In America today, educators like me—Black, gay, agnostic, and married to an immigrant—are being told to disappear in K-12 and higher education. We have been erased and excluded through policies that have banned or limited the discussion of race and diversity, equity, and inclusion, and have been abandoned by state and district leaders who choose to remain comfortably silent rather than engage in conversations about systemic racism. In times like these, courageous leadership matters not just in theory but in action. When I consider what it means to be a bold K-12 and higher education leader, I can’t help but think back to when I was a doctoral student and first met James Ryan.
Recently, the U.S. Department of Education demanded the resignation of Ryan, the University of Virginia’s president, after investigating whether the school complied with executive orders banning DEI. But before Ryan was pushed out of UVA, he was the dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education during my time studying there. I had come to Harvard not to find my leadership voice but to refine it.
During that time, I became part of a group of about five master’s and doctoral students who approached the dean with a request: We wanted to meet with Ryan to discuss how the school of education could broaden the political and ideological spectrum of invited speakers. We believed that there needed to be not just demographic diversity in the speakers the school invited but also diversity of thought and ideology—left, right, and in-between—if the school was truly committed to equity.
What struck me most about Ryan during that meeting wasn’t how he listened but how he led. He didn’t step away when the conversation got uncomfortable. He leaned in and kept listening. He didn’t deflect or rush to resolve tension. He made space for disagreement, asked hard questions, and followed through. Over time, because Ryan clearly articulated why it was important to include a politically diverse range of guest speakers, the graduate school’s leadership team and student committees invited more varied voices to the campus to model and encourage inclusive dialogue. That is the sort of leadership both K-12 and higher education need: principled enough to take a stand, open enough to invite tension, and brave enough to hold it.
Courageous education leadership in K-12 and higher education doesn’t look like grandstanding. It looks like listening when it would be easier to deflect. It looks like choosing integrity over position. This isn’t a time to retreat into neutrality. When equity is under attack, a school leader’s silence is complicit. James Baldwin once said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” In the years since my time as a graduate student, I have frequently reflected on that lesson while working with district leaders to craft student-centered policies. That’s what this moment demands of educational leaders, especially as educators—from university presidents to superintendents to classroom teachers—are being punished for standing up for marginalized communities.
So, what should educators in both P-12 and higher education do? Act, organize, and refuse to vanish.
The following aren’t just strategies, they are acts of resistance. They are how educators build public schools that stand even when their leaders are ejected. To cultivate an equitable school system that lasts beyond the duration of their leadership, K-12 education leaders can:
- Embed equity into every system. Leaders shouldn’t silo equity into a single office or role in a school district. It should be a lens through which decisions about curriculum, hiring, funding, and discipline are made. For example, if a district is rewriting its strategic plan, equity shouldn’t be a goal but a framework that considers who’s at the table, how priorities are set, and how resources are allocated.
- Protect one another in hostile climates. Isolation is a tactic used to suppress. Solidarity turns resistance into strategy. In other words, when a teacher or school board member is targeted by anti-equity sentiment, principals and superintendents must be vocal in their support, both privately and publicly.
- Speak truth, even when it’s coded. In some environments, saying “DEI” may cost an individual political capital and substantial federal funding. While the stakes are most definitely high for education leaders under the current administration (where we’re seeing federal funding held and an executive order proclaiming much of equity-focused education “illegal and discriminatory”), that doesn’t mean they stop speaking. It means learning how to speak with greater wisdom and precision. For instance, teaching the full history of our nation, even when terms like “systemic racism” are banned, can still be done through literature, firsthand accounts, and community narratives.
- Train for resilience, not just survival. Survival is reactive. Resilience is strategic. Equip teams to withstand the backlash without burning out. This might look like providing access to mental health resources, peer networks, and legal training in staff-development plans.
- Document everything. Maintain clear records of equity, focused initiatives, feedback, sessions, and community partnerships so they can’t be erased when leadership changes. When the tide shifts, records become the receipts. They protect people. They preserve truth. They prepare educators for what’s next.
Some might say James Ryan acquiesced by stepping down as the University of Virginia’s president. That’s not what I saw. It wasn’t an act of retreat, nor did it mark defeat. I saw a leader standing firm. It cost him his job but not his values. And there are other leaders K-12 educators can look to as models. Just recently, my husband, who serves as an executive director at a local university, was asked to remove any wording related to DEI from the school’s website. He refused to take part in the erasure, an act of defiance that puts his job at risk.
As my late fraternity brother, U.S. Rep. John Lewis, urged us to make “good trouble, necessary trouble,” that’s exactly what Ryan did. He challenged political pressure with moral conviction, choosing to leave his position rather than abandon his principles. (Ryan will stay on at UVA as a professor.)
If Ryan was willing to lose his university presidency rather than compromise the values that support equity, then those of us who remain must ask: What are we willing to risk for what’s right?
