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Academic Grieving: (Critical) Reflections on the Dangers of Romanticizing DEI in Engineering Education
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Academic Grieving: (Critical) Reflections on the Dangers of Romanticizing DEI in Engineering Education

James Holly and Amy Slaton
Studies in engineering education (Blacksburg, Va.), v 6(1), pp 91-97
04 Jun 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21061/see.220
url
https://doi.org/10.21061/see.220View
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open

Abstract

The following editorial shares a perspective on a contemporary issue that we are aware can be considered controversial. As active members of the engineering education research community we welcome open dialogue concerning our position; that is why we chose this venue because of its explicit mechanism enabling such discourse. We understand the potential of our urgent tone to be perceived as critical, even perhaps hurtful, though we write assertively in order to describe entities and circumstances we consider having already caused tremendous hurt. Our intent is to provide a sobering perspective to our comrades who have invested significant time and energy in working toward diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) over the past few decades, an investment we see ourselves as having made. We seek not to chastise, instead realizing that as knowledge producers we have a responsibility to engage with knowledge already produced, and with the practices that have resulted. The serious flaws that critical DEI scholars have already delineated should not be dismissed because the pain is widespread now.

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