Supporting Institutional Change through Interracial Dialogue among Leaders

Abstract

This paper elucidates how using a dialogic approach to interracial conversations supported two cohorts of campus leaders to engage in organizational change. Dialogue centralizes relationship-building as a key mechanism for addressing organizational problems collaboratively. This paper describes the processes undertaken and lessons learned in the interracial dialogue program, which could serve as a guide for institutions of higher education (IHE) interested in anti-racism work. Findings include the ways relationships supported growth in understanding of the racialized experiences of BIPOC participants, differences in emotional taxation for participants given their racial identities, and the importance of acknowledging pain before moving towards change.

1. Introduction

Racism in institutions of higher education (IHE) is evident in the historical roots of universities as well as in the pervasive racial disparities that continue to persist in contemporary IHE. Institutions of education were originally developed to support the needs of wealthy White elites [1], often by creating conditions that subjugated Black and Indigenous people and perpetuated the ideology of white supremacy [2]. While separate institutions were eventually created to support Black and Indigenous people (Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Tribal colleges, respectively), by emphasizing culturally relevant pedagogy and empowerment [3]; nevertheless, these institutions were often poorly resourced and sought to assimilate students into White middle-class norms [4].

Since the 1960s, IHEs have welcomed more students of color [5]. Despite increases in students of all racial backgrounds attending college, there are still racial disparities in post-graduation income and student debt levels. Black students, specifically, are leaving college with higher debt and making less than their White peers [6]. Furthermore, a systematic review of over 40 studies highlighted the prevalence of racial microaggressions toward students of color both in and outside the classroom, as well as the effects of institutional racism through bias in classroom content and discussions, insensitivity from campus leaders, and an overall racial climate that promoted White cultural values [7].

Racial disparities also affect staff and faculty of color who work in IHE. Less than 27% of faculty identify as a person of color, with starker disparities (20%) among tenured faculty [8]. The lack of diversity is even more pronounced at the administrative level. While 42% of staff members identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC), less than 20% of individuals in administration identify similarly [6]. Low diversity at the leadership level deeply impacts the visioning, strategies, policies, and practices of IHE, further constraining their ability to meet the needs of diverse students and communities.

IHE have engaged in a variety of approaches to address disparities in student outcomes and faculty and staff representation. One main approach is diversity training to educate students, faculty, and staff about pressing racial issues within higher education. Diversity training is intended to decrease prejudice and discrimination, increase knowledge of diverse others, and improve intergroup interactions [9]. Diversity training for people with institutional power, (e.g., administrators, managers, and supervisors), has the potential to greatly impact policy and culture within institutions [10].

In this paper, we outline a diversity training model developed and applied at one university that emphasizes interracial dialogue as a precursor for leadership strategy and action toward racial equity goals. We intentionally used the term interracial when framing our program. While the myth of biological racial differences has been debunked, the social implications of racism on individuals and communities continue to be felt [11]. Using the lens of critical race theory, this paper acknowledges the ways that the construct of racism continues to be embedded within institutional structures and to produce systematic inequitable outcomes, a condition that requires attention to discrepant racial experiences of institutional members, and the explicit naming of racism as an underlying problem, in order to surface its impacts and work towards dismantling them [12].

The authors, referred to as facilitators in this paper, were responsible for designing and implementing the dialogue program. In the following sections, we provide a brief review of the literature on diversity training, explain the theoretical framework that guided our dialogue-based program, highlight insights from the literature on the use of dialogue to foster racial equity, and conclude with key points of learning derived from participant feedback and facilitator reflections. Our goal for this paper is to highlight practical applications of dialogue for racial equity work and to guide others who might want to facilitate interracial dialogue in IHE.

2. Multicultural and Diversity Training

Ethnic and racial minority psychologists began developing and researching multicultural training in the 1970s to improve therapists’ knowledge, awareness, and skills when working with clients from marginalized groups [13]. Models for multicultural training have extended beyond psychology programs into organizational settings to support diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. In higher education, diversity training is offered to employees to help them address institutional inequities, improve workplace culture, and enhance the institution’s ability to serve diverse students and employees. Training often takes the form of a single-day professional development opportunity rather than sustained learning over weeks of an academic term [14].

Formats for multicultural training differ, but three common pedagogical approaches include (a) educational instruction on different cultural groups, sociohistorical context, structural oppression, and social justice; (b) experiential activities and discussions that involve cultural sharing by participants through games, role plays, and self-reflection; and (c) community service learning [15]. The first approach is primarily didactic, (e.g., presentations/readings), whereas the second two approaches involve active participation and construction of knowledge [15]. Some training programs rely more heavily on one of these approaches while others include a combination of approaches.

Research on diversity training and evaluation has proliferated within the past two decades. Bezrukova and colleagues [9] conducted a meta-analysis of 206 studies of diversity training effectiveness and found that diversity training had the greatest impact on participant reactions, (e.g., appreciation for the training), but also impacted participant cognitive, behavioral, and affective/attitudinal learning. Gains in cognitive knowledge were most likely to be maintained over time whereas attitude and affect outcomes were more likely to decay over time. The authors found a relationship between longer training (measured by hours of training) and positive reactions to the training, better knowledge of diversity topics, improved affect/attitudes, and more behavioral skills. Training that used multiple instructional formats multi-instructional reported higher effect sizes for reactions than studies only using a single instructional method, but there was no significant impact on other outcome measures. Importantly, training programs that were integrated with other forms of DEI initiatives demonstrated greater effectiveness. These research findings offer important considerations for diversity training design. We intentionally developed a program that spanned multiple sessions (approximately 2 h/week over 7–9 weeks). We also incorporated multiple formats of instruction, (i.e., readings, videos, reflections, and dialogues), and the program supplemented other DEI efforts at the institution.

