

If you pay that much in time and money, there has to be a payoff beyond having an appreciation for J.S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor or learning The Lessons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

This is especially true for first-generation students and working adults. It’s not that they don’t want personal development; it’s just that they have a more pragmatic approach to education. It is a means to an end; knowledge is not an end unto itself.

We also must be careful to recognize that people exposed to classes in a college or university can change their minds, regardless of their background. They may shift from something “pragmatic,” like engineering or business, to English.

While some think that is a waste, most English or other liberal arts majors do fine in employment opportunities and have great careers.  

State lawmakers and the business community are less concerned with how developed a person is. They want to know that a college or university produces enough workers educated in the right skills to help the economy thrive.

That being said, when I was a regent for the University of Colorado System, we invited leaders from businesses, nonprofits, and the government to share what they wanted from college graduates.

They told us they wanted employees that could think critically, write well, communicate effectively, work in teams, and problem-solve. Recent research supports what we heard.

While that may be true, employers often don’t practice what they tell researchers or regents. When push comes to shove, resume scanners and HR officers look for hard-skill credentials.  

Intellectual Arena

There is also the view that colleges and universities should be a gladiatorial arena of ideas. Let all ideas out, and only the best will survive. This means that throwing intellectual elbows is welcome and expected.

The thinking goes that in the friction of an intellectual brawl, new fires of knowledge and insight are born, the best ideas will rise, bad ideas will get crushed, and incorrect research will be proven wrong.  

That is why academic freedom becomes important. Professors should be allowed to pursue the “truth” as they see fit (with appropriate guardrails). What is hearsay today can be tomorrow’s truth.

Academic freedom has allowed colleges and universities to thrive and produce new technology, medical cures and procedures, and critical insights into the human condition that have benefited humanity. With academic freedom also comes faculty who are wrong, obnoxious, controversial, or offensive. That’s a small price to pay.

What are a few hurt feelings or bruised egos compared to the great benefits to society?  

This isn’t to say that being rude or disrespectful is okay—although contentious tenured faculty meetings seem to skip that rule—but the fear of offense shouldn’t stop academics from pursuing a line of inquiry or offering their insight on a sensitive subject.

It’s the Whole Pachyderm

Some see higher education’s role as the guardian of knowledge. Wikipedia is not terrible, but it’s not where we want doctors to learn medicine or scholars to gain insight into China’s Zhou Dynasty (1050-256 BCE). We all need something with a lot more rigor and peer review; thank you very much.

Other frameworks include being a place to create knowledge, a research factory, a town square, etc. I have no idea where to put college sports.

Colleges and universities are usually combinations of some or all of these. The larger the school, the greater the complexity, the more needs it tries to meet.

These frameworks often have competing interests and don’t always play well together. If one point of view becomes too dominant, the fireworks start.

Based on your personal history and values, some of these frameworks will resonate more than others.

When we get into debates about what a college is supposed to do, to what end, and for whom, we are often arguing from our framework. And as I have discussed previously, this also impacts how we think about the social contract between higher education and the public.

So, next time people are screaming about something a college or university has done, take a minute to see if you can identify the different frameworks and assumptions. It might help us understand each other better.

Isn’t that one of the goals of DEI?