The Failures of DEI
By: Jennifer Rittner
Tags: Education Reform, Educational Equity, Diversity And Inclusion, Design Education, Art Education

The Failures of DEI

Photo by Stephen Harlan on Unsplash

In the Fall of 2020, the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York hired a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Director, the first of its kind at the school, hired at a time when Black racial politics were top of mind for the institution. Among the most pressing concerns the new administrator was hired to address on his arrival was a powerful student protest amplified on social media over the summer of that year, which named some of the abuses Black and PoC students had experienced at the hands of faculty and department chairs, and their general concern over the school’s lack of urgency in addressing historical racial inequity.

The student protest, being public and perhaps therefore most embarrassing for the school, rightfully took precedence over other concerns. As the most vulnerable population at SVA, student concerns should absolutely have been prioritized and handled with the utmost care.

That said, a small number of faculty — all of us adjuncts who lack institutional protections and so speak up at our own risk — have also been engaged in the fight for equity on the inside. For many of us, that work is principally pedagogical, which is to say that calls for equity are built into our teaching. Courses taught by Black, PoC, and disabled faculty have been designed to bring new conversations, approaches, techniques, resources, and practices into the curriculum and, by extension, the professional practices of art and design. For many of us, the pedagogy contains the core of systemic change and sows the seeds for the larger liberatory work. Pedagogy (how we teach) and curriculum (what we teach) represent the injection sites where equity might enter the bloodstream of SVA, perhaps even alter the DNA of the institution itself as we model those hard conversations and create equitable spaces for student and faculty colleagues to carry out into the world with them, along with the technical, aesthetic, and philosophical principles they are taught.

That said, my understanding of DEI work at a school like SVA is that it is not principally concerned with pedagogy but with administration — how the institution behaves as a result of its policies and administrative practices. DEI therefore speaks both to and for the School, advocating for change at an administrative level, while also — presumably — responding to the concerns and complaints of faculty, staff, and students.

Equity Requires Distance From Leadership

In some ways, that role is in itself problematic in that it is so often situated within the context of power, often answering to leadership rather than as an independent force with the power to demand change.

I’m going to belabor this point because I actually think it’s the most critical failure of DEI at SVA.

At SVA, the DEI office allies itself with and answers to the Provost’s office and the DEI committee, a small, exclusive, and inequitable body consisting of department chairs and administrative directors.

This situatedness within the leadership renders the office beholden to the most powerful voices at the institution. At worst, the Director expresses its fealty to leadership, taking the Provost’s lead in determining how to prioritize and execute the work of equity and inclusion; made to respectfully request, rather than demand, the radical dismantling of inequity. At best, he’s a neutral and neutralizing figure that follows a set of prescriptive, performative acts — statements of solidarity, anti-racist “training,” PoC town halls — that do nothing to actually dismantle the inequitable power structure and dynamics of the institution. In fact, this proximity to power can be used to rationalize inaction, as this person serves as a clearinghouse for complaints, but must actually seek confirmation from leadership as to whether faculty, student, and/or staff demands are convenient or possible.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

A DEI administrator situated closely to the leadership would need to be particularly strong-willed and fearless in their willingness to challenge and critique their peers.

Let me offer a concrete example of how this plays out.

Case Example: The SVA “anti-racist” book club

In the wave of anti-racist sentiment that took hold of our institutions in the Spring of 2020, the School of Visual Arts initiated an “anti-racist” book club (quotes are intentional). The purpose seemed to be to provide white faculty with a platform for discussing Black critical thought with, perhaps, the goal of improving some of the more problematic dynamics between them (the white faculty) and Black and PoC students. Despite SVA having a number of Black and Black PoC faculty (a small number, admittedly) and several Black alumni who might have been invited to participate in such an initiative, the school selected a non-Black PoC woman, Cathy Rosamond, to serve as the organizer and moderator of the group. As far as my colleagues and I can tell, Rosamond did not reach out to Black or Black PoC faculty to discuss the initiative, the book selection, or our experiences as Black or Black PoC faculty at SVA.