3. Interracial Dialogue

Amid efforts to realize racial equity goals, interracial dialogue is less common than more didactic educational approaches. The reasons are understandable. Facilitating interracial dialogue is time-consuming and challenging. Additionally, weariness with talk over action evokes warranted skepticism about the role of dialogue in making serious long-term changes toward racial equity [16]. More dangerously, as Lozano-Reich and Cloud [17] have warned, invitational approaches, such as dialogue, can be wielded as “bludgeons of the oppressor” (p. 225) to silence the anger and frustration of marginalized voices demanding change. Nonetheless, dialogic frameworks have informed substantive efforts to foster interracial understanding and healing [18].

Various organizations have developed models for engaging in race dialogue, such as the U.S. Department of Justice’s Dialogue on Race guide, the Living Room Conversations guide, and the Essential Partners’ Race in America dialogue guide. Practitioners have also sought to leverage the potential of dialogue for race-related conversations between stakeholders in educational institutions [16,19,20]. These efforts highlight the importance of carefully designed formats and processes to maximize the impact of dialogue in generating interracial understanding.

Gurin and colleagues [21] researched the process and outcomes of intergroup dialogue across multiple institutions of higher education using a rigorous experimental design. They studied a critical-dialogic model of intergroup interaction with small groups of students in higher education. Within the groups, relationships were used as a catalyst for building critical consciousness. The authors’ mixed-methods research supports the effectiveness of intergroup dialogue in higher education as a way to improve students’ understanding of others, relationships across racial and gender identities, and commitment to intergroup action and collaboration. The authors found evidence that psychological processes, (e.g., cognitive and affective), and communication processes, (e.g., critical reflection and alliance building), explained the positive effects of intergroup dialogue. Importantly, the benefits of intergroup dialogue were also evident a year following the experience.

Gurin and colleagues’ findings challenge common criticisms of dialogue, such as concerns that dialogue focuses too much on interpersonal relationships and not enough on action [21]. They found that intergroup experience led to an increased frequency in intergroup action. Another important concern about intergroup dialogue is that it uses marginalized groups to foster the learning of privileged groups. Gurin et al., however, observed that there were overall positive significant effects for both privileged and marginalized participants. They argued that equitable benefits to privileged and marginalized groups depended on facilitators who constructively addressed power dynamics and situated learning content within the social context of unequal power.

4. Race-Conscious Leadership Training Rooted in a Dialogic Approach

The office of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) on our campus chose to invest in dialogue as a means for shifting campus culture toward more equity-minded structures and policies. This commitment arose from conversations between DEI leadership and the facilitators, who are faculty with expertise in dialogue and racial equity work. In this section, we introduce ourselves, our institutional context, and the leadership curriculum and interracial dialogue program we created.

4.1. About the Facilitators

The three authors of this article collaborated to develop a race-conscious leadership curriculum, co-facilitate interracial dialogue groups, and evaluate outcomes. Our respective backgrounds and training influenced our collaboration. The first author identifies as a South Asian, able-bodied, cisgender woman from a working-class background. She was racialized in the United States but had immigrant parents with limited knowledge about the local racial context. She has a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and her work centers on dismantling oppression within the educational system. The second author identifies as an able-bodied, cisgender woman, and an East Indian immigrant in the United States. Her understanding of race and racism emerged primarily after her immigration to the U.S. She has a Ph.D. in Communication. Her scholarship and teaching focus on dialogue and deliberation as invitational modes of engagement for social action. The third author identifies as a White, able-bodied, cisgender woman from a middle-class family. Her family has a mixed ethnic and racial heritage which informs her understanding of race as a social construct. She has a Ph.D. in Clinical Child Psychology with some expertise in multicultural psychology.

4.2. Institutional Context

The dialogue program started with grant funding which was designated for 20 institutional leaders to receive anti-racism training, in order to spur positive changes in institutional policy and practice. Instead of relying on an external training program, the campus DEI office decided to support in-house training by recruiting campus faculty to design and implement a training program. We were cautious when invited to lead the program as all three of us were tenure-track junior faculty at the time, concerned about how our untenured status would constrain our effectiveness in holding university leaders accountable for racial equity goals. Nonetheless, our belief in the potential of this program, and the complementarity in our respective areas of expertise led us to accept the challenge of creating a training program.

The DEI office had requested we centralize dialogue in our training program. However, we undertook substantive deliberation to assess the compatibility of a dialogic approach with the ethical and practical considerations of racial equity work. We have continued, throughout our dialogue program, to evaluate and grapple with emerging gaps between the conditions needed for dialogue and those needed for achieving racial equity. We elaborate on these contradictions below.

