Dear Colleagues,
This month marks one year since President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order aimed at dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts across our institutions. For many of us, that anniversary is not merely symbolic—it reflects a year of intensified scrutiny, uncertainty, and real consequences for the work we lead, and the communities we serve.
There is no question that this past year has tested diversity professionals in unprecedented ways. Longstanding frameworks have been challenged. Legal and political shifts have narrowed definitions of discrimination and weakened enforcement mechanisms that once helped safeguard equitable outcomes. The Department of Justice’s elimination of disparate impact protections under Title VI is only one example of how decades of civil rights progress can be deliberately unraveled, not by denying intent, but by ignoring impact.
And yet, we are still here.
We are here because this work has never been about compliance alone. It is about fairness, opportunity, and human dignity. It is ensuring that access to higher education, and the ability to thrive once there, is not determined by race, background, or circumstance. Those commitments do not disappear because they are politically inconvenient.
Over the past year, many of you have carried this work forward under extraordinary pressure. You have navigated ambiguity while supporting faculty, staff, and students who feel increasingly vulnerable. You have continued to build pathways for success even as the ground beneath those pathways has shifted. That perseverance matters.
At NADOHE, we remain rooted in our mission and values for precisely these moments. Our resource guide, Rooted in Mission and Values: A Guide for Advancing Access, Opportunities, and Outcomes in Higher Education, was developed to help leaders move beyond reactive responses and toward durable, systems-based strategies, approaches that endure across political cycles and remain aligned with institutional purpose. It reflects what our members know to be true: equity work is strongest when it is integrated, principled, and collective.
This past year has reinforced another truth as well: none of us can do this work alone. Our strength comes from community, from sharing strategies, naming harm when it occurs, and standing with one another when the work becomes isolating or unsafe. Believing in this mission, and in each other, is not naïve optimism; it is a professional resolve.
As we move into 2026, the path forward will continue to demand clarity, courage, and vigilance. Progress is neither accidental nor guaranteed. But together, grounded in shared values and sustained by community, we will continue to advance access, opportunity, and outcomes—because that is who we are, and that is what higher education requires.
In solidarity,
Paulette Granberry Russell, J.D.
President & CEO, NADOHE