Colleges and universities need new and creative strategies to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals amidst today’s challenging cultural and political landscape.
Summary
Shared equity leadership seeks to dismantle inequitable systems and structures by broadly distributing responsibility for DEI work into people’s roles across campus, rather than concentrating responsibility in a single office. While this collaborative approach has succeeded at numerous institutions, leaders have faced implementation challenges that haven’t been previously explored. This report outlines these challenges and provides recommendations for addressing them.
Key Insights
- Interviews with campus leaders surfaced a set of common challenges that many institutions encounter when implementing shared equity leadership.
- Common, but navigable, obstacles include challenges making the transition, difficulties navigating accountability, unevenness in leader's personal journeys, inconsistency in different departments or units, and problems working together across differences in power and privilege.
- Challenges with the potential to derail shared equity leadership if not carefully and intentionally addressed include poor relationships and lack of trust, lack of senior leadership support, and hostile state political climate.