4.3. Theoretical Underpinnings

Given that the word “dialogue” is used in everyday conversation to represent a wide range of communicative acts, we wanted to ensure that our program was built on a clear theoretical foundation. Since the program was designed as an intervention specifically for campus leaders, our curriculum and praxis framed interracial dialogue as a leadership resource. Isaacs [22] observed that dialogue is effective for addressing an organization’s complex problems because the process of dialogue offers an alternative to the default “fragmentation in thought” that occurs when organizational members are isolated by their individual perspectives, without an acknowledgment of how those perspectives interact with each other to create the organizational status quo. Isaacs [23] not only encourages dialogue as a communication alternative but, in fact, integrates dialogue into the responsibility of a leader by conceptualizing dialogic leadership as “a way of leading that consistently uncovers, through conversation, the hidden creative potential in any situation” (para. 11). We included Isaacs’ [23] article titled Dialogic Leadership in our introductory curriculum module to help our participants recognize that effective leadership can be a profoundly collaborative process, and that, in anti-racism work, in particular, leaders who are able “(1) to evoke people’s genuine voices, (2) to listen deeply, (3) to hold space for and respect as legitimate other people’s views, and (4) to broaden awareness and perspective” (para. 11), can catalyze more meaningful and lasting organizational changes to meet equity goals.

For our interracial dialogue sessions, we adopted the intergroup dialogue (IGD) framework in which “co-facilitators lead dialogues, which involve participants who come from two or more social identity groups, occur over a sustained period of time, in a structured context” in order to create “opportunity to learn about each other and to learn skills and tools to help listening across differences” [19] (p. 27). Our working definition of dialogue is a communicative process in which “participants endeavor to know and understand one another as each wishes to be known and understood” [24] (p. 69). We also relied on Bohm’s [25] assertion that dialogue is not simply an exchange of previously held positions but a creative process in which listening “without trying to influence each other” can lead a participant to “see something new, which is relevant both to his [sic] own views and to those of the other” (p. 3). We share this definition of dialogue with our participants at the outset of each of our dialogue series. In our curriculum, we also share with participants Buber’s principle of “I-It” and “I-Thou” interactions [26]. An I-It interaction is one in which a subject regards the interlocutor as an object and thereby makes communication choices that disregard the dignity of the other. In an I-Thou interaction, which dialogue encourages, the subject is willing to accord a similar level of subjectivity to the other, appreciating the other’s irreplaceable uniqueness [24].

Bohm’s and Buber’s paradigms for engaging mutually across difference contrast with frameworks of racial justice advocacy that reject the possibility of mutuality due to power imbalances between privileged and marginalized group members. Given such conditions of material inequality, oppressed groups have been forced to realize that “political confrontations up to and including violence have been perennial resources in struggles for justice” [17] (p. 224), while “civilizing strategies”, such as dialogue, can “silence and punish marginalized groups’’ [17] (p. 223). Recognizing this important critique of dialogue, we chose, nevertheless, to explore its potential in racial justice change because of a key factor in our particular context-shared organizational affiliation which presumes at least some overlapping interests between participants, including the desire to improve personal interactions with colleagues.

Our commitment to interracial dialogue stems from a shared belief (across our disciplines, namely Communication and Psychology) that the process of change significantly impacts the sustainability of change outcomes. More specifically, we began from the premise that racial equity outcomes have a greater likelihood of being significant and lasting with the cultivation of intrinsic motivation for achieving racial equity [27]. Meaningful dialogic encounters in which participants are encouraged to listen to personal stories that describe the racial experiences of colleagues can build trust between organizational members, decrease prejudice, increase concern for colleagues’ welfare, and foster a shared desire for equity efforts on campus.

To address the tension between assumptions of mutuality between participants with the realities of unequal racial distributions of power across a college campus, we grounded our design of dialogue sessions in a critical-dialogic theoretical framework for intergroup dialogue [21]. Within this framework, racial and gender identities are contextualized within systems of power and privilege, allowing for “personalized and contextualized conversations about identities and inequalities while building relationships across these very kinds of difference” [21] (p. 284). We also followed the practical guidance offered by Kaplowitz et al. [20] by combining dialogic practices of listening and emphasizing human dignity with a curriculum designed to provide a critical perspective on the intersections between race and power. Kaplowitz and colleagues’ model of intergroup dialogue (IGD) is specifically created to “facilitate conversations between people who have antagonistic sociohistorical legacies due to unequal social power” [20] (p. 17). This approach entwines education about racism and anti-racist practices with dialogic processes that allow for the connection of personal stories to structural equity problems. Following previous work that has used dialogue in an interracial context, we addressed the conditions of power imbalance by integrating a curriculum that provided our participants with critical perspectives on race along with dialogic interaction that allowed participants to express and understand how systemic injustices mark the lived experiences of colleagues.

4.4. Participants and Group Design

The initial phases of this program were designed for institutional leaders in administrative and managerial positions at our campus. We wanted interracial dialogue to build empathy in campus leaders for the lived experiences of injustice among campus stakeholders and to foster collaborative relationships between leaders on campus to enact change. Participants included a total of 39 administrators, managers, supervisors, and faculty members in leadership positions. Dialogue is best served when the group size is large enough to include diverse perspectives and small enough to allow each person to contribute [20]. Accordingly, we maintained each dialogue group at 8–11 participants. Groups met once a week for a total of 8–9 weeks. We had an attrition of one to three participants out of 20 per semester, but most stayed involved and attended the majority of sessions.