Photo by Fa Barboza on Unsplash

When the book club first launched, a small number of faculty (Black and otherwise) asked if I planned to attend. I believe I responded at the time that I didn’t think the book club was intended for me. However, one of my Black colleagues did attend, and reported to me that they were the only Black faculty in attendance, that the space did not feel safe, and that the discussion was not well moderated. These facts are important, as the purpose of anti-racism work is to build equity for the historically marginalized, not provide those who have power with the means to gain more power through acts of performative representation. If the one Black soul in the space feels unsafe, then the work is doing harm that needs to be addressed.

With a new book club meeting being promoted by the Provost’s office, I felt that it was important to speak up about these concerns; so on May 7, 2021, I sent the following correspondence to Rosamond and the DEI Director for their consideration:

“Hi Cathy,

It was nice to see you in the DEI meeting last week.

I noticed that you’re holding another book club meeting soon, and you’ve chosen James Baldwin again. It seems noteworthy that you’ve chosen mostly Black authors for the readings, with the exception of the D’Angelo book on White Fragility. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with my colleague REDACTED (at REDACTED University), who runs the REDACTED book club (she’s an absolutely brilliant facilitator). It’s been important that she, as a Black woman, is leading those conversations around books by Black authors, and that whenever she has the opportunity, she invites guests who represent the identities of authors who identify as non-Black PoC. From an equity standpoint, it means that representative voices are deeply acknowledged in those conversations.

As a Biracial Black woman, I’ve been in conversation with the very few other Black faculty at SVA who have also expressed some discomfort with the choices of reading and the lack of a Black co-facilitator. I wanted to just make you aware that although I’m sure you’re doing some genuine good with these sessions, there’s also some perceived harm to those of us who identify as Black and/or Black Biracial.

As we’re now opening up the spaces through the DEI work to have these conversations, I thought it was important to share this feedback with you. My colleague who actually called this to my attention suggested that perhaps you could choose books that represent your particular cultural identity, and then if you are reading books by Black authors, you invite a Black colleague to co-facilitate with you. I think that sounds reasonable and hope you agree.

I’ve cc’d Jarvis here as I think this fits squarely in the DEI arena.

Warm regards,

Jennifer”

(Redactions are to protect my colleague at another university.)

As I do not have Rosamond’s permission to quote her response, I will do my best to honestly paraphrase it here. In 3 sentences, she:

Thanked me for my feedback and suggestions; Told me that I should have attended the book club before offering any suggestions; and Told me that if another colleague had a suggestion about the book club, they should contact her directly.

The DEI Director did not respond to either of these messages. However, I did reply to Rosamond as I felt that her response was glib and unhelpful. As a member of the SVA DEI Committee, she had, in my view, a responsibility to respond to the content of my concern. My response:

“Cathy,

I’m very glad to hear that the recent book club was successful.

However, I want to just be clear that what you wrote here didn’t address my concerns. I think it’s important that, from an intentional DEI perspective, we can have these uncomfortable conversations with one another so that we can grow as an institution.

Jarvis was very kind to share with me a resource on racial gaslighting that I think would be helpful for you to see in light of your response. Perhaps he’s already shared that video with you. What you just said is that you don’t consider my concern valid, that I should have attended something I already articulated to was a cause of racial harm, and then did not offer any specific information or details to allay my concerns.

What I am asking you for is the consideration to discuss how important it is to be clear about our very specific racial representations in order to achieve equity and inclusion at SVA. My question to you was about your choices of Black authors and the lack of a Black co-facilitator in those discussions. Very specifically, I have chosen NOT to attend the book club meetings because I did not feel included and was very concerned about being in a room with all or mostly white faculty members reading Black authors and/or about Blackness facilitated by a non-Black faculty member.

And as my colleague spoke with me in confidence, it was their decision to have that conversation with me rather than to speak with you, as they did not feel that they could trust you to hear them.

