I have been holding a secret. At least, that is how it feels to speak openly about my experiences in diversity, equity, access, and inclusion leadership in higher education. From 2005 through 2024, I supported and studied chief diversity officers through administrative, research, and teaching roles. I saw an opportunity to help shape the profession’s future. Looking back, I see questions worth investigating in experiences that still feel like family secrets. I remain proud of our collective progress. I also carry memories I have struggled to name and refuse to be the keeper of institutional memory that needs to be on record.
One is an invitation to guest lecture about my dissertation framework and emerging findings to an executive doctoral cohort. The students seemed receptive, but the faculty member appeared aggravated. After the session, I gathered my things and found myself afraid of them. A colleague who witnessed the encounter advised me to retreat in their office until that faculty member left for the day. I did, heart racing. The dean later assured me I had done nothing wrong and attributed the reaction to their sensitivity of my research. The faculty member’s subsequent LinkedIn request left me more confused. How was I supposed to make sense of that experience?
In another research role, an extension of my appointment depended on demonstrating that I could secure funding for a community accelerator. I secured funds through an account established to support it. What I understood as fulfilling the assignment became a dispute: the director sent a scathing email accusing me of not being forthcoming about the institutional account I established to receive funds to validate receipt. I was laid off. I experienced the conflict as a turf war. This was my first forced departure from higher education but certainly not my last nor most tumultuous separation. How was I supposed to interpret that in terms of stability or leadership?
I had entered the field with a different vision. In my 2010 dissertation, I examined an emerging leadership capability that I believed could help institutions prepare for the future. I imagined strategy and collective impact: an executive partner bringing the leadership to various academic and administrative units and departments providing consequential institutional decisions. I admired this organizational advancement and wanted to help institution understand the capability as to enhance their ability to strategically lead.
The work required trust. Faculty, students, alumni, and community members shared things they were not ready to say elsewhere. We built relationships, helped repair them, and learned where institutional commitments fell short of people’s experiences. That proximity carried responsibility. It also made speaking difficult when protecting a relationship seemed to require swallowing what had happened within it.
For years, I treated painful experiences as the nuances of leadership. You absorbed the anger, learned publicly, explained your expertise again, and recovered from another ending. I am less willing now to accept that cycle without asking what it produces. When does the expectation of resilience become permission to leave harmful conditions unchanged?
Recent reporting about sociologist Jason Arday sharpens that question. Byline Times reports that a further publisher review did not substantiate plagiarism allegations against his 2020 paper (Ahmed, 2026). Following his death, Cambridge announced an independent review of institutional processes and the support and protections available to him amid extraordinary scrutiny (University of Cambridge, 2026). His experience is his own; the circumstances of his death remain under investigation. But the institutional question resonates: What responsibility accompanies inviting someone to contribute, particularly when their credibility and belonging become targets?
I want to examine how racism, intimidation, and professional exclusion can shape those conditions, including in spaces publicly committed to inclusion. That requires asking whose expertise is believed, whose distress is recognized, and whether protection extends to people as readily as it does to institutional reputation. Naming harm is part of understanding what must change.
Robert Birnbaum’s account of the cybernetic institution offers a way to examine that responsibility. He described sensing mechanisms and feedback that help universities detect problems and correct course (Birnbaum, 1989). Diversity leaders can provide some of that feedback. If naming a problem threatens their safety, credibility, or employment, what reaches decision makers? What knowledge leaves with them?
In the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education’s (NADOHE) 2025 survey, 34% of respondents reported a change in their role over the previous two years, and 29% reported a change or reorganization of their office (NADOHE & Rankin Climate, 2025). Those figures invite questions about outcomes. When has reorganization strengthened the work? When has leaving protected someone’s well-being? What expertise disappeared, and who decides whether a change succeeded?
My confession is that I still believe in the work. In this ongoing column, What’s Next?, I will draw on research, my own experience, and conversations with higher education leaders to examine how institutions respond to change and what those decisions mean for the organization as well as its people. Some contributors will need anonymity to speak candidly. Together, these accounts can help us ask what higher education must preserve, redesign, or stop doing to prepare for its future. The purpose is to turn experiences too often held privately into knowledge institutions can use to change.
