Faculty who teach about race do so at a moment when public scrutiny of higher education is increasing, federal policies are shifting, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs are being dismantled. Despite the rising stakes, pedagogical support for teaching about race remains weak. Classroom missteps become fodder for political commentary, investigation, and legislative action not because DEI has failed but because higher education fails to prepare teachers for the teaching demands of the job.
In recent years, a series of classroom incidents have sparked outrage on social media and media coverage, questioning whether teachers can responsibly teach about race and racism. Last fall, a federal civil rights complaint against Colorado State University took issue with the way two social work instructors taught about race: The instructors reportedly detailed in a journal article how they viewed discomfort as a measure of teaching success, describing student dissent as “whiteness” or an attempt to maintain “white emotional comfort.” In November, Texas A&M University passed sweeping new rules restricting professors from advocating “racial or gender ideologies, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity” after a lecturer’s course on gender identity drew political scrutiny.
Similar conflicts, large and small, have emerged at other institutions, in which comments, assignments or assistance lapses around racial issues have escalated into campus crises, legislative attention or national media backlash. For critics of DEI’s work, the story is a familiar one, with each conflict another example of what they see as a misguided and coercive approach to discussing race in the academy.
But these cases do not prove that DEI has failed. This evidence suggests that higher education continues to equip faculty to teach about race without adequate preparation, support, or pedagogical training. The results are predictable. Classroom conversations break down, students withdraw or react defensively, and teachers turn to simplified frameworks that reduce complexity rather than deepen understanding. When the inevitable conflicts arise, external critics will seize on these moments to demonstrate that DEI itself is the problem.
As someone who has spent more than two decades teaching courses on race and racism, preparing PK-12 educators and school leaders, and facilitating difficult conversations across racial, political, and socioeconomic backgrounds, I recognize many of the dynamics described in recent reports.
I have seen classrooms break down when conversations about race are not handled properly. I also see that classes are strengthened and deepened when race is taught skillfully, developmentally, and transparently in the learning process—rather than being designed to make certain students feel uncomfortable because of their race.
Why higher education keeps making this mistake
Too often, teachers are left with high-stakes, emotionally charged conversations with little guidance beyond reading and good intentions. They conflate discomfort with learning or view identity categories as complete explanations of student responses. They believe that pointing out systemic racism is enough to develop insight. They view emotional responses as confessions rather than data. They interpret objections as avoidance rather than inquiry.
Teaching about race is not the same as teaching about race explain About race. It is not enough to have strong convictions, an anti-racist syllabus, or readings that challenge dominant narratives. Teaching about race effectively, humanely, and rigorously is adaptive work. It requires attention to the sense-making skills adults bring to the classroom, the emotional and cognitive demands of confronting unfamiliar histories, and the complex identity threats that discussions of racism can raise.
Unfortunately, many college faculty are asked to lead these conversations without any formal preparation in adult learning theory, without much practice in facilitating difficult conversations, and without much practice in practicing racial literacy skills. Graduate programs rarely include courses on how adults learn, how to hold tension effectively, or how to differentiate instruction for learners at different stages of development. Teacher development programs often focus on teaching tools, strategies, or curriculum design rather than on the psychological and relational competencies needed to teach race well.
The result is that many teachers default to one of two equally ineffective approaches: avoidin which fear of error or conflict leads teachers to sanitize or eliminate discussions about race altogether; or Overkillin which teachers prematurely push students into discomfort, reframe struggle as resistance, or identify identity categories as agents of understanding. Both approaches harm learning. Ironically, both approaches contribute to the narrative that DEI is coercive, dogmatic, or intellectually fragile.
misunderstanding discomfort
A common mistake in teaching about race and racism is to view discomfort as a goal of learning rather than a byproduct. Discomfort occurs when students are faced with unfamiliar history or grapple with the effects of structural racism. But causing discomfort without further reflection is uninstructive. In fact, adult learning research shows that when learners don’t understand Why they feel uncomfortable, or when they interpret it as personal indictment They often shut down, shift, or retreat into a state of defense rather than information.
Barbara Larrivee’s work on reflective teaching practice emphasizes adults’ deepening of reflective abilities no when they lose their temper, but when they can connect Feel the meaning. Tyrone Howard is particularly aware that reflective practice around race is emotionally demanding and must be established, especially for students with little or no prior engagement with race analysis.
