Grand Challenges and Opportunities Part 2 - Rebuilding Trust After Abandoning Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

How Higher Education Leaders Can Repair Harm and Renew Commitments to Diverse Students and Employees

In recent years, colleges and universities across the nation rapidly retreated from commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion. Leaders fired chief diversity officers and other DEI professionals, scrubbed diversity language from websites, renamed programs and positions, closed culture centers and DEI offices, eliminated scholarships for underrepresented students, and defunded initiatives created to foster belonging and academic success. This widespread abandonment of longstanding commitments dramatically accelerated in February 2025.

These hurtful actions left many diverse students and employees feeling abandoned by campus leaders who had previously espoused deep commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion. Panelists will consider what colleges and universities must now do to acknowledge the harm, account for what was dismantled, and rebuild trust. Experts on this panel also will explore how leaders can repair these breaches of trust, renew institutional commitments to effectively serving diverse communities, and ensure diverse students and employees that they will not be so easily abandoned when political pressures arise again in the future.

Moderator:

Shaun Harper, University Professor, Provost Professor, Clifford and Betty Allen Chair, and USC Race and Equity Center Founder and Chief Research Scientist, USC

Panelist:

Lori Patton Davis, Professor of Education, Heyman Endowed Chair, and Educational Leadership Program Faculty Director, UCLA

Mitchell J. Chang, Professor of Education and Asian American Studies, UCLA

Emelyn A. dela Peña, President and CEO, National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE)

Royel M. Johnson, Associate Professor of Education and Social Work, Pullias Center for Higher Education Co-Director, University of Southern California