I have a friend who worked for four or five years as a Title IX diversity officer at a large state school. She started the job with a lot of fire in her belly for the righteousness of the cause, but she ended up resigning in a state of total disillusionment. Not because she no longer believed in the principles behind Title IX - she belie…
I have a friend who worked for four or five years as a Title IX diversity officer at a large state school. She started the job with a lot of fire in her belly for the righteousness of the cause, but she ended up resigning in a state of total disillusionment. Not because she no longer believed in the principles behind Title IX - she believed in them even more deeply - but because she realized that her job in that capacity would always, always be fundamentally about protecting the interests of the university rather than about living up to those ideals. So it wasn't that sexually aggressive students got away with it when they shouldn't, or that innocent students got railroaded on phony accusations when they shouldn't have been, in general. It was that whatever the outcome of a given investigation was, it was always the outcome that best helped the school from the standpoint of optics and politics and marketing. Her department didn't have a bias for or against finding students accused of sexual misconduct guilty. It just had a bias in favor of the institution.
The thing is, that's not a reflection of that university or universities writ large. It's a reflection of the nature of institutions. Anyone hired by an institution to promote diversity will inevitably find themselves in a marketing position, no matter how zealous they are. And the problem with so much of the diversity efforts at colleges or corporations or nonprofits is that they're trying to institutionalize processes and ideals that could, if performed appropriately, cut against the institutions that write the paychecks. At scale, and over a long enough timeframe, that becomes impossible. It's a fundamental and intrinsic problem with the institutional approach to "diversity."
Yuuuuuup. I can identify with your friend's experience 100%. I worked in the realm of DEI for the corporate publishing arm of an Ivy League university that churns out (among other topics) DEI articles and training content for global Fortune 2000 business leaders. I have a nearly ready-to-go draft to publish here that details how my calling out their hypocrisy and challenging their imperialist goals is probably why they suddenly cut my new contract short less than 2 months into it. I also wrote about the ways the ideals of DEI initiatives are incompatible with capitalism and the corporations know it, so the goals of DEI programs will never actually be achieved without breaking free from the capitalist system itself. Corporate DEI programs are lipstick on a pig.
I have a friend who worked for four or five years as a Title IX diversity officer at a large state school. She started the job with a lot of fire in her belly for the righteousness of the cause, but she ended up resigning in a state of total disillusionment. Not because she no longer believed in the principles behind Title IX - she believed in them even more deeply - but because she realized that her job in that capacity would always, always be fundamentally about protecting the interests of the university rather than about living up to those ideals. So it wasn't that sexually aggressive students got away with it when they shouldn't, or that innocent students got railroaded on phony accusations when they shouldn't have been, in general. It was that whatever the outcome of a given investigation was, it was always the outcome that best helped the school from the standpoint of optics and politics and marketing. Her department didn't have a bias for or against finding students accused of sexual misconduct guilty. It just had a bias in favor of the institution.
The thing is, that's not a reflection of that university or universities writ large. It's a reflection of the nature of institutions. Anyone hired by an institution to promote diversity will inevitably find themselves in a marketing position, no matter how zealous they are. And the problem with so much of the diversity efforts at colleges or corporations or nonprofits is that they're trying to institutionalize processes and ideals that could, if performed appropriately, cut against the institutions that write the paychecks. At scale, and over a long enough timeframe, that becomes impossible. It's a fundamental and intrinsic problem with the institutional approach to "diversity."
Yuuuuuup. I can identify with your friend's experience 100%. I worked in the realm of DEI for the corporate publishing arm of an Ivy League university that churns out (among other topics) DEI articles and training content for global Fortune 2000 business leaders. I have a nearly ready-to-go draft to publish here that details how my calling out their hypocrisy and challenging their imperialist goals is probably why they suddenly cut my new contract short less than 2 months into it. I also wrote about the ways the ideals of DEI initiatives are incompatible with capitalism and the corporations know it, so the goals of DEI programs will never actually be achieved without breaking free from the capitalist system itself. Corporate DEI programs are lipstick on a pig.
https://open.substack.com/pub/jdgoulet/p/dei-is-capitalisms-achilles-heel?r=10bxpq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web