Gender identities included 49% men (n = 19), 49% women (n = 19), and one transgender individual. Racial identities included 56% White (n = 22) and 44% BIPOC (n = 17). We intentionally structured dialogue groups to include an approximately equal number of BIPOC and White participants in order to create optimal conditions for interracial engagement [21]. Creating racially-balanced groups proved challenging because the leaders at the top levels of our institutional hierarchy identify primarily as White. We addressed this problem by recruiting faculty and staff leaders, (e.g., department chairs and diversity liaisons), which created a different set of opportunities and challenges. With groups comprising individuals at different levels of the organizational hierarchy, benefits included understanding and collaboration across leadership levels, but risks included self-censorship and concerns about retaliation and job security. To recognize the complexity of not only inter-race but inter-rank groups, our first dialogue session began by having participants identify and reflect on their respective positionalities. While we recognized various dimensions of institutional identities at the outset, we emphasized that the dialogue sessions would focus primarily on racial identities and experiences within higher education.

4.5. Structure of the Interracial Dialogue Program

In our own application of dialogue, we wanted to reconcile the personal nature of dialogue with the need to offer participants information about historical and structural inequities that shape personal racial experiences. We recognized that participants would enter the dialogic space from very different lived backgrounds and consequently different levels of knowledge about racism in higher education. Aligning with the Kaplowitz and colleagues [20] model, we structured a curriculum that would provide basic information on (a) the historical context of racism in the United States, (b) how racism impacts institutions of higher education, and (c) how racism specifically impacts our campus community. Recognizing the busy schedules of participants, each week’s curriculum was structured for 30–90 min of review. Readings, podcasts, and video clips were chosen to illuminate salient concepts with limited academic jargon. Each week, participants reviewed curriculum content prior to engaging in group dialogue.

4.5.1. Dialogue Sessions

Each session began with a brief centering activity, (e.g., breathing or mindfulness practice), a review of shared communication commitments, and an introduction to the dialogue question (these questions were provided before the session so that participants could reflect on their responses in advance). The design for the dialogue session was borrowed from the Public Conversations Project [28] format, which begins with a structured phase in which each participant shares their response to the dialogue prompt consecutively, without any interaction between participants. During this round, participants are simply encouraged to listen empathically. During a second unstructured phase, participants engage in Connected Conversation [28], which allows them to share how others’ stories led them to insights, to ask questions of other participants, or to draw connections between participant responses. Given that White and BIPOC participants tend to have different experiences during interracial dialogue [16], during most sessions, we also included time for racial affinity spaces in which BIPOC and White participants engaged in intra-group conversation separately from each other, in order to identify and process shared reactions to the dialogue. The White and BIPOC affinity spaces were each moderated by a facilitator whose racial identity matched that of the affinity group. Sometimes affinity spaces were introduced in between the structured and unstructured phases of the dialogue, while on other occasions racial affinity conversations were introduced after the Connected Conversation. After the racial affinity conversation, participants were invited to share with the whole group any salient insights that arose in the affinity conversation. When introducing affinity spaces to the whole group, we acknowledged sorting into affinity groups could be challenging for participants with multiple racial identities. We allowed multi-racial participants to select the affinity space that felt most appropriate for them in connection with the dialogue topic for the day. Affinity spaces provided an opportunity for participants to share thoughts and emotions that felt riskier to articulate in the whole group. These conversations also provided participants with validation when others in the affinity space shared similar experiences, but periodically intra-group differences emerged during affinity conversations that highlighted the heterogeneity of racial experiences. Affinity spaces also provided an opportunity to encourage White-identified participants toward deeper reflection in a supportive yet guided environment. Historically, White-identified individuals often lack the socialization to engage in conversations about race [29]. Therefore, guided reflections during affinity space processing can help further prepare White participants to engage more deeply in dialogue. Finally, each dialogue session was brought to a close with a grounding mindfulness activity.

4.5.2. Accountability

Since our participants were campus leaders, the dialogue was intended to motivate participants to enact systemic change within their spheres of influence. Building intellectual knowledge about racism and being in a relationship with individuals from various racial backgrounds are by themselves insufficient to bring about the structural changes necessary to dismantle racism in institutions of higher education [30]. We impressed upon our participants that dialogue itself was an inadequate end goal. As the critical-dialogic approach prescribes, dialogue must be “fundamentally about social change; it does not rest simply in opposition to what is, but has to be coupled with visions and experiments in collaboration for what is possible” [21] (p. 285). To meet this generative goal, we recommended that dialogue be followed by accountability workshops, in which participants could leverage the insights they gained from the curriculum and dialogue sessions to create actionable goals for change and processes to elicit feedback from their constituents, especially from racial minorities, so that equity efforts were genuinely collaborative and reflected the needs and voices of underrepresented campus members. In the first two cycles of the program, the accountability workshops were outsourced. In future iterations of this program, the facilitators will design and implement accountability workshops to ensure stronger integration with the curriculum and dialogue.