Again, my friend and colleague REDACTED has been leading the REDACTED book clubs and one of the most noteworthy facets of that experience is how intentional she is in talking about her positionality. The label “PoC” is often a very lazy way to lump us all together, but our experiences are NOT the same. In my group of Black design educators (there are about a dozen of us who communicate regularly from around the country) most are African American, some are African in the U.S., some are West Indian in the U.S., some are West Indian-American, one is Brazilian-American (that’s me), and two are Biracial (myself and another colleague). We are very clear about those identities when we discuss issues of Blackness because our very specific positionality matters, deeply. In my case, for example, I have a white father and a white husband, so I have proximities to whiteness that are unusual (and even a bit suspect) within my social group. People need to be able to decide how or whether they can trust me based on how they feel about that proximity to whiteness. That said, I’ve seen some faculty at SVA use their Black partners and spouses as “proof” of something about their proximities to Blackness, which I think is based on some deeply flawed and racist thinking that often comes across as, “my Black friend” rationalization.

Again, I know that these are difficult conversations and that I am critiquing a project you have worked hard on. I appreciate your hard work, but I also need you to know that I am among a small number of your colleagues — your PoC, Black and/or Black Biracial colleagues — who see this as problematic and would like your consideration in making it more equitable and inclusive.

Jennifer”

White Ownership of Black Stories OR Why FUBU Actually Matters

It is noteworthy neither Rosamond (a DEI committee member) nor the DEI Director responded to my concerns. Here’s why I believe this conversation matters both as a matter of administration and pedagogy.

A) Administratively, it is the responsibility of DEI officials (including ad hoc committee members) to acknowledge the concerns of historically-marginalized community members on campus.

B) Pedagogically, the book club risks becoming a permissive framework for white faculty to superficially claim expertise over matters of racial understanding simply by virtue of having casually discussed a few books on Blackness.

This is not speculative. Over the past two years, a number of prominent white design educators have developed initiatives that purport to “de-center whiteness.” One was a resource that boasted of its complete exclusion of Black voices in its creation by white faculty about Black, PoC, and indigenous design history. After a public outcry, one of the project leads reached out to at least one Black design educator by way of correcting their failure. But notably, the work had gone on in the intentional absence of Black, PoC, and indigenous colleagues without anyone in that group of white colleagues recognizing the fundamental inequity of their approach.

nyc artist de la vega

More recently, a publication by a prominent white design educator and curator invited a one-each of representation at the 11th hour to add an “essay” to a book she initially authored from an entirely white point of view about equity and inclusion.

The problem with these initiatives is that they rob PoC educators of agency and professional growth. They perpetuate imperialist forms of cultural dominance that claim that the historically dominant group simply knows better about our lives, concerns, and needs than we do. Or they presume that they can articulate them more universally than we can. By using the existing power they hold to teach, publish, and promote their purported expertise on our lives, white educators are not upholding values of equity, they are shoring up their relevance and power. A book club by a non-Black Department Chair for white faculty about Black experiences further supports the idea that white and non-Black people in power can and should speak for us. It is giving permission to white faculty to use the words and work of Black authors, artists, and designers in their classroom rather than hiring Black and Black PoC faculty to do that work. A Black faculty or alumnus leading the discussions would at least bring more honesty to the proceedings, and, frankly, more much-needed discomfort.

I was hoping for increased equity, inclusion, and transparency in the process itself, which is what I had hoped to share with Rosamond and the DEI Director. My proposal to them was going to be that they open up the book club to a new moderator each month, and that faculty, alumni, and yes, even students be invited to share a reading that represents an issue or identity that they would like to bring to the table. That these moderators be given the tools to grow their own professional practices through the act of moderating these readings. And perhaps that a virtual space be created where those who are not able to participate (for whatever reason) can still share ideas, questions, and responses to the proceedings asynchronously. What a different experience it might be to create an initiative with greater transparency and inclusion, not one led by someone at the institution who already holds power and has not taken the initiative to share her platform with other PoC in our space.

