“Higher Education Diversity Employee Intimidated and Threatened”

Discussions about diversity and inclusion in higher education are eliciting increasingly strong reactions. For example, employees with special diversity are more often confronted with (online) harassment. This is the conclusion of the research of media of 21 higher education institutions.

According to the researchers, the main talking points are to make the learning material inclusive, by using more pronouns (besides he/she and she/she) and by adapting men’s or women’s toilets to gender-neutral toilets.

“There are people who think universities are too pushy about this, and there are also groups who think much more should be done,” says Ries Agterberg, president of the Circle of Editors-in-Chief of Higher Education Media, in the NOS Radio 1 Newspaper.

There are people who get very upset about this, to whom diversity employees, or responsible for diversity, they are threatened and intimidated, Agterberg says. “Because they’re seen as sort of a figurehead for this job, people often focus on them.”

“We are much more visible than other political officials. The function of responsible for diversity it requires different qualities,” says Aya Ezawa of Leiden University. “You need to be tough-skinned, be strong in terms of content, and have diplomatic skills to engage the community.”

Almost everything responsible for diversity spoken to say they get negative and sometimes hateful reactions on social media, in comment sections, columns, and opinion pieces in newspapers and magazines. Three of them claim to have been personally threatened.

Employees don’t want to delve into this, researchers say. You just want to say something about it anonymously. “Antiwoke group shares personal information on social media and uses profanity for people of color, for people with disabilities, for being a woman or for homosexuality.”

The woman says the anger isn’t directed at her alone. “Our names are public, so our families are also victims of online hate. And sometimes reactions are shared even by MPs who disagree with our work.”

Agterberg thinks it is useful to continue explaining why politics is done. “Many people react purely to the measure, without understanding why it is being taken. Some diversity employees also provide this explanation, because one of their tasks is also to raise awareness.”

It also works to separate practicality from ideology for dealing with resistance, says Ruard Ganzevoort, responsible for diversity at VU University in Amsterdam who was interviewed for the study.

“If I said we’re racist here because we have too few black professors, everyone would protest, rightly so.” It’s better to focus on quality, says Ganzevoort: “Your team will be better if it’s more diverse.”

Researchers say the focus on diversity discussions and policy varies by region. The issue seems to be more important among Randstad students than in the rest of the country. “Although it may also matter how many international students and employees there are. In Maastricht, for example, the tone is activist,” she plays.

Alet Denneboom, HR advisor Participation, Diversity and Inclusion at Hanze University Groningen, notes in the study that diversity and inclusion are therefore not Randstad’s issue. “Especially when the student population is more homogeneous, employees or students who don’t quite fit into the traditional framework feel less at home.”

While inclusion and diversity are on the map in all of the institutions studied, it remains challenging to set concrete goals, says Denneboom. “There’s no end point. Because who or what would set that standard? It’s a process. To what extent, we don’t know.”

In 2014, the first diversity employees in the Netherlands were hired appointed in higher education. Leiden University and VU University Amsterdam were the first universities to have such an employee. Every college and university of applied sciences in the survey now has some form of diversity policy.