Education
Why Institutions Retreating From DEI Can Feel Like Betrayal
We can face betrayal with courage, curiosity, and enchantment.
Updated July 24, 2025 Reviewed by Gary Drevitch
Key points
- Institutional betrayal disproportionately harms members of marginalized groups.
- The political context, including threats to DEI, is making things harder for many such individuals.
- Strategies for change and repair include institutional courage, collective action, curiosity, and enchantment.
By Meg A. Warren, Ph.D., and Monica J. Casper, Ph.D.
The Chronicle of Higher Education has been tracking colleges and universities dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion in recent months; some 366 college and university campuses in the U.S. have altered or eliminated their efforts related to DEI. The newly released book, Betrayal U: The politics of belonging in higher education, helps make sense of why this feels like a gut punch to marginalized groups and their allies.
The book documents eye-opening stories of injustice in higher ed. The editors (including this post's co-author, Monica Casper) permitted contributors to publish their experiences anonymously or mask the identity of their institution. No contributors elected to remain anonymous.
Betrayal U candidly lays bare the kinds of experiences that women, people of color, LGBTQ, people with disabilities and illnesses, and other marginalized higher education employees and students face, which are otherwise shrouded in silence. The editors also affirm their commitment to the promise of higher education as a vehicle that fosters personal growth, enhances social mobility, and benefits society.
What Is Institutional Betrayal?
When organizations that have made claims to support and advocate for marginalized groups retreat from their commitments, people can experience what psychologist and professor emerit Jennifer Freyd calls “institutional betrayal.” Because that is precisely what it feels like: a betrayal. Institutional betrayal allows injustices to go unpunished, minimizes and dismisses the pain of those targeted and impacted, and erodes hope for a better future within the organization.
Institutional betrayal includes wrongdoings perpetrated by an institution as well as failure to prevent or respond supportively to wrongdoings committed by individuals within the institution. People are dependent on and trust institutions, including their employers, to uphold and follow through on their statements of support. When harm is perpetrated, and especially without consequence, the sense of betrayal can be profound.
In Betrayal U, contributors document a range of betrayals in higher education, ranging from inadequate and harmful responses to sexual harassment and assault to overt crushing racism and classism to job losses due to the increasing “adjunctification” of higher education. In their introduction, the book's editors observe that such betrayals, longstanding in academia, have intensified with the right-wing shift in U.S. politics, offering valuable lessons for the current political moment.
What Does Institutional Betrayal Look Like?
One type occurs when organizations cause harm through toxic organizational cultural practices or policies that breed inequity. Another is when people engage in acts of harassment and violence, and organizations neither prevent nor adequately hold them responsible for such behaviors. A third occurs when marginalized group members speak up about their experiences of injustice, and organizational actors obstruct, dismiss, or penalize them.
Institutional betrayal can affect everyone who cares about fairness. Research by this post's co-author, Meg Warren, and her team, published in Betrayal U, found that not only do marginalized groups experience betrayal, but so do allies. When men stood in solidarity with women and challenged sexism in their institutions, they reported four levels of institutional responses. At levels one and two, they were successfully able to drive change, and this buffered the betrayal women experienced. But at the third level, they found that the institution was unresponsive to them, and they experienced feelings of betrayal, too. At the fourth level, they reported that they themselves were obstructed and penalized for speaking up, and felt intensely betrayed.
The book focuses on experiences in colleges and universities, but institutional betrayal is common well beyond higher education. The Center for Institutional Courage, founded by psychologist Freyd, documents institutional betrayal across numerous industries, including health care, law enforcement, the military, government, churches, and the judiciary.
When so many of us feel betrayed after being promised, cajoled, and reassured that our institutions are committed to equity and fairness, how can we move forward? How can marginalized groups and allies repair and rebuild, especially in political contexts that perpetuate harm?
Moving Forward With Institutional Courage, Curiosity, and Enchantment
The Center for Institutional Courage suggests the antidote to institutional betrayal is institutional courage. This reflects a commitment to doing the right thing for people and the world, even in the face of risk. It means developing a set of practices geared toward making institutions “more accountable, equitable, effective places for everyone.”
Often, leaders of these institutions may seek to do good, but are fearful of the consequences, especially if they are hypervisible (college presidents, CEOs). As Casper notes, “Many administrators are deeply committed people who have chosen leadership to make things better for the people around them. They just do not always know how to do so or are not given the space to reflect on their actions and do better.”
One path toward courageous change is supporting our leaders and granting some degree of grace, so that leaders can learn to become more courageous, assuming that they possess a legitimate desire to change (and unless they prove otherwise). Leaders can express courage by becoming visible allies. They can mitigate risk and increase strength by building support networks among colleagues. For example, on many college campuses, there is a chasm between faculty who are protected by tenure and most other staff members, who are not. Yet, as higher education is being transformed, the fates of faculty and staff are intertwined. Faculty can collectively support staff, whether through advocating for a living wage or protesting inhumane work practices.
A sense of curiosity and even enchantment can be a helpful response to betrayal. Not everyone can engage in protest, but being curious about the world around us can be life-saving. I (Warren) keep this curiosity alive by traveling and learning about how people in different parts of the world, including in the harshest conditions of war and poverty, use culturally-embedded practices to create well-being, connection, and joy. As Katherine May notes, we can cope with emotional burden and refuel by giving ourselves space in which to ground, connect, and appreciate beauty around us. Leaning into this sense of enchantment (for example, Casper is reading a lot of poetry right now) can offer healing and a path forward.
Whether our strategies include courage, collective action, curiosity, enchantment, or all of these, we must engage in and foster trauma-informed approaches. Many of us from marginalized groups have chronically experienced institutional betrayal and are now having to step up again when it is much more unsafe. We need to recognize that our practices should be attentive to establishing safety and care for people who are suffering in ways sometimes invisible to us. It is time for allies to unite and move forward together with sensitivity, courage, and even joy.
Monica J. Casper, Ph.D., is a professor of sociology at Seattle University and co-editor of the book, Betrayal U: The politics of belonging in higher education.
