EDI and Racial Justice
Initiatives to bring EDI into post-secondary institutions often focus on gestures such as including EDI statements on hiring job ads, asking job candidates to discuss diversity in their job materials or providing anti-bias training to hiring and search committees. Feminist and Black scholars have critiqued the institutionalization of diversity and related concepts, such as intersectionality, for domesticating the radical and transformative critical work of these concepts. For instance, Jennifer C. Nash argues, “The work of diversity … is not meant to transform social institutions but to insert bodies into existing structures and even to engage in ‘rebranding an organization’” (2019, 24). Similarly, research on racism in higher education illustrates how inclusive strategies risk exposing racialized faculty to forms of institutional betrayal (Dutt-Ballerstadt 2020). Despite critiques over the impact these initiatives have had on the widescale restructuring of our post-secondary institutions, or worse—compounding harm for marginalized faculty and students (see Ahmed 2012; Nash 2019) and simply re-centring hegemonic norms—EDI is currently the primary language used by universities to address systemic inequalities. In this way, scholars have called for us to engage in the institution in continued projects for systemic change and transformation (Wiegman 2016, 93 [PDF]).
EDI in Pedagogical and Curriculum Design
Although EDI achievements in the university sector are often legible through the diversification of staffing or student enrolment in programs, the biggest challenge universities continue to face is the structural forms of exclusion that are embedded in our institutions through minor changes made in individual hiring and recruitment strategies, and little change to the structures of power and governance that maintain hegemonic control over university administration, complaints processes, evaluation, etc. This is reflected in racially homogenous university administrative bodies; disregard for student, staff, and faculty experiences of racism, ableism, transphobia, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of oppression; and the cultural norms that underpin notions of academic collegiality that set marginalized and historically excluded faculty, students and staff as the problem when voicing concerns and complaints (Ahmed 2012). For instance, in Meghan Gagliardi’s (2024) research on racialized students who take on anti-racism work within institutions, she found that Black and other racialized students are made responsible for the work of anti-racism within higher education settings precisely because anti-racism work has not been made a collective responsibility. For Gagliardi, this has resulted in compounding harm for those most impacted by racism.
What EDI looks like in Pedagogical and Curriculum Design:
Incorporating EDI into your pedagogical practices and curriculum design includes (but is not limited to):
- Conducting curriculum