Julie PosseltDec 27, 2022

There’s a dissertation to be written on the org & cultural changes required to create stable, internally equitable systems for #DEI professionals & their work. This story about resignations at #Princeton is unfortunate but unsurprising, and a reminder that 2020 headlines about elite universities’ big $ responses to #BLM were just one episode in a still unfolding story. #blackmastodon

https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2022/12/princeton-dei-resign-staff-athletics-share-lack-of-support

3 Princeton DEI staff members resign, alleging lack of support

Three Princeton staff members who were hired to conduct work related to diversity, equity, and inclusion have resigned within the past 15 months and allege a lack of support from the University, an investigation by the ‘Prince’ has found.

The Princetonian
Show thread1P1P1DDec 27, 2022

@JuliePosselt why is there a presupposition that an institution build through colonialism, and with slave labor, and a large body of graduates who have maintained the same capable of being Diverse, Equitable, and or Inclusive?

Is there any material basis for it?

Show threadJulie PosseltDec 28, 2022
@1P1P1D I hear you. It’s one of the most awkward things about my field, higher ed administration, that people are looking for what to do as leaders to be “part of the solution” in institutions whose past & present suggest solutions are naïve… that are defined by self-reproduction & racialization… and where default approaches to change rely on “master’s tools,” to use Lorde’s language. Gets existential, but is part of why I like studying outliers.
Show thread1P1P1DDec 29, 2022

@JuliePosselt I think naïveté, especially at these high levels can't be presumed.

The Ivy League most definitely doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt that the reproduction of life for themselves and the colonial capitalist system come at the expense of the colonized peoples of the world.

But neither is any land grant institution. Are there any examples of outliers in DEI that seek to dismantle the economic basis for the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized?

Show threadJulie Posselt
@1P1P1D Good question. That’s a high bar. I’m going to think on it. A lot of work that aims to shift power relations gets co-opted, diluted, or subverted by institutional interests. But there are also people (mostly of color) maneuvering, resisting, & refusing from within on a daily basis, and I would hate to diminish that aspect of the struggle.
Dec 30, 2022 at 9:12pmWeb
Show thread1P1P1DDec 31, 2022

@JuliePosselt colonized peoples will always struggle. The "To what end" is key. likewise with the institutions.

As colonial institutions, universities do their part to recreate colonial society as it currently exists. While there are a great many professors surely who enjoy being challenged by their students' new ideas and perspectives, there is always a point where a claim for "equity" that shifts power in a meaningful way a firewall is hit...

Show thread1P1P1DDec 31, 2022

@JuliePosselt this is true whether or not the issue is DEI Related, Student Governments run into this as well, and for a different aspect of the same contradiction of (colonial) society.

If equity means anything it means power not concentrated in the hands of a hostile oppressive system right? I think, rather than a high bar changing the power relationship these institution have both with the powerful and the oppressed by making reparations is the floor.

Show thread1P1P1DDec 31, 2022

@JuliePosselt and if that means some or all don't exist, or exist in the same way then good.

And if that's a stretch, lets not forget that sentiment suited/suits them in the process of genocide that made them, sustains them, and that they sustain (where academica has justified colonialism & brutality outright, or via assimilation).