Research by Deborah Helsing, Annie Howell, Robert Kegan, and Lisa Lahey shows that adults only grow when they are able to safely examine their assumptions, rather than being forced to expose their emotions without support structures. Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Martin Linsky’s concept of “holding environments” emphasizes the importance of creating a space that is strong enough to accommodate tensions and flexible enough to accommodate learner development.
When teachers lack this foundation, discomfort may be misread as resistance, and resistance may be seen as evidence of vulnerability that warrants no further questioning. The learning process breaks down.
Identity is background, not destiny
Another pitfall that has been exposed in some cases and escalated into public controversy is the assumption that students’ reactions can be explained entirely by race or gender identity. While identity determines perspective, it does not predetermine perspective. H. Richard Milner IV has always believed that classroom discussions about race must be thoughtful, contextual, and connected to students’ lived realities, structural inequalities, and institutional power.
Treating students as exemplifications of demographic categories rather than complex thinkers with diverse histories and meaning-making abilities undermines trust and dulls otherwise nuanced conversations. It also prevents dissent and the intellectual engagement we should be cultivating. Students should be questioned in class, disagreements scrutinized rather than punished, and identity viewed as a lens rather than a verdict.
The real risk: We’re giving evidence to DEI’s critics
Teachers who teach about race work in a political climate where the stakes are extremely high. White House executive orders and state laws across the country have limited what can be taught about race. Public trust in higher education is declining. DEI offices are being demolished.
In this case, when a classroom collapses, the consequences extend far beyond the confines of a single course. They reinforce public misunderstandings about DEI, encourage efforts to overturn equity-centered policies, and undermine institutional commitments to students becoming democratic citizens in multiracial societies.
Conservative media has built a profitable outrage economy out of these events, some real and some exaggerated. Every time a classroom implodes, the anti-DEI movement grows stronger, with new examples affirming pre-existing narratives: DEI is dogma, DEI is coercion, DEI is emotional manipulation, DEI is identity reductionism.
But these explanations are not the inevitable result of race instruction; They are the avoidable consequences of poorly designed learning environments and teachers’ unexamined assumptions. They describe DEI at its worst as if it were DEI as a whole. And colleges, by failing to teach race well, continue to provide critics of DEI with the evidence they need.
make pivot
Adults do not grow when they are humiliated, cornered, or silenced by shame. Teachers grow when they make their reasoning visible, invite criticism, and create structured environments in which difficult emotions can be examined rather than weaponized. When students encounter challenges, they learn in ways that help them make sense of their experiences, not in ways that reinforce fears or defenses.
Through experimenting, making mistakes, and learning with colleagues working on adaptive adult learning, I have discovered that effective teaching about race requires several related commitments:
Teaching Transparency: Making our own assumptions, reasoning, and uncertainties visible so that students understand the purpose and process of learning.
Shared inquiry framework: Establish norms that differentiate between exploration and blame to help students understand emotional responses rather than weaponize them.
Challenges in developing alignment: Recognize that students enter school with different and complex abilities and design learning opportunities that suit them while moving them forward.
Treat objections as data: Don’t understand pushback as avoidance, but rather as information that needs clarification, exploration, or more realistic contextualization.
When teachers live up to these commitments, difficult conversations become less of a thing to endure and more of an opportunity for insight. Discomfort is natural, not imposed. Identity becomes background, not destiny. Students stay on the job long enough to learn important things.
If colleges and universities want students to think critically about history, identity, power, and inequality, they must invest in preparing teachers to do this work. This means teacher development focused on adult learning, racial literacy, adaptive teaching, and facilitating complex intergroup dialogue, not just compliance training or a list of “do’s and don’ts.” This means recognizing that teaching about race is a complex pedagogical endeavor, not a box to be checked.
Without institutional support from university leaders, faculty will continue to be ill-prepared to teach topics that are considered too politically controversial—even though this is important for developing civic-minded, informed citizens who can engage in productive dialogue with people with radically different perspectives and life experiences.
A call for higher education
The recent controversies at Colorado State University, Texas A&M, or those yet to be reported should not deter colleges and universities (or PK-12 schools) from teaching about race, nor should they cause them to abandon teachers who are committed to doing so responsibly. If this moment helps us take a more rigorous, developmental, and humane approach to teaching about race and racism, it will do something important. It may challenge how we teach about race better than many of us do.