5. What We Learned

In this section, we distill the insights we gained from carrying out multiple iterations of the interracial dialogue program. Rather than starting with testable hypotheses about the effects of dialogue, our starting point was an identified campus need for a more collaborative climate that would stimulate campus members of different races to engage in racial equity work. We identified dialogue as an option for the intervention. Our goal was to develop a program that drew from current literature on the use of dialogue in anti-racism work, in order to create potential attitudinal and relational changes on our campus. Throughout multiple iterations of the program, we have reflected on the suitability of dialogue to achieve these changes in campus climate. Since we intended to disseminate our findings on campus and to broader academic communities, we submitted them to the institutional review board (IRB), which decided that our assessment of dialogue did not need IRB oversight. In this paper, we have chosen to engage in reflective praxis-mining participant feedback and our facilitator notes, not only to understand how dialogue impacted our participants and us, as facilitators, but also to identify ways in which the program can be strengthened, based on our learning. We have organized our reflections thematically and framed them as guidance for others who may be interested in taking up similar work at their institutions.

The development of our interracial dialogue program has been iterative. We have adjusted the design of the program in response to what we learned about both the potential for change, as well as challenges in the use of dialogue to build relationships and achieve equity goals. The takeaways below are distilled from the facilitators’ observations during dialogue sessions, our debriefing after each dialogue session, anecdotes shared by participants, as well as formal feedback from participants obtained through anonymous surveys. As we continue the program, data collection and program improvement will be ongoing. Below, we organize the lessons we learned into two categories: guidance for facilitators and takeaways for participants.

5.1. Guidance for Facilitators

In this section, we identify significant insights we gained as facilitators that influenced our iterations of the program and provoked our thinking on the use of dialogue as a resource for equity-related change on college campuses.

5.1.1. Unequal Burdens in Dialogue-Differential Emotional Taxation

Dialogue demands reciprocity in speaking and listening. However, in an interracial context, White participants and BIPOC participants tend to shoulder unequal burdens during dialogue. We observed unequal burden, for example, in responses to our dialogue prompts which asked participants to recall and share personal racial experiences. BIPOC participants, overall, tended to share memories that evoked greater emotional intensity for themselves, as compared to the majority of the stories shared by White participants. In affinity group sessions, some BIPOC participants drew attention to the difference between their levels of emotional engagement and that of their White colleagues. Personal experiences of discrimination, which were more typical of stories shared by BIPOC participants, can be expected to carry a greater emotional burden than bystander accounts of observing discriminatory behavior, which were more common in White participants’ stories. As facilitators, we sensed that BIPOC participants seemed to carry a heavier emotional toll while recalling and retelling their personal stories during dialogue. Where possible during dialogue sessions, we sought to help the whole group of participants appreciate the discrepancy in emotional vulnerability between racial subgroups, either by explicitly acknowledging the emotional burden being carried by a particular participant following the participant’s sharing, or by introducing more general observations about this difference during collective processing at the end of a dialogue session. All participants were educated about the possibility of unequal emotional burdens before we began dialogues through a curriculum component designed to help them empathize (in a non-racial context) with the experience of bearing discrepant emotional weights due to being differentially impacted by a problem. We caution others who take up dialogue as a process for facilitating interracial understanding to be vigilant about unequal burdens and to be prepared to help participants both appreciate and mitigate the disparity where possible. One approach would be to create conditions for White participants to engage with greater emotional vulnerability than they may be initially prepared to do.

As facilitators, we grappled with encouraging White participants to share more salient personal experiences. White participants’ stories tended to offer less grievous bystander accounts of observing racial prejudice or discrimination rather than experiences in which they may have themselves created harm. In contrast, some BIPOC participants showed a willingness to reveal experiences in which they had harmed another due to their own privilege. This was especially true of participants who identified as multi-racial. We were unsure whether this pattern reflected a relative unfamiliarity among our White participants with experiences of racial oppression and/or whether less serious experiences felt safer to share in a racially-mixed group. Some White participants courageously shared experiences that were strongly emotional for them. We hypothesize that the depth of sharing by White participants is a function of personal experience, individual willingness to be vulnerable in a group setting, and the facilitators’ ability to encourage participants to be braver in their reflections and expressions. As facilitators, we have grappled with ways to nudge our White participants into deeper sharing. One way to encourage this vulnerability is by clarifying the role that deep bystander empathy can play in legitimizing the lived experiences of BIPOC colleagues. White participants may also constrain their sharing from a desire to avoid taking up the group’s attention with stories about White experiences. This fear represents a real and complicated contradiction between the use of dialogue on the one hand, with its assumptions of mutuality, and our culture’s long and systemic dismissal of BIPOC experiences and its normalization of White experiences. To address this fear practically, we suggest explicitly naming and working through possible latent fears of White and BIPOC participants about their differential dialogue expectations and experiences, as well as providing clearer guidelines for the kind of sharing that supports a dialogic experience.

Another concern that arose for the facilitators in the course of this work was the uncomfortable realization that BIPOC participants’ re-living of traumatic experiences and the consequent distress evoked for them in dialogue became the mechanism for growth in perspective-taking and empathy for our White participants. In some instances, having one’s personal experience of discrimination heard, especially when the memory had been suppressed, felt cathartic and generative for BIPOC individuals. However, we worried as facilitators about the emotional labor that our BIPOC participants were experiencing during dialogue. We worked to offset this imbalance by validating, as specifically as we could, the painful experiences shared by BIPOC individuals in the moments immediately following their sharing. In other words, we tried to ensure that we reciprocated the storyteller’s gift of vulnerability with verbal and non-verbal validation of their experiences to help the storyteller feel heard and understood by the group. On a few occasions, White participants felt sufficient clarity and courage, in the moment, to spontaneously acknowledge a BIPOC colleague’s story and to articulate how the story had created an insight for them. Such feedback from White participants can be a valuable act of reciprocity that helps offset the emotional labor performed by BIPOC individuals. We learned the value of feedback to BIPOC participants in one particular iteration of our dialogue sessions. We designed the session as a listening experience in which our dialogue participants listened to a panel of three non-participant BIPOC individuals who shared their stories of hardship regarding diversity issues on our campus. We left an insufficient period during the session for our participants to process and articulate feedback. Our BIPOC panelists experienced this lack of immediate response as a painful deficit. We encouraged participants later to reach out to panelists, individually, via email to let them know how the stories had contributed to participants’ learning. However, our panelists made it clear that a facilitated and immediate opportunity for feedback would have reciprocated them much more adequately.

