Did you see the news this week that the Department of Education dropped its appeal in the matter of funding threats if schools didn’t comply with its mandate to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives? The threat was explicit: Comply or lose funding. The response from many institutions was swift: No public challenge. No coordinated resistance. No serious attempt to test the legality or legitimacy of these demands. It has been called “anticipatory obedience.”
And that obedience taught us something or — at the very least — reinforced that which we already know about organizations while also highlighting a potential path forward, but only if we recognize the game we’re in. I’m not sure everyone does; I outline some of that in my post about the potential for weaponizing compliance with WCAG come April.
A scene from the HBO show Succession has been playing on loop in my mind ever since this debacle started and I watched org after org capitulate to what were very clearly unlawful demands (not all of those orgs, but MOST). Logan Roy, patriarch of a media conglomerate family, looks at his children at one point and says, “I love you, but you’re not serious people” (language warning!).
That’s my personal message to higher education, especially organizations that are rhetorically explicit in their commitments and values: Equity. Critical Thinking. Antiracism. Black Lives Matter. No Hate. Etc.
I watched many orgs that are rhetorically explicit buckle immediately with a sense of exasperation because I know what happens in organizations as a result of decisions like this one. We’ll experience a wave of effects, many of them invisible to leaders, but all of them influential and consequential within organizations.
When higher education leaders roll back DEI commitments in response to political threats, they often frame the move as prudence. We hear the familiar (and corporate) language: Protect the institution. Preserve funding. Avoid unnecessary risk. Live to fight another day.
And listen, that’s not new. Dr. Victor Ray’s theory of racialized organizations is instructive here as we consider these dynamics (you can check out a new Substack from Dr. Ray here).
But organizational citizens experience something very different because what we see isn’t caution but surrender, especially knowing that the initial threat was just that: A threat, and an unlawful one.
The Lesson Organizations Teach when they Capitulate
When leadership folds in advance, organizational members draw several conclusions very quickly.
First, we learn (or are reminded) that the institution will not protect its people when values become inconvenient. If leadership will not defend its own stated commitments, it will certainly not defend individual faculty, staff, or students who act in alignment with them. Full stop.
Second, we learn (or are reminded) that the board will not be a backstop. The myth that governance exists to buffer political pressure collapses. If trustees are unwilling to absorb risk, then risk is redistributed downward.
(Here I would argue that the board should never be viewed as a backstop; I think organizational citizens in higher ed should learn way more about governance in their organizations: Who is aligned with which larger social and economic dynamics — including who stands to directly benefit from the integration of new technologies — for example, and if you’d like a great panel on this subject, check out Theory at the Bargaining Table, featuring higher ed scholar Dr. Dominique Baker. You’ll hear some familiar things there, if you’re a reader of this space!)
Third, we learn (or are reminded) that values language is performative. If commitments disappear the moment they cost something, then they were never commitments at all. They were branding.
And finally, we learn (and are reminded!) how to survive in orgs. Faculty, for example, may stop asking hard questions in classrooms. Staff may avoid initiatives that could draw attention. People take the safe route, not because they lack courage themselves but because self-preservation becomes rational under institutional abandonment.
This isn’t a theoretical discussion, my friends; this is how organizational behavior changes.
Responsibility Displacement
Let’s call it what it is, then, as a means of developing a heuristic for understanding the dynamic: Responsibility Displacement.
Responsibility displacement occurs when institutions respond to external pressure by formally withdrawing support for values-based work while informally expecting individuals to continue carrying the moral and social labor associated with those values. The institution preserves itself by shedding responsibility, and individuals absorb the risk without protection.
Under responsibility displacement, the organization keeps its rhetoric while abandoning its duty. DEI becomes something faculty are encouraged to “care about” but not something leadership will defend. Should we attempt to operationalize those commitments individually, we are on our own.
This dynamic is especially corrosive in higher education because faculty are already positioned as the front line. They teach the material. They facilitate difficult conversations. They respond when students raise questions about race, gender, power, and history. When leadership retreats, faculty remain exposed. And aware of it!
What Preemptive Capitulation does to Trust
This moment, for me, is one where I can say pretty firmly that preemptive capitulation is not a contribution to the erosion of trust in an org but rather a full collapse.