There is a final coda to this story and it’s an unhappy one. I escalated the matter to the Provost’s office and so I share here the core of my argument:

“One of the most fundamental principles of all solidarity and liberation work is Nothing About us Without Us. It is a rallying cry for disability advocates, but in this current wave of #BLM, it’s also very deeply embedded in all of the work being done to secure equity for Black and BIPoC people in all of the spaces that have marginalized us . . .If we are going to be ignored and treated as pariahs when we speak up on behalf of our own equitable representation, then the DEI work is adding insult to existing injury. . .”

Almost immediately, PoC ally Emily Ross, the Associate Provost, responded and acknowledged the need for change. She requested that the DEI Director meet with me to discuss what change might look like. In other words, DEI waited until and took its cues from the Provost’s office in order to act.

I’m deeply sorry to say that instead of diving right into the heart of the issue — the means and methods of evolving the book club — the DEI Director spent his time berating me about the nature (read: tone) of my emails and reprimanding me for not taking the matter up with him first, and him only, before reaching out to Rosamond directly.

I immediately left the call and tendered my resignation from SVA.

It seems unconscionable to me that the DEI Director would see it as his responsibility to reprimand a PoC colleague who has called for equity and inclusion at our institution because he disapproved of the mode and tone of my communication — a bluntly-written email. He is, in essence, assuming the role of gatekeeper who demands that his colleagues have their communications approved and mediated through the DEI office, an act of rank paternalism that is anathema to equity and inclusion.

There’s a separate conversation that arises from this conversation with the DEI Directory, which is his argument that communications like the one I initiated should not happen via email. This is now a pattern I’ve seen playing out by those in leadership, in which they weaponize arguments against using email for hard communications in favor of phone and video calls, and then lean into reprimands about the modes of communications instead of dealing with the content of the concern. My emerging analysis is that they know that most of us are less combative face-to-face, and so believe that they can either quell dissent or be more persuasive in their chosen modality. For those of us who need time to gather our thoughts — and therefore choose to write — those face-to-face encounters hold as at a disadvantage. It has been my observation that male colleagues use this tactic in a gendered way because they have been successful in getting women to back down or soften their complaints via live conversation.

Can DEI Do Better?

With that in mind, I’d like to share some thoughts on what I think it means to do better. Because the truth is, we need to do better and we need our institutions to commit to radical change so that faculty, students, and staff of color can do the work we’re here to do and stop burning out while our white and white-adjacent colleagues thrive.

Photo by Scott Rodgerson on Unsplash

Do Better #1: Prohibit Gatekeeping

We should all be encouraged to speak directly to power as honestly and as often as the need for it arises.

At SVA, the Department Chairs are treated as a protected, elite class, perhaps because they hold those positions in perpetuity — the ultimate inequity — and are treated as “icons” rather than administrators. Equity demands that Department Chairs be treated as equals whose roles are as temporary stewards of the departments they lead, with the mandate to consistently and intentionally nurture new leaders who might rise to the task of stewardship, and requesting (frankly, demanding) constructive criticism in order that all may thrive in the spaces we share together.

Gatekeeping — saying that the rest of us should only speak and be heard under specific conditions and only through chosen mediators — adds new layers of inequity and tells us that we are not peers, that we are all subordinate, that we must perform respect where it has not been earned, that leaders may use the power and privilege of their positions as shields against critique.

No one in a leadership position at SVA is more special, more elite, more worthy than anyone else — not the faculty, the students, the staff, no one. None is more deserving of respect than anyone else at this school.

DEI fails when it reinforces a culture that says that some are more deserving and that its office must serve as mediator between parties that can and must speak for themselves. Instead of a gatekeeper who sits in the Provost’s domain issuing orders from on high, the school would benefit from a DEI ally who listens, affirms, and addresses the content of critique regardless of the tone or mode of its communication; and affirms each individual’s right to speak as an equal.

