One of the dynamics at play (...) is in the difference between how a person using a critical social justice lens sees diversity and how people who are using a mainstream lens see diversity. The students, looking through the lens of individualism, see diversity in terms of personality. From this lens, everyone is first and foremost a unique individual and social group memberships are unimportant. The instructor, who is looking through a critical social justice lens, sees the room in terms of key social groups. From this perspective, many major minoritized groups are absent, including: peoples of Color, people with (...)

International migration is the major cause of increasing diversity within nations today (Martin & Widgren, 2002), and the quest for social justice by marginalized groups is the driving force behind the increasing recognition of diversity (Banks, 2004a). Diversity has become a salient issue in pluralistic democratic nation-states because some groups - due to their race, ethnicity, religion, language, gender, sexual orientation, handicapping condition, or citizenship status - are structurally or culturally advantaged (empowered) or disadvantaged (marginalized) within their societies. Marginalized groups are pushing for both cultural and structural equality in many societies around the world.

The goal of DEI policies is to rectify an illegitimate system of social inequality by increasing the representation, status, and power of disadvantaged groups. Thus the presence of such programs can elicit ingroup morality threat among members of the advantaged group, by making salient their illegitimate high status and power in the organization (and society more generally). The violation of meritocratic principles in this case is due to the advantaged group's perceived illegitimate power and status. This is in contrast to the violation of meritocratic principles implicit in symbolic threat, which focuses on the perceived illegitimate changes to the organizations (...)

It is because colonialism, racism and gender hierarchies continue to shape educational as well as social spaces that diversity matters. In other words, diversity matters not as a description of such spaces (of what they are, or what they have), but as a sign of what they are not. In this way, organisations need to diversify only when racialised others remain the strangers, as ‘bodies out of place’ (Ahmed, 2000; Puwar, 2004).

White, cisgender, heterosexual men dominate at the ranks of full professor within Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs). White women, though they are still rare among the ranks of full professor, are well represented among the ranks of assistant and associate professor. Comparatively, those with other marginalized identities, especially non-whites, are often relegated to the ranks of instructor and adjunct across PWIs (Zambrana et al., 2017). The lack of diversity among faculty and thus lead researchers, and the ways in which this lack of diversity limits the depth and quality of research evidence the institution produces, continues to be a key concern. (...)

diversity is most often defined as a point of “organization change” containing several layers of difference that move beyond policy, to include ethics of social justice and equality

Much of the research surrounding diversity within organizational communication has steered away from a strictly critical approach. However, distancing oneself from the critical approach is a disservice to this area of communication because diversity is inexplicably linked. In fact, Fine (1996) argues that the critical approach is synonymous with diversity because the “social construction of gender, race, and class” expose diverse identities within multicultural organizations (p. 488). Allen (2014) sides with Fine asserting that researchers should “analyze issues of power and control [...] during specific communication events [...] fulfill[ing] a need to systematically examine organizational actors” (p. 149). Addressing power (...)

Specifically, this paper focuses on the myriad ways in which diversity in research teams is treated as a set of boxes to check, rather than an epistemology that underscores positionality and power.

These accounts also produce the perhaps surprising insight that there should not and cannot be only one science around the globe. Rather, economic, political, social, and cultural differences between societies insure that each will develop distinctive bodies of knowledge that, they hope, best enable them to flourish in the particular parts of the natural and social world that they occupy. Apparently such differences between scientific traditions extend into their ontologies and epistemologies. We do, and in principle must, live in a “world of sciences.” The next argument brings such a conclusion into conflict with an otherwise illuminating recent philosophy of (...)

Is Indigenous Knowledge Reliable? Do We Live in a World of Sciences? A third argument focused on another issue in postcolonial science and technology studies: the reliability of indigenous knowledge systems even though they are always embedded in culturally local assumptions and interests. Because they are so embedded, modern Western scientists have regarded indigenous knowledge as unreliable, as not “real science.” Yet in order to survive and flourish, sometimes for millennia, societies around the globe have had to develop reliable knowledge of the world around them. Botany, agriculture, animal husbandry, medicine, pharmacology, navigation, manufacturing, and engineering are among the fields (...)