5.1.2. Logistical Considerations-Modality and Time Commitment

Our iterations for the dialogue series have included logistical adjustments to address the challenge of time commitment among our participants. We began our series in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which constrained us to an online format. In addition to meeting the pandemic restrictions, the online format proved easier for our participants’ full schedules. Zoom allowed facilitators and participants to see each other’s faces (masks would have been required if we had met on campus post-lockdown, but with mask mandates in place). Another benefit to conducting dialogues virtually was the ease of using breakout rooms to host racial affinity spaces during each dialogue session. In the online format, we were also able to easily monitor airtime for each participant by using a virtual timer that was displayed as a video background behind one of the facilitators. Since participants could see this timer easily, they managed their own sharing to keep within time allotment, which allowed for equitable sharing of air-time across participants.

Challenges to the online format included the fatigue of online meetings and the lack of shared physical presence. One participant wrote that the Zoom modality “de-personalized” the dialogue experience and made it seem less “authentic” than in-person conversation. Another participant shared that they were more likely to be fully focused when meeting in person as compared to a Zoom session. From the facilitators’ perspective, reading participants’ non-verbal cues was sometimes challenging due to the size of each participant’s video images in the gallery view, as well as intermittent poor internet connection which disrupted the flow of dialogue. Further, facilitators found that the Zoom gallery display, which included their own video images while facilitating, created a stream of potential distractions requiring extra focus to maintain a mindful presence. Another challenge with online meetings is guaranteeing strict privacy and confidentiality. The facilitators spent time at the beginning of each session emphasizing confidentiality as one of the group’s shared communication commitments, but could not guarantee that the Zoom session would not be recorded by participants or overheard by non-participants who might enter participants’ physical spaces. Balancing both the advantages and disadvantages of the online format, the facilitators have decided to continue with online dialogue sessions to leverage the convenience of the format for busy campus stakeholders. In addition, we are complementing the virtual sessions with two in-person accountability workshops in which participants will use takeaways from dialogue to build concrete plans for racial equity changes in policies, structures, and practices.

The time commitment was the most common challenge identified by participants in their feedback surveys. A few participants mentioned that the readings and videos curated for each weekly module were challenging to complete prior to the weekly dialogue session. Participants were all volunteers, and as such had an intrinsic interest/commitment to racial justice in higher education. However, they still found it hard to prioritize this work in their packed schedules. Recognizing this challenge, we provided participants with estimations of weekly time commitments, including precise times required for each reading and video in the weekly modules. Based on participant feedback, we have also decreased the curriculum each week from 90 min of review time to less than 30 min. In curating a more condensed curriculum, we adopted the principle of “depth rather than breadth,” offering participants fewer resources that could engage them more deeply on the week’s topic focus.

5.1.3. Collaboration and Reflective Practice

Diversity training and racial justice work in organizations is a unique area of scholarship because of the emotional toll evoked by this type of training [9]. As facilitators, we have found that consistent collaboration and mutual support have been crucial in helping us manage the cognitive and emotional burdens of a dialogic approach to diversity training. Others interested in this work should thoughtfully consider team dynamics and styles of communication when assembling a team to ensure complementary approaches and a mutual desire to offer support. Another key element of our dialogic approach, as facilitators, has been to engage in reflective practice, constantly questioning our assumptions, examining the impact of our work, and exploring areas for improvement. After every session, facilitators engaged in the debriefing of the concluded session and used insights to plan the upcoming session.

5.2. Dialogic Insights

In this section, we turn toward insights about racial inequities that emerged through participants’ sharing during dialogue. These takeaways represent possibilities for strengthening collective awareness and understanding about racial experiences on university campuses, by listening to participants’ lived experiences.

5.2.1. Experience of Structural Inequalities

One point of learning that became apparent through participant sharing was that White and BIPOC participants can experience the efficacy of university structures and policies differently. Specifically, White participants with positional power tended to describe university structures and policies as adequate for addressing racial inequities, while BIPOC participants, even those with positional power, shared experiences of frustration in navigating those same networks. Differing accounts about the adequacy of university structures and policies offered all participants insight into both the positive intentions often informing structural and policy decisions, as well as the realities of BIPOC faculty and staff who did not experience the intended benefits of these structures and policies equitably. Many IHEs provide infrequent opportunities for administrators and faculty/staff to engage in personal conversation which can lead to poor relationships [31]. A dialogic process can allow participants a glimpse into each others’ lived realities, opening up relational connections between them in order to ensure that campus equity efforts are more collaborative and meet the real needs of campus stakeholders.

