This was supposed to be for professional development for educational staff to help increase their understanding of DEI topics.
Notes From Presentation:
-She is old school DEI where telling people that they don’t see color is a form of her projecting bias on them because they just try to see people as people and she is forcing race issues on them that they do not have. This is actually Dr. Harden supporting a toxic psychological approach to DEI. This is toxic because she is forcing perceptions on people that they do not have and saying that they are an issue when they are not an issue. This is a form a stereotyping and actually one of the major negatives in DEI. DEI is being used to justify stereotyping instead of breaking stereotypes which is what it should focus on.
-Microinvalidation: She negates that other people may have had to pull themselves up from nothing and for them to expect it of others, without any regards to any descriptive things on them is not a form of bias. She makes the assumption that only people that identify as minorities have come from tough situations or lives. This is just more bias that she is clearing showing.
-She assumes that white people have never dealt with racism. White people can be the target of racism. Also many Jewish people look white and yet they continue to experience “racism”. Just another example showing how out of touch she is with what people live through. Many current methods in DEI actually support racism towards people that appear white and it comes from people like her that make assumptions about people based on their looks and not what their lived experiences have been.
-“I can talk about my mama, but you can’t” – she said this at one point, but she does not understand that if something is disrespectful for one person to say about someone then no one, even their kid, she still use the same phrases because they are still disrespectful. No one should have the right to be mean to someone. In group vs. out of group should not matter since we are all human and taking this approach is dehumanizing. If reclaiming words is ok, then changing what a phrase means should just be as equally ok, so people should not have bias against people using phrases that some could view as wrong because language evolves.
So, let’s look at the credentials that Dr. Harden has. Based on her LinkedIn profile she has a BA in Communications, M.Ed. Student Development Administration, and an Ed.D. in Higher Education Policy. The version of the M.Ed. in 1999 that she took fell under the school’s psychology education section of the catalog (P73-74). In the program there was only one DEI related required class, EDUC515 Multicultural Perspectives. In the elective section of the degree there were only 2 courses that were DEI related, CUIN538 Introduction to Mild Disabilities and EDAD559 Women as Transformational Leaders. Each class was worth 3 credits, so at best this was 9 credits out of the required 51 that focused specifically on DEI related topics (17.64%). The other courses may have touched upon some DEI topics, but based on the course descriptions which show the expected learning outcomes, any DEI coverage was missing. One would hope that she would have geared her class projects in that direction, but this is not info that can be found by standard research on either her or the program.
For her Ed.D. in Higher Education Policy, I could not find that degree in the catalog for the year she started school there in 2014. The closest program was in Higher Education Administration which the description said that it would look at “cultural, ethical, and societal issues in higher education” yet of the base required courses for the program none of them specifically focused on these topics. For the electives there were two courses that specifically talked about DEI related subjects and possibly one more course that may have included DEI topics. This program is built weird. It says that there are 60 required credits, but when you add up the different sections it only adds up to 50 credits with only 2 credits being required under the elective section. Catalogs can have mistakes/typos in them. My calculation will go off the program having 60 required credits. At best if she took the two elective courses that covered DEI topics it would be 6 credits out of 60 or 10%. I also looked at the course descriptions for 2018 (one of the years she attended) and verified from their learning outcomes that the courses for the program did not have a DEI focus even though the program had the above description as those topics being a part of it. This program overall would not give someone the qualifications to be an expert on topics related to DEI in higher education.
Also, with either of her degrees she does not include what her thesis was on and this could also give us more insight on to what her expertise could be. This could have been done intentionally if she did these work on topics that are not what she is wanting to focus on.
For work experience she shows nothing before her first leadership position. She was the Director for Multicultural Services and Student Development for 10 years at Highline Community College and Vice President for Diversity at Bellevue College for nearly five years. The problem is without her listing the jobs that led up to her first director position it is unclear if she had the experience she needed in diversity work before she was given that position. Many times in higher ed. people will be given jobs hoping that they will grow into that role without them having experience that directly relates to that position. This allows personal bias to come into play over actual learned abilities. Also, even though the title included the word multicultural services it could just mean it fitting into the overall student body. She also does not provide any job description or highlight any duties or achievements. Without this it is hard to see anything she has actually done. This could lead to people giving her more credit then she deserves in relation to what she actually did just because multicultural was in the job title. The Vice President for Diversity is little better because she gives so little info on the position. She said she influenced policies and practices, but how did she come by this. What types of research or student interactions did she do to come up with her suggestions. She says nothing about working with students directly and it seems like she just did a top down approach which would allow her own personal bias to influence policies and procedures instead of having anything to back what she did. Based off the work experience she has there is nothing to show that she has real experience with populations that fall under DEI topics and job titles do not reflect actual duties or experience. With this public information it can not be said if she could actually be considered a leader on DEI, just that she speaks on the topic and anyone can speak on any topic without actually being an expert on that subject.
It seems like for this presentation the CCCS just brought in someone claiming to be an expert in DEI without any real credentials that could back this up. This conclusion was based off of the presenters LinkedIn profile and if the saying is true that people use LinkedIn to make themselves look better then they really are then Dr. Harden really doesn’t have anything to support her being an expert in DEI.
Overall, I would give this panel an F grade because there were so many issues with her approach and that she was actually sharing worst practices in DEI instead of best practices. The problem is that the people inviting these speakers and most of the people listening to them do not know enough about the larger subject matter to understand the complexities and what is good or bad info.
Dr. Harden’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-yoshiko-harden-44104357/
Seattle University Master of Education Student Development Administration Requirements 1999 academic year: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/bulletinofinformation/164/
Northeastern University Seattle Catalog: https://registrar.northeastern.edu/article/catalog-2014-2015/
Northeastern University Seattle Course Descriptions for 2018: https://nubanner.neu.edu/StudentRegistrationSsb/ssb/courseSearch/courseSearch