The final [core element of CRT] concerns the notion of a unique voice of color. Coexisting in somewhat uneasy tension with anti-essentialism, the voice-of-color thesis holds that because of their different histories and expiriences with oppression, black, American Indian, Asian, and Latino writers and thinkers may be able to communicate to their white counterparts matters that whites are unlikely to know. Minority status, in other words, brings with it a presumed competence to speak about race and racism.

Positionality is the concept that our perspectives are based on our place in society. Positionality recognizes that where you stand in relation to others shapes what you can see and understand.

the concept of positionality has become a key tool in analyzing knowledge construction. Positionality asserts that knowledge is dependent upon a complex web of cultural values, beliefs, experiences, and social positions. The ability to situate oneself as knower in relationship to that which is known is widely acknowledged as fundamental to understanding the political, social, and historical dimensions of knowledge. Positionality is a foundation of this examination.

Identities are both ascribed by others and asserted by individuals. They are heavily influenced by social groups and historical circumstances, but they are also situational, flexible, and determined by individual choice. People define their identities in many ways, such as by gender, age, and ethnic, racial, religious, or other affiliations. Many individuals have global, cosmopolitan, or multicultural belongings and identities. Some reside in more than one country or lead transnational lives going back and forth between countries.

In every disciplinary organization, women’s caucuses and feminist research collectives formed to challenge dominant disciplinary assumptions and to pursue neglected questions to which women wanted answers. So-called women’s issues could not simply be added to disciplinary knowledge. The pursuit of such issues often challenged basic assumptions of the disciplines. Thus, recognizing and valuing this kind of diversity in social values and interests would increase the reliability of the results of research, feminists argued. And by using a methodology that answered questions that women wanted answered, women gained resources to advance their interests and desires. What was this methodology? In epistemology, (...)

Grimes (2002) offers a sound understanding of whiteness perspectives illustrating three primary areas found in diversity management scholarship: interrogating whiteness, re-centering whiteness, and masking whiteness. Through interrogating whiteness, research is aimed at “naming, unmasking, and de-centering whiteness” while privileging and diverse voices (p. 390). To interrogate whiteness is to be aware ones’ own privilege and challenge the powerful dominant ideologies produced by whiteness. In fact, interrogating whiteness exposes tactics such as denial where issues of diversity are rationalized away based on a white male reality. Similarly, re-centering whiteness recognizes difference. However, recognition is often rooted in stereotypes with surface level (...)

Members of diverse identity groups bring a variety of perspectives and approaches to the workplace

It is also important for authors and teachers to declare how they understand and engage with diversity. My priorities are race, culture, and ethnicity as they relate to underachieving students of color and marginalized groups in K–12 schools. Other authors may focus instead on gender, sexual orientation, social class, or linguistic diversity as specific contexts for actualizing general principles of culturally responsive teaching. It is not that one set of priorities is right or wrong, or that all proponents of culturally responsive teaching should endorse the same constituencies. But they should make their commitments explicit and how they exemplify the (...)

Citizens from diverse racial, ethnic, cultural, language, and religious groups must be structurally included within the nation-state and see their experiences, hopes, and dreams reflected in the national culture in order to develop deep and clarified commitments to the nation-state and its overarching ethos.

the epistemic and scientific norm of objectivity and the sociopolitical norm of diversity can be used to advance each other’s projects.

Conversations around values of diversity, equity, and inclusion need to go beyond the “surface-level” rhetoric in order to address racism and white supremacy. The act of changing organizational culture requires that everyone grapples with these issues in some capacity and all professors must also be open to incorporating equity within their research and teaching agendas in order for systemic change to transpire.