Do Better #2: Activate Ethics over Rhetoric

On several occasions, I’ve heard those in leadership at SVA claim that they are creating “safe spaces” or “brave spaces” for discussion and dissent. That is rhetorical dishonesty. A safe space is not assigned by leaders, it is formed and stewarded by peers who earn each other’s trust. If we — even myself in my classroom — claim that a space is safe, then we need to be clear about how we are facilitating that safety and the degree to which we are willing to sublimate our own needs or goals to the group.

Martin van Buuren

This is a matter of ethics in addition to equity. False claims of safety are psychologically and professionally harmful. They undermine the safety and security of our students and peers, leaving them exposed to their own traumas and potentially to the disapproval and retaliation of their peers and/or those in leadership. We have an ethical responsibility to ensure that our claims of safety actually protect our peers everywhere in the institution.

As a single example, the DEI Director held a forum for “BIPoC faculty and staff” to share our experiences at SVA. The first 15 minutes of the meeting were taken up by the DEI Director speaking at us, and informing us that he had produced a community agreement — a set of rules designed to define what safety would look like for us.

To begin, community agreements must be prepared by the community, not the facilitator. In fact, the importance of community agreements is not to have a set of rules to follow, but to bring people into conversation with one another about what it means to facilitate that space together. The exercise itself builds trust and generates conversation. The facilitator may, perhaps, initiate or prompt the group at the starting point, but the process itself is what matters. A more ethical process allocates ample time and more intimate space for participants to engage in the kind of trust-building and community-bonding activities that community agreements are designed to catalyze.

So while the DEI Director’s rhetoric affirmed the need for a safe space, he denied us an equitable role in manifesting it with care and intention. This is a failure of DEI facilitation. It utilizes the term “safe space” rhetorically rather than ethically, valuing product over process.

We need DEI administrators to understand the purposes and processes of equity, not just the projected outcomes that short-circuit the ethical frameworks on which they are built.

Do Better #3: Honestly Acknowledge Power

DEI fails when it does not learn about existing power dynamics in order to better understand how it plays itself out against the most vulnerable.

At SVA, expressions of power are not only situated in race. From the faculty perspective, they are deeply manifested in the power differential between the few who hold full-time positions and the majority of faculty who teach on contract, and at the discretion of the Chairs.

As an example of DEI demonstrating ignorance to unequal power dynamics, during the same “BIPOC faculty and staff” forum hosted by the DEI Director in April 2021, it was apparent to many of us that participants represented several different tiers of power-holding at SVA. Directors, Department Chairs, Faculty, Admin, and Support staff all operate at different and unequal levels of power at the school.

The suggestion that we might see each other as unalloyed peers simply by virtue of a presumed racial solidarity misunderstands the privileges of professional position. In my observation, PoC Chairs do not serve as unconditional allies or advocates for PoC students or faculty; and are much more viscerally aligned with their non-PoC peers in leadership or industry.

Beyond the PoC community, the issue of faculty serving at the discretion of Chairs is a profound inequity at SVA. Among my peers, there are several long-time faculty members whose work is essential to the departments they teach in. As contract workers — paid by their teaching hours — they are in essence giving hundreds of hours of free labor to the school each year; especially when, as many do, they contribute well beyond their contract hours in one-on-one meetings with students, syllabus planning, lesson and assignment preparation, assignment review and student feedback, coordinating on content and teaching strategies with faculty peers, and faculty meetings (some mandatory, others voluntary). All of this work should be encouraged at any institution of higher education, as it translates into meaningful pedagogical value for students and results in greater cohesion to the curriculum.

The difference at SVA is that as adjuncts who work on course-specific contracts, our employment is not protected and our contributions are essentially on loan, as it were. Where full-time Department Chairs and administrators are guaranteed their income regardless of work hours (homeowners, if you will, who are growing equity in their work), faculty are just renters taking up space until they fall out of favor or simply move on. They are not incentivized to invest in the school because the school has denied them any investment in their work beyond the contract hours.

While I’m not arguing for traditional tenure models (which are also problematic), it’s useful to understand how power dynamics at SVA disenfranchise more than just PoC faculty, students, and staff.

