Chapter 11: Campus Unrest in American Higher Education: Challenges and Opportunities for Strategic Diversity Leadership

In response to a wide array of challenges and concerns, we have seen a surge of student protests across college and university campuses. This is arguably part of a larger watershed moment – a moment punctuated by increasingly vocal students and protests, administrative responses to issues of institutional racism and insensitivity, and community-wide efforts to mobilize the pursuit of a more inclusive campus climate. In order to create more inclusive campus climates that value diverse voices, experiences, and perspectives, this chapter highlights the importance of strategic diversity leadership (Williams, 2013) in higher education. Moreover, this chapter provides an overview of these campus protests and syntheses of the scholarly literature in the areas of crisis leadership, diversity and inclusive leadership, and crisis diversity leadership. Distilling various lessons from recent diversity crises across higher education, this chapter concludes with five suggested practices for taking a coordinated, proactive, and intentional approach to leading during these tumultuous times. The authors argue that proactively incorporating strategic diversity leadership into everyday leadership practices is essential for colleges and universities to be successful in this current environment.