Reimagining Inclusion During Pendulum Swings

Recent federal and legal developments—including the Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions decision, heightened Title VI scrutiny, and expanding state-level restrictions on DEI activities—have fundamentally altered how colleges and universities may pursue inclusion. Leaders are now confronted with a more complex challenge than compliance or messaging alone: determining how principles of inclusion can be advanced simultaneously at the systems level of the institution and within the educational realm itself, under new legal and regulatory constraints.

This unrecorded, Chatham House Rule session convenes presidents, human resource, and senior education leaders for a candid discussion of inclusion as both an institutional responsibility and an educational imperative. Participants will examine how evolving federal rules are reshaping institutional approaches to access, fairness, and accountability, while also exploring how teaching and learning can reflect a pluralistic society—bringing multiple intellectual traditions and viewpoints into the classroom and harnessing the educational value of students’ diverse backgrounds and lived experiences in ways that endure beyond political pendulum swings.