In one pivotal incident which reflects the type of insight described above, a White participant described their own experience of the university as a highly collaborative community. In contrast, a Black participant shared that they had felt bereft of community support at the institution. With guidance from the facilitators, the whole interracial group processed the reality that, although some members may have experienced the university as a welcoming place, those with marginalized identities tended to feel isolated and disconnected. In particular, the group dialogue around this insight noted how definitions of collaboration may be influenced by a difference in White cultural values that favor individualism versus other cultural values that privilege collectivism [32]. This poignant moment of contrast gave all participants insight into how university practices may be set up with neutral and race-evasive goals but the impact of those practices is felt differently depending on the marginality of a university member’s identity.

5.2.2. Growth in Understanding How Race Impacts Experiences

Our dialogue participants often demonstrated racial identity development and growth during the dialogue sessions. As intergroup contact theory by Allport [33] posits, placing individuals with similar backgrounds but different social identities into shared contexts opens up opportunities to decrease prejudice. Some White participants noted that they had only previously had surface-level contact with people from different races, which reflects the legacy of segregation in the United States [34]. Therefore, creating a shared dialogue context in which White and BIPOC participants listened to each other’s experiences allowed participants to dimensionalize and humanize each other more richly and shift from a more impersonal professional knowledge of each other toward I-Thou orientations and interactions [26]. In our dialogue sessions, we asked participants to share personal experiences of racism and bias. The collective sharing typically revealed a gap in White participants’ exposure to and awareness of the daily onslaught of racial microaggressions and biases their BIPOC colleagues experienced. In one particularly powerful dialogic moment, a White participant somberly observed that while it was hard for them to think of a single incident of racism that they had witnessed over the course of a lifetime, they were struck by the account of a BIPOC participant who had endured an experience of racism just that day.

Some of our BIPOC participants also reflected on the ways they have suppressed memories of racist incidents as a form of coping. Research has pointed out that racial stress can be felt viscerally even when BIPOC individuals don’t explicitly acknowledge that particular interactions have caused them harm [35]. In line with this finding, some of our BIPOC participants revealed that, in identifying experiences to share in dialogue, they were acknowledging, for the first, time how those experiences had created harm for them, although they had been carrying the memory and its visceral damage below their conscious awareness.

5.2.3. Acknowledging Pain before Focusing on Positives

During the dialogue sessions, facilitators and participants also became keenly aware of the strong need for BIPOC individuals to first have the pain of their experiences of racism heard and validated before group members praised the resilience of BIPOC individuals or before they responded with solutions for inequities. Our White participants often held roles with substantial positional power in the university. This positionality can often come with pressure to meet role expectations, identify existing campus resources, and offer solutions to address the harms shared by BIPOC participants. However, BIPOC participants consistently expressed a desire for the group to first hold and process the emotional impact of racial harm. They noted that a solutions-focus felt premature in the absence of deep understanding and acknowledgment of felt harms. This observation emphasizes to us the significant role that dialogue can play in equity efforts on campus. Dialogue can shift the emotional culture of the organization toward listening and increase the likelihood that BIPOC stakeholders feel adequately heard and, therefore, trust in the equity investments made by a campus.

5.2.4. Feeling Uncomfortable versus Feeling Unsafe

The dialogue sessions also revealed a key distinction between feeling uncomfortable and feeling unsafe during dialogue. One of our weekly dialogue prompts asked participants to “Recall a time when [they] felt safe OR unsafe to talk about racism in higher education.” Many stories from our White participants reflected feelings of discomfort in talking about racism. In contrast, many BIPOC participants shared stories in which they feared for their physical, emotional, or job safety. In the whole interracial group dialogue, we were able to explore the distinction between the risks of feeling uncomfortable versus feeling unsafe.

To help address difficult emotions that arise during a dialogue about race, our curriculum included content about emotion regulation and managing stress responses. We also took care to begin and end each dialogue session with breathing or mindfulness activities in order to build emotional capacity in participants for processing challenging thoughts and emotions that emerged during dialogue.

5.2.5. Strengthening Relationships

As facilitators, we felt the humanizing impact of dialogue and its ability to forge deeper connections between campus stakeholders. Participants also attested to the benefit of getting to know each other beyond positions and roles. We observed moments of Buber’s [26] I-Thou interaction in which participants’ perspectives about particular others shifted by coming to see the other not as a member of a category but also as a unique human being. Participants shared that having met in our dialogue sessions, they felt more connected to other participants. We, ourselves, experienced this advantage. As junior faculty, we had had limited contact with the campus leaders in our groups prior to our involvement in the dialogue program. The roles and decisions of campus leaders felt distant to us. However, getting to know them through their participation in our program allowed us to see them as more than their positions. The promise of dialogue is uncertain and slowly fulfilled. A handful of dialogue sessions does not necessarily produce stronger working relationships. However, the experience of dialogue can be transformative. Glimpsing another’s particular humanity can increase motivation to continue interaction with others outside the dialogue space. Multiple participants attested to this motivational change in them as well. The importance of the dialogic approach for relationships and change is reflected in a quote by Margaret Wheatley [36].

