We are Elizabeth Taylor-Schiro, Nisaa Kirtman, and Vidhya Shanker, Co-Chairs of AEA’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Working Group (WG) since 2021. As the WG shifts to a Task Force this year, we wanted to offer some reflections we hope will be useful to the work’s next iteration.
As women-identified evaluation scholar-practitioners, parents, and activists/organizers who share the experience of attempting to change the field we inhabit, we represent three different decades of birth, disciplinary backgrounds, and specific lineages with respect to racial and gendered capitalism. We have each directly and indirectly witnessed and experienced atrocities and oppression as well as social movements that cost the lives of those we love and that have shaped people’s lives in the USA and elsewhere. Near strangers when we met, we deliberately achieved a level of collaboration and shared leadership across identity and experience that we are proud of and that we tried to model and cultivate within the larger WG. As co-chairs, we didn’t reduce ourselves/ our lives to struggle and strife or deficits and lack of power. Rather, we found power and beauty in building trusting and supportive relationships and community with one another, which manifested in the four individual charges regarding a “statement,” metrics, and measures. This work is just not sustainable unless organizations and individuals find space for joy.
Reflecting on our tenure as co-chairs, we now wonder if, how, and how much we met our charges. Exactly how were those charges defined, by whom, and for whom? Using the discourse of our field: What was the “theory of change”? Have we seen any change or “impact”? Could we, realistically, in three years, among an intentionally wide range of volunteers whose membership in the WG we played no part in orchestrating?
Since 2020, organizations like AEA have made statements, built strategic action plans, and formed committees to address “DEI”. While AEA’s efforts predate COVID and the post-George Floyd uprising, they previously fluctuated at the mercy of whoever was on the board or was president at a particular time. Most folx’ intentions may be good, but having tried to democratize decision-making and expand channels to influence decisions, we are on the fence—at best—about DEI groups in general. Using more parlance from our field, we observed differential outcomes in our own efforts. Who do AEA’s DEI efforts benefit? Are they designed by, for, and with groups that existing systems harm in mind, or are they designed by, for, and with those who already benefit from existing systems in mind?
Lessons Learned
In our Statement, we name our alternative to DEI or cultural competence: apologizing and redistributing and decentralizing control over the means and ends of knowledge production. We suggest ways for the Task Force selection process not to continue evaluation’s harmful pattern of measuring and comparing initiatives and people, attempting to predict their success and judge their merit or deservingness, so that the owning/ruling class can control who gets access to resources (education, employment, grants, decision-making influence, etc.) that they hoard and artificially make scarce. We suggest ways for the Task Force—and AEA and evaluation more largely—to truly honor many different ways of knowing and knowledge systems by serving the needs of, and creating pathways to leadership for, members with different:
- levels and types of training and experience related to evaluation;
- durations and degrees of involvement with AEA; and
- disciplines, geographic areas, and settings where they study, practice, or teach evaluation.
Lastly, we start to unearth the work of scholar-practitioners who said all of the above generations ago, but whose counter-narratives evaluation’s gate-keeping institutions—sponsors, academic programs, journals, publishers, professional associations, etc.—have actively suppressed.
The American Evaluation Association is hosting DEI Week with our colleagues in AEA’s DEI Working Group. The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from working group members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this AEA365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the AEA365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an AEA365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to AEA365@eval.org. AEA365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.