Re-Visioning Academic Narratives for Marginalized Spaces: The Ecology of J.E.D.I.

Introduction

Justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (J.E.D.I.) have become widely promoted principles in educational institutions, corporate America, and government offices. In our institution’s 2020 Diversity Strategic Plan, key priorities include:

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  Accelerate toward a culturally competent community and accessible environment.

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  Increase, support, retain and graduate underrepresented students.

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  Increase, support, retain and advance underrepresented faculty, staff and administrators.

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  Adopt accurate and reliable evaluations and assessment methods and metrics for all diversity and inclusion strategies and initiatives.

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  Establish transparent and universal paths of communication and responsibility for diversity and inclusion (Diversity, 2020).

With a focus on removing barriers, increasing cultural competency, opening communication channels, and supporting and retaining underrepresented students, faculty, staff, and administrators, our institution promotes discussions of J.E.D.I. principles. It is actively engaged in developing strategies on how to integrate J.E.D.I. principles into the university’s mission, vision, and values of a student-centered, fair, diverse, service-oriented, innovation-focused, and excellence-driven institution (Office of the President, 2021).

Strategic diversity goals, J.E.D.I. principles, and the establishment of equity and access offices and multicultural centers provide academic institutions with essential stepping stones for creating a sustainable environment focused on transforming unsustainable practices. However, despite many efforts to infuse J.E.D.I. principles into educational institutions, inequalities in access to education, hiring practices, and retention continue to exist. In this chapter, we show that it is especially important to address the realities of those who have been on the periphery of academia, and to provide specific suggestions on how to move from goals to implementation and action at the institutional, college, and departmental levels. We unfold some of the shortcomings of focusing on diversity goals without focusing on the situated practices of those at the perceived center and those at the perceived margins. We address the need for overturning current efforts, not to create confusion, but to dismantle concepts of margin and center in order to change what is known and understood. We foreground the important role of currently marginal spaces as opportunities for reimagining and advancing J.E.D.I. In other words, we need to envision educational institutions as part of an intricate ecological system that is affected by the “influences from the past, orientations towards the future and engagement with the present” (Priestley & Drew, 2019).

We use our training as rhetoricians and our own experiences as individuals who have experienced the marginal spaces of the academy (one second-language speaker and one Latina faculty) and who are working at a Hispanic-serving institution to show how J.E.D.I. can be implemented if we shift the paradigm to blur margins and to reconfigure what is currently considered the center. Instead of taking on an accepted ecological framework, we argue to expand the traditional grand academic narratives of the past, looking to the future, and designing an integrative ecological approach that acknowledges the implicit influence of the academy’s grand narrative. This, we show, can encourage individuals and institutions to highlight fragmented narratives and marginalized organizations, peoples, and visions. We provide suggestions for implementing J.E.D.I. goals, and we conclude by emphasizing the usefulness of fluid spaces for establishing situation-based and action-focused J.E.D.I. goals. We emphasize the importance of integrating and revising marginal spaces to delegitimize current inequalities found in educational settings. This will help to emphasize currently underrepresented knowledges within a reconfigured academic system.