The DEI office has a responsibility to interrogate these larger inequities as they are foundational, albeit not as sexy as the latest, headline-grabbing issues like “anti-racism” and AAPI solidarity. These are important, yes. But if the DNA of the school is damaged, then these efforts around racial solidarity are emoji-faced bandages on metastatic cancer.

Do Better #4: Be Clear About Positionality

We are not all the same. DEI work must recognize the differences we carry and understand the historical inequities among our various groups.

In a specific instance in which positionality was ignored — separate from the case I named above with the faculty book club — I witnessed a white, male, full-time administrator at SVA claim to be equally oppressed by his position of leadership as a group of PoC contract workers who have to remain in this person’s good graces in order to be employed. This is both rhetorical dishonesty and fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of positionality. This person mechanized the language of oppression to artificially flatten the hierarchy and suggest that we, a group of historically-marginalized contract faculty, should feel empathy for him.

Look, we are more than the sum of our historic and personal oppressions or privileges, even when those dynamics are critical factors in how power works against us or in our favor. We are complex creatures, all of us. So many of us are navigating difference, and the work of equity has to acknowledge the many complexities of who we are and how we co-exist with one another in institutional spaces. DEI work must resist oversimplifying members of our community as “oppressors” or “victims.” But that also means that we can’t just flatten the pool to suggest that all identities or all oppressions are equal. It is an assault on equity-centered work when fully employed, white male colleagues claim that the challenges of leadership are equivalent to the oppressions of historic racism, classism, or ableism. And it is a pernicious act of erasure to suggest that “PoC” is a universalizing or salient identity.

“PoC” and “BIPoC” are meaningful terms in the context of coalition-building and solidarity movements, but within those categories are meaningful differences with historic distinctions. As a Biracial Black woman, I know that there are hard lines between my experience and that of my Black, immigrant mother who did not have the privilege of verbal or visual code-switching to camouflage herself in spaces of whiteness. That means that I must also navigate caution when talking about Black racial politics, because my own Biracial identity places me in closer proximity to whiteness than others among my Black peers.

Family 2019 — Photo credit: Brian Crooks

DEI work fails us all when it pretends that a person who uses the PoC designation can serve as a stand-in for all marginalized identities, rather than demanding the Inclusion part of DEI to bring more of us into spaces where our histories and heritages are being discussed.

Positionality matters. It matters in policy-making like hiring and promotions; it matters in terms of content, specifically curriculum and pedagogy; and it matters in terms of the administration of equity at the institution, including who gets to speak and be heard on behalf of others within any group.

Do Better #5: Center Joy & Healing over Trauma

DEI fails us when it centers trauma and pain over healing and liberation.

I have been struck by the fact that DEI-initiated presentations have begun by confronting participants with the most traumatic experiences we have shared in recent years. As many in our communities are already navigating trauma, we need equity-centered initiatives to center healing and care first.

DEI fails us when it traffics in acts of bonding through trauma, incautiously triggering participants’ anxieties when we’re already feeling raw. In one such case, a group of PoC faculty and staff were asked to share out with a group of relative strangers our personal experiences with policing. While many of us could and did respond with personal stories, we were left to wonder: “What does this have to do with our teaching or administrative practices? How does sharing these traumatic stories help us to build equity at SVA?”

DEI fails us when it conflates the problems of the world with the challenges of our work, particularly doing so without guardrails that protect participants from oversharing personal experiences that might undermine how we are viewed by peers and by those who hold power of determining whether or not we remain employed.

Do Better #6: Take an Art & Design Approach

At SVA, and surely in every art and design school, the single factor that connects all faculty and students is our love for, connection to, and practices in art and design. For many of us, we are present in our creative selves as much as we are present in our racial, ethnic, gendered, abled, and sexual selves. It is the core purpose for being at SVA and for investing in its stewardship.

In my experience with DEI at SVA, all engagements have taken the form of linear conversations and/or the establishment of rules.

