Dear Higher Education: Letters from the Social Justice Mountain

The Reimagining of a DEI Scholar’s Dream

Eletra Gilchrist-Petty

The University of Alabama in Huntsville

Abstract

As a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) scholar, this letter to higher education addresses a reimagining of my professional trajectory amid rapid dismantling and rebranding of DEI initiatives in U.S. higher education. Drawing on intersectional lived experiences as the first and only Black woman full professor and longest-serving Black woman department chair at a research-intensive predominantly White institution in the South, I address my experiences as the “lonely only." I devote particular attention to the broader structural and political shifts that have rendered my aspirational DEI leadership position increasingly untenable. I argue that transformation remains possible, especially for those with intersectional identities, through recalibrated approaches to our pedagogy, scholarship, community engagement, and administrative advocacy.