Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Under Siege Worldwide: Moving Beyond Limiting Notions of Gender and Sexuality in Education Organizations and Leadership

Authors

Margaret Grogan, Chapman UniversityFollow

Files

Description

As 2025 gets underway in the United States, educators across this country, like in many others, are bracing for unprecedented opposition to their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and policies. Newly elected President Trump is rapidly dismantling many federal agencies, cutting off aid to foreign entities, and causing major apprehension across the globe. His stated agenda to eradicate progressivism echoes many other international ultraconservative and far-right movements, who applaud his authoritarian regime. To mount the best possible resistance to these disturbing developments, and, indeed, to expand and strengthen DEI work, this chapter argues for collective action across all the education sectors and in coalition with all identity groups. Within the larger context of commitment to social justice, this chapter focuses on gender and the intersections of gender with sexuality. It is a call for leaders and policymakers in education to reconceive policy and practice to better understand how gender and the intersection of gender with other marginalizing factors positions individuals in our organizations. The principles of social justice expressed in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion, however inadequately they have been put into practice in the past, have given us some conceptual tools for finding common ground and coming to a more insightful sense of being in relation with others in our organizations. We need to revisit these principles. I argue that we need more complex, nuanced understanding of how we must practice them. To counter this offensive, I believe we must come together in a full celebration of our shared humanity.

ISBN

978-3-031-56275-4

Publication Date

6-24-2025

Publisher

Springer Cham

City

Cham, Switzerland

Keywords

Education leadership and policy, LGBTQ, Anti-DEI, Othering, Shared humanity, Ethics of openness

Disciplines

American Politics | Curriculum and Social Inquiry | Disability and Equity in Education | Educational Sociology | Gender and Sexuality | Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | Other Political Science | Social Justice

Comments

In Ira Bogotch and Carolyn M. Shields (Eds.), Second International Handbook of Educational Leadership and Social (In)Justice.

Recommended Citation

Grogan, M. (2025). Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Under Siege Worldwide: Moving Beyond Limiting Notions of Gender and Sexuality in Education Organizations and Leadership. In: Bogotch, I., Shields, C.M. (eds) Second International Handbook of Educational Leadership and Social (In)Justice. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56275-4_96-1

Copyright

Springer