...the only way the world will change is if many more of us step forward, let go of our judgments, become curious about each other, and take the risk to begin a conversation…Human conversation is the most ancient and easiest way to cultivate the conditions for change–personal change, community and organizational change, planetary change. If we can sit together and talk about what’s important to us, we begin to come alive. (pp. 4–7)

6. Conclusions

The work toward achieving more racial equity IHE is ongoing and requires a critical-reflective process. While many IHEs affirm values of diversity, equity, and inclusion, leaders in higher education can find it challenging to make time for the hard work of wrestling with change. Further change efforts that are top-down can miss the real needs of campus stakeholders and can, therefore, feel cosmetic rather than authentic. Dialogue offers an opportunity for campus leaders to listen to the lived experiences of racial minorities on their campus so that change efforts can heed the perspectives and involve the collaboration of campus members. In reflecting on our experience facilitating interracial dialogue sessions, we conclude by drawing attention to lingering questions: the suitability of dialogue in facilitating racial justice change and the need for strong institutional accountability to ensure that dialogue does replace material changes in policies and practices.

6.1. Dialogue as a Pathway toward Racial Justice

While dialogue has been used as an approach to building greater awareness about racism, including in IHE, we advocate keen attention to the potential challenges inherent in dialogue when used specifically to develop interracial understanding. As Ramasubramanian et al. [16] have noted, the goals and qualities of group conversation shift considerably based on the composition of dialogue groups, whether predominantly White, predominantly people of color, or balanced groups. Our program intentionally curated balanced groups since our objective was to influence the campus climate by fostering interracial understanding. However, a persistent struggle we encountered as facilitators was how to mitigate power imbalances between races outside the dialogic space when the process of dialogue is premised on mutual understanding. We intended to create conditions in which our White and BIPOC members could mutually acknowledge why talking about racism is hard and how working through fear and with dialogue skills can deepen collaboration in anti-racism work in IHE. To appreciate the complexities of conversations about race, both White and BIPOC participants have the potential to understand each other’s fears. However, this goal raised a dilemma, as we experienced this work. We struggled with the possibility that in creating conditions of mutual understanding between White and BIPOC racial experiences, we may be reproducing in dialogue a problematic equivalence of experiences and further contributing to the under-representation of BIPOC experiences that is prevalent in many professional contexts. This challenge has made us careful to encourage White participants to understand their responsibility and the potential of their impact as listeners in the dialogue space. With this approach, however, we risk White participants holding back in reflection and sharing in order to center BIPOC experiences. Therefore, the goals of mutual understanding and facilitating deep empathy for BIPOC experiences can present a conflict. We encourage further theorizing and practical considerations for how dialogue can address this tension.

The second challenge of using dialogue for racial equity work is that dialogue works best in small groups and its long-term impact can be slow and difficult to track. Over the course of two academic semesters, three dialogue facilitators have been able to run dialogue sessions for 39 campus leaders, who comprise a fraction of our university leadership. A single educational training session could reach larger numbers of campus stakeholders more quickly. Nevertheless, as research on dialogue outlined earlier in this paper has shown, cognitive and affective changes are likely to be stronger with more sustained opportunities for understanding racism’s impacts in IHE, particularly through the lived experiences of campus members. All the same, time and money invested in dialogue can yield slow returns. Therefore, dialogue practitioners face the pressure of scaling up efforts. Gurin and colleagues [21] described some ways in which the critical-dialogic model of intergroup dialogue can be used in innovative ways within IHE. In particular, Ximena Zúñiga, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, collaborated with colleagues across institutions and Five Colleges, Inc., to create the Five College Diversity and Dialogue Initiative Group. The partnership trains staff and faculty across five institutions to facilitate intergroup dialogues that are both short-term and longer-term [21,37]. Other campuses have also used trained campus members as facilitators to run several dialogue groups simultaneously, e.g., the authors of [16]. We have started early work in training campus faculty and staff as dialogue facilitators and will continue to explore this avenue.

6.2. Building Accountability

Reactionary approaches to institutional change when instances of racism occur in IHE can often seem as too little, too late [38]. A campus culture that values continuous listening as a means to identify and invest proactively in equity efforts can produce more far-reaching results. Interracial dialogue is an approach that can help build such a culture. However, the learning and relationship building that occurs during dialogue by themselves cannot guarantee visible structural and policy changes. Those with decision-making capacity can be further supported in equity efforts by offering them accountability opportunities that move beyond surface-level changes to addressing root causes and longer-term solutions [38].

One aspect of accountability for IHE leaders is the creation of an operationally defined plan that includes measurable goals and specific behaviors that will achieve these goals [39]. Often, the creation of goals is top-down, which historically has left White-identified leaders to decide what areas to address and change [32]. From our work, we learned that many White-identified leaders may not be adequately socialized to deeply understand racialization within IHE and, therefore, they need to center the voices of those that are systematically silenced in the creation of systemic equity goals [40]. In centering these voices, leaders can acknowledge perceived problems and individuals’ lived experiences and pain. Additionally, those who have been marginalized should play a role in implementing the goals they helped to co-create. There is more success in implementing anti-bias goals when there is distributed leadership across departments and units [38]. Despite its challenges, dialogue can play a critical role in supporting leaders of IHE in engaging in the critical work of accountability. First of all, dialogue brings White leaders into contact with BIPOC campus members who have experienced the racialized ways IHE uphold white supremacy culture. Secondly, dialogue encourages White leaders to adopt a listening attitude so that they can be encouraged to make sure that BIPOC individuals and their experiences are central drivers of change efforts. The combination of interracial dialogue and accountability spaces opens the door for authentic relationships to drive institutional change.