A global perspective is the capacity to see the whole picture whether one is focusing on a local or an international matter. It promotes knowledge of people, places, events, and issues beyond students’ own community and country - knowledge of interconnected global systems, international events, world cultures, and global geography. A global perspective does not privilege certain cultures while exoticizing and marginalizing others. It teaches respect for diverse worldviews and encourages co-existent citizenships of people of many cultural, religious, racial, and ethnic origins and identities (Case, 1993; Hanvey, 1978).

Diversity as a value, however, need not be thought of as an unprincipled process approach to law that is lacking in limits or principle. Diversity as a value should be considered in context. Here, “context“ refers to that aspect of law that requires consideration of multiple points of interest-both public interests and private interests. For example, diversity as a value does not mean that charities should be able to advance any conceivable private purpose. “ Thus, tax-exempt charities, because of the public policy doctrine, cannot engage in invidious racial discrimination against black people. Simply recognizing that racial preferences promote diversity (...)

To effectively prepare students to become reflective, constructive, and contributing local, national, and global citizens, schools must thoughtfully address diversity. But in doing so, schools must also deal with the companion concept, unity. Schools in democratic nations should help students better understand and deal constructively with these linked concepts. Unity refers to the common bonds that are essential to the functioning of the nation-state.

Many attorneys, judges, and other law professionals in the Colorado legal community are pioneers when it comes to diversity and, particularly, inclusion. Ten years ago, with the establishment of the Deans’ Diversity Council, this legal community was the first in the country to focus on the new paradigm of inclusiveness and how it must be added to traditional diversity efforts to make diversity sustainable. The three-part dialogue on unconscious bias featured in The Colorado Lawyer was truly ground-breaking because it addressed challenges not often discussed openly.
The next step is to take action, on an individual and organizational basis, to (...)

In this paper, I consider how advantaged group members' opposition to DEI policies is shaped by three types of threat to their group interests: resource threat (concern about losing access to outcomes and opportunities), symbolic threat (concern about the introduction of new values and expectations in a changing organization), and ingroup morality threat (concern about their group's immoral role in creating or perpetuating inequality). While social psychologists have identified other forms of intergroup threat - including distinctiveness threat (Jetten et al., 1998) and existential threat (Bai & Federico, 2020) - I selected these three threats to group interest because they (...)

As of this writing, the most recent attempt at silencing the voice of anti-oppression and antiracism is the banning of training on critical race theory, White privilege, structural racism, and other concepts of antiracist training, among the federal workforce, uniformed services, and federal contractors (Trump, 2020; Vought, 2020). This gutting of the core of diversity and antiracist training has been condemned by myriad groups, including the National Association of Social Workers, the Council on Social Work Education, and the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare.

Many of the articles in this special issue also suggest that these new equality regimes are part of a wider cultural shift, where diversity and equality are becoming part of performance and audit culture (Power, 1994; Strathern, 2004). In other words, diversity and equality are not only documented, they are being transformed into documents that can be evaluated by an agreed set of measures. For instance, in higher education, the Equality Challenge Unit (ECU) ranked the race equality policies of all universities in England and Wales. Although they did not produce a league table on diversity and equality performances, they (...)

In a way, not only is diversity becoming a performance indicator in the United Kingdom, but it is also something organisations are increasingly performing. We do not have to look far to ‘see’ how diversity has been taken up. Diversity is increasingly used as a marketing device, or even as an organisational brand – a ‘glossification’ of diversity (Gewirtz, 1995 cited in Lingard et al, 2003). One further education college in the United Kingdom, for instance, suggests ‘celebrating diversity is second nature to us’. Such statements are typically accompanied by visual images of happy ‘colourful’ faces, as a visual translation (...)

As general surgery programs train the next generations of surgeons, they must meet the standards of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) for workforce diversity and responsiveness to diversity in patient populations. Programmatic changes will have greater success with department and institutional leadership support. Adopting holistic strategies will require a selection team to mitigate bias. Interviewers should be selected from different ages, back-grounds, and practice experience and be given implicit bias training. Structured interviewing and situational questioning have been shown to aid in reducing personal bias. Addressing recruitment with deliberate strategies and best practices should be incorporated where (...)