Let me tell you a little story of corporate EDI in higher ed. UC San Diego has a largish EDI office, the result of an Academic Senate study that highlighted glaring racial inequalities on our campus. Bolstered by these findings, the administration created a well funded EDI office https://twitter.com/timnitgebru/status/1381372227275386884

Despite an extremely well funded office and widespread support from faculty, the EDI office has been largely ceremonial, closer to a corporate PR office than to an active champion of equity and diversity.

When our campus was attacked by a very prominent white supremacist group that posted offensive literature outside the Latinx center, for example, our EDI office was largely silent bar a statement or two.

When URM faculty is recruited, they move not a single finger in helping them land in the best possible position nor even attempt to reach out to ease the transition.

When URM faculty faces difficulties (salary disparities, spousal support disparities, etc), they say their hands are tied unless some extraordinary conditions are met, all of which are the onus of the person requesting help.

And when Latinx faculty reached out with shock over the rent hikes that are bound to affect an increasingly diverse population of grad students, the EDI office has been completely and absolutely silent.

Indeed, the only people they serve are themselves: the VC for EDI makes a handsome $270k for organizing webinars, while her partner was given employment at $120k, requiring firing someone who actually knew how to do the work.

And now, as a result of the quite glaring lack of Black and African American faculty, the EDI office is supporting a cluster hire of 10 scholars without changing the hostile environment that leads to such poor diversity. It is all smoke and mirrors.

There is a reason why higher ed inspired organizational sociology, and part of that is that we embody some of the worst patterns of capitalist enterprise under the guise of nonprofit, intellectual pursuits.

What Timnit writes echoes so strongly the dynamics of higher education where, in the service of their own careers, many EDI officials and administrators prefer not to confront the causes and dynamics of inequality, preferring instead an endless succession of workshops.