Organizational trust depends on a basic assumption: That when people act in good faith on behalf of institutional values, the institution will act in good faith toward them. Capitulation absolutely shatters that assumption.
Once trust is broken, people stop investing discretionary effort. They stop taking risks. They stop believing that their labor serves anything beyond compliance.
They haven’t changed, though; the people are the people. The organization, instead, revealed itself.
The Higher Education Contradiction
Higher education leaders often describe colleges and universities as engines of social change. They speak about preparing students for democratic participation. They celebrate critical thinking, equity, and civic responsibility.
Then, when those values come under pressure, as we witnessed large scale, they fold.
The contradiction is impossible to miss. Institutions that claim to shape society refuse to defend themselves within it. Leaders who frame themselves as stewards of justice behave like managers of risk exposure.
The worst offenders are those with the clearest rhetoric, sadly: We speak fluently about social justice. We name historical harms. We foreground equity in strategic plans. And yet, when faced with a clear white supremacist policy agenda dressed up as fiscal oversight, leadership capitulates.
Not after a fight. Not after a loss. In advance.
That choice signals alignment, whether intended or not. Again, this information is not new; what’s new is the scale at which we witnessed it.
What Leaders Should Understand
Capitulation is not neutral. It is not merely adaptive. But it is very educational and informative.
Organizations teach their members what matters by what they defend. When leaders refuse to contest unjust pressure, they communicate that justice is optional and expendable. Let’s look back to the last episode on authoritarian leadership!
They also ensure long-term damage; they bake it into orgs. Faculty will remember this moment. Staff will recalibrate their labor. Students will sense the dissonance. The institution will become safer (maybe) and intellectually poorer (definitely).
If leaders want colleges and universities to remain places of courage, inquiry, and moral seriousness1, they must accept that values sometimes require confrontation. Risk cannot always be outsourced downward. Boards exist for moments like this; leadership exists for moments like this.
If higher education cannot model principled resistance inside its own walls, it forfeits any claim to shaping the world beyond them.
And organizational citizens will act accordingly.
But if I may, I want to suggest an alternative to what will feel most natural in moments like this one, retreating into safety. Let me clear about something before I go on: For some organizational citizens, what looks like retreat is not disengagement at all but survival, shaped by race, gender, immigration status, employment precarity, or past punishment for speaking up. The room to choose between engagement and withdrawal has always been unevenly distributed, and that unevenness matters here.
This moment calls for a different kind of action, in my mind, one that is structural rather than symbolic. Advocating for meaningful faculty and student representation on governing boards matters, not as advisory voices but as voting participants with access to information, deliberation, and real power.
You can see, though, that this idea isn’t always terribly popular, as evidenced by one system’s attempt to strip students of a voice on their Board of Regents.
Faculty can also document responsibility displacement when it occurs, creating a visible record that makes institutional retreat harder to deny or normalize. Collective action is essential. Individual bravery is easily punished, while coordinated positions taken through departments, senates, and unions are more difficult to isolate or dismiss.
Faculty can continue to press institutions to close the gap between rhetoric and practice by insisting that commitments to equity be tied to explicit protections, clear policies, and shared risk. And when those protections are absent, it is reasonable to recalibrate how labor is offered. Declining unpaid moral labor, refusing to act as the sole carriers of institutional values, and pushing responsibility back toward those with formal authority are not failures of courage. In my view, they are disciplined, strategic responses to an organization that has clarified where its limits currently lie.
And to be clear, those of us with greater institutional protection, whether through tenure, employment status, or social positioning, have a responsibility to use that protection to absorb risk rather than allow it to continue flowing downward.
This feels like a disappointed dad post, and in part, it is. At some point, though, personal disappointment gives way to organizational clarity. It becomes easy to see why decades of organizational research shows rising cynicism and disengagement across workforces. When institutions fail to stand behind their people, people eventually stop standing up for institutions. That response is merely learned behavior.
Still, I am not ready to concede the field. Collective action offers a way to reclaim some of what has been lost; we don’t need to pretend trust still exists, but we can rebuild leverage, representation, and shared responsibility. If higher education is to be more than a performance of values, it will require leaders willing to absorb risk and organizational citizens willing to insist that values are not optional, conditional, convenient, or disposable. Anything less leaves us with simple compliance, hollow language, and institutions that teach precisely the opposite of what they claim to stand for.
I am not sure that they do.