DEI must acknowledge the particular opportunities and challenges of working with a population of creative practitioners. That means acknowledging that as artists and designers, we have many different — often even divergent — learning and communication styles that comport with an art and design school perspective. Equity work can happen through creativity, personal agency, and liberatory practices, not just in-person, verbal, rules-based dialogue.

Photo by Matthieu Comoy on Unsplash

Think of all the wonderful opportunities to catalyze change through acts of making, creating, and lyricizing; with time and space to process big, heavy, emotional ideas and information before we come together to talk about “problems” and “solutions.” Many SVA faculty have facilitated art and design-centered workshops that succeeded because we created space for participants to engage on their terms through image and written thought as much as through spoken words, but these methods have been completely absent from the DEI agenda.

DEI at SVA fails when it ignores the power of art and design practices, and neglects to seek out teaching faculty who can help guide those practices.

Many Allies in Quiet Places

In my time at SVA, I have met extraordinary allies, advocates and peers in this work. Most of them are, like me, contract faculty who have dedicated hundreds of hours and kilowatts of energy trying to build equity in many corners of this institution. I’ve been honored to work with many of those whose work goes largely unacknowledged. It is because of their work that curricula have evolved, that students are supported and affirmed even when the system itself has failed them, and that faculty from marginalized or vulnerable groups are validated in our concerns even when the leadership doesn’t hear us.

It might help them to have a DEI office that serves as a resource to support their work, not a gatekeeper determining when, whether, or to what extent they should continue to build those practices.

“But That’s Not My Experience”

I imagine that some of my colleagues who have interacted with DEI at SVA may recount different, possibly more positive experiences. I fully support and affirm any good that is happening as a result of that office’s work. I also know that my experience is shared by others. Doing good in one area doesn’t give anyone permission to silence dissent elsewhere.

If you are succeeding with DEI, I ask you now: How is that work supporting someone else at the school who is experiencing harm? How might you stand in solidarity with another student, staff, or faculty who has been diminished or silenced because they spoke out, perhaps undiplomatically but honestly about an inequity that is undermining their ability to be whole at SVA or to thrive in their practice?

If DEI asks us to show up in ways that are pleasing to their sensitivies or the sensitivies of those in power, then it can never be equitable or inclusive. So I ask, what does it mean to create a space for us to be imperfect, messy, and honest in our demands for change?

To DEI professionals who believe in the work you are doing, and are operating in good faith: how will you hold yourself accountable to the most vulnerable in your community who want to believe in your capacity to effectuate change but can’t or won’t work on your terms, in your chosen modalities, in ways that suit your particular sensitivies or egos?

In the future, I hope that DEI administrators refrain from arguing on behalf of respectability politics, showing more concern for hurt feelings and politeness than the harms perpetuated by historic inequities.

I hope that they will forgo asking us to perform niceness at the expense of our physical and mental health, or at the risk of losing our jobs.

I hope that they will never again ask PoC faculty or students to apologize for their stridency or anger when advocating for ethical change.

Students, Faculty, and Staff

I know you know this, but just in case you weren’t sure:

No one at SVA is better or more worthy than you of being respected or heard. No one in your workplace, no one in your industry is more worthy. We should endeavor to earn each other’s respect, but no one has the right to demand it without first offering it to you.

No one has the right to tell you how to show up in your body, in your voice, in your name, in your beliefs, or in your practices. You have every right to speak your anger, or sadness, or concerns, or dissent to those who hold power, and to demand that they create equitable spaces for you and your peers to do so. Yes, distinguish between a productive disruption and damaging acts. Yes, be compassionate with others. Yes, be alert to the safety of all. But don’t let the politics of respectability get in the way of honest disagreement.

I hope you can find an ally who is a true ally, regardless of identity. And I hope you can be an ally to someone else who needs to be heard and is similarly looking to create meaningful change for more than just themselves.

Equity at SVA becomes equity in art and design practices everywhere. Let’s demand that this institution commit to its responsibility to do better.