Abstract
To meet the needs of the evolving student demographics that has seen a 300% increase in URM college going rates, higher education institutions began developing the Chief Diversity Officer (CDO) position to govern and lead their mission as it relates to diversity, equity, and inclusion. More than 60 colleges have created a CDO position over the last 20 yeas with many more heading in that direction. However, because CDOs are relatively novel in the higher education space, the leading authority of diversity officer research, the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE), developed a set of guidelines to serve as a source of consistency for diversity officers. Although these guidelines have been very useful, we suggest that when viewed through a Critical Race Theory lens, the guidelines are laden in passive and color evasive language, supports slow-moving incremental change, and is absent of language associated with racism, sexism, gender bias, homo- & transphobia, ableism, and xenophobia among other discriminatory practices. Thus, in this conceptual critique, we report on how we use CRT to critique and identify improvements for the Twelve Standards of Professional Practice for CDOs.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Allen, B.C.M., Rodriguez, A. J., & Esters, L. T. (2020). Using Critical Race Theory to Redefine the Standards of Professional Practice For Chief Diversity Officers. Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs
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