“People always think that history proceeds in a straight line. It doesn’t. Social attitudes don’t change in a straight line. There’s always a backlash against progressive ideas.”

–feminist author Erica Jong

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This article originally appeared in Museum magazine’s January/February 2025 issue, a benefit of AAM membership. 

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How can museums serve their communities while avoiding culture war skirmishes?

Diversity, equity, and inclusion, aka “DEI,” is the latest battleground in the current round of culture wars. At the national level, that has led to historic court decisions curbing opportunities or funding that appear to favor (or exclude) any protected class. Publicly traded companies are backing off from DEI commitments and training. Colleges and universities are searching for ways to foster diverse student bodies without using race as an admissions criterion. Museums have been targeted by protests or lawsuits related to DEI initiatives ranging from admissions programs to internships. How can museums avoid, or respond to such attacks? What can organizations do, individually and collectively, to continue to serve their communities in ways they feel are just, equitable, and appropriate?

The Challenge

In the 1950s and ’60s, civil rights activists mounted successful campaigns to dismantle laws and practices that explicitly or effectively segregated the US in education, housing, and employment. In the following decades, these efforts expanded to encompass equality of opportunity for people of color generally, women, and people with disabilities. It was clear, however, that merely “leveling the playing field” was not going to make up for inequities created by centuries of discrimination. To close that legacy gap, efforts at the federal level evolved from simply treating applicants equally without regard to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin to taking affirmative action to expand opportunities for minorities. The goal, as captured by a meme that took off in 2012, was to help everyone “see over the fence,” rather than offer them all an equal boost (see image at left.)

Now the US is experiencing the social equivalent of Newton’s Third Law, with a new generation of activists pushing back specifically against the past decade of efforts to advance DEI. Ironically, these arguments are often grounded in the very laws that attempted to erase entrenched disadvantages, contending that actions designed to foster equity of outcome rather than equity of opportunity are themselves discriminating based on protected statuses such as race and gender. Encapsulating this view, in 2024 Elon Musk declared to his 199 million followers on X (formerly Twitter) that “DEI is just another word for racism.”

This new wave of anti-DEI activism quickly racked up a long list of successes with regard to education, grant making, and government assistance. The Supreme Court ruled in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2022) that institutions of higher education can’t take race into account in evaluating applicants, even in the interest of creating a more diverse student body. In 2024, the American Alliance for Equal Rights sued the nonprofit Fearless Fund over its program of awarding small grants to Black women–owned businesses. While the fund settled before the court reached a decision (by promising not to revive the grant program), that case is expected to have a chilling effect on race-based preference in grantmaking more generally. Also in 2024, a federal judge in Texas ruled that the racially based federal assistance provided through the Minority Business Development Agency violated the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution by discriminating against white business owners and directed the program to provide assistance “regardless of race.”

Higher education, already characterized as a bastion of liberal ideology, has been particularly vulnerable to attack. As of spring 2024, over 30 bills designed to curb DEI initiatives at public colleges had been introduced in state legislatures across the US. These efforts have already succeeded in Florida, North and South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Alabama, and Idaho. Arguably the most extreme is a new law in Iowa that not only bans DEI offices in state colleges and universities, but also explicitly prohibits administrators from taking positions on a long list of specific topics, including implicit bias, anti-racism, and social justice.

In the business realm, pressure has been brought to bear by consumers and stockholders, leading John Deere, Lowe’s, Harley-Davidson, and other companies to pull back from DEI training and commitments to DEI values. Some companies have also downplayed or pulled back from their commitment to so-called ESG investing—financially managing funds to improve the environment, social outcomes, and good governance. For-profit companies are facing challenges from the judiciary as well. In 2023, 13 state attorneys general put Fortune 100 companies on notice that they might be subject to legal actions for factoring race into hiring and contracting in their efforts to diversify their workforce.

These high-profile examples have had a chilling effect, leading organizations to effectively self-censor to get ahead of possible legal or legislative actions. Some colleges and universities are preemptively dismantling or downplaying their DEI programs. Even the Society for Human Resource Management, the preeminent association providing training and best practices for HR, announced it was removing “equity” from its equity, inclusion, and diversity efforts. SHRM’s chief human resource officer explained the action, saying, “Because there’s so much lack of certainty around the definition of what equity means, that means it’s a distraction.”

The abundant press about anti-DEI efforts obscures a key fact, however: the majority of these high-profile lawsuits, protests, and actions are driven by a relatively small number of wealthy individuals, lawmakers, and conservative think tanks. Research suggests that public opinion is more nuanced on the topic of DEI. On one hand, 2022 research by Pew found that 82 percent of US adults felt colleges should not consider race or ethnicity in deciding which students to accept, and 2019 polling showed that three-quarters of US adults thought companies should not take race and ethnicity into account when hiring or promoting workers. But other research suggests that the majority of Americans support DEI efforts. Recent public opinion polling by IPSOS and the Washington Post found that 69 percent of Americans approve of affirmative action programs that are designed to hire people underrepresented in the workplace (including racial and ethnic minorities). Tellingly, only 14 percent of respondents said that DEI had personally hurt them.

Some feel that attacks on DEI have peaked, leaving overall efforts to pursue equity of outcomes stronger than ever. Even in the face of pressure, some companies and professional associations are reaffirming their commitments to DEI. College students are protesting