Hi! I’m Elizabeth Bishop. I teach modern Arab history at Texas State University and am a member of the Minority Serving Institution fellowship cohort at the AEA.
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As I write, the University of Florida terminated all positions associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion in compliance with new state regulations, a year after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill that banned institutions of higher education in the state from spending state or federal money on such initiatives, the New York Times reported. This prompts me to ask: what opportunities does CREE offer to act on AEA values (“excellence in evaluation practice, utilisation of evaluation findings, and inclusion and diversity in the evaluation community“) in jurisdictions where DEI is under erasure (in Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah)?
In their Evaluation in Today’s World, Veronica G. Thomas and Patricia B. Campbell define “culturally responsive evaluations” as those in which “evaluators go beyond simply attending to the funder’s agenda in evaluation to also hearing and infusing the perspectives of the target community in determining the evaluation’s purpose.” More recently, A. Christson Adedoyin, Ndidiamaka N. Amutah-Onukagha, and Chandria D. Jones—in their introduction to Culturally Responsive & Equitable Evaluation—survey “culturally responsive and equitable evaluation,” defining CREE as integrating “diversity, equity, and inclusion into all phases of evaluation; furthermore, CREE incorporates cultural, structural, and contextual factors into the evaluation plan through participatory processes that shift power to those most impacted by the evaluation process.”
There they are, three little words! As a historian, I wonder–can we turn to Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology with Derrida’s definition of erasure: “to write a word, cross it out, and then print both word and deletion (since the word is inaccurate, it is crossed out; since it is necessary, it remains legible).” For Derrida, the sous rature mark is a visualisation of something that is a condition of writing, which “structurally carries within itself the process of its own erasure and annulation, all the while marking what remains of this erasure.”
Is DEI under erasure? At the University of Oklahoma, because of Gov. Kevin Stitt’s December executive order calling for a formal review of diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education, the Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion changed its name to the Division of Access and Opportunity. In Mobile, AL, Governor Kay Ivey signed SB 129 into law, which “prevents student, staff, or faculty organisations from hosting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs that may involve divisive concepts.” Here in Texas, SB 17 led to more than 100 job cuts across public university campuses.
“Is CREE the same as DEI under erasure?” It’s tempting to answer “yes.” The Utah House approved HB261, a “bill is focused on removing barriers for all students and all Utahns who overcome adversity through hard work, initiative and talent.” In Tennessee, Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti warned the American Bar Association that changes to standards it sets for all accredited U.S. law schools could run afoul of last year’s Supreme Court decision Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v President & Fellows of Harvard College, barring colleges and universities from race-based affirmative action practices.
Does Derrida offer a model for philosophically-informed subversion of executive orders, house bills, and attorney general’s screeds, that entails teaching and practising CREE? Let’s leave that a matter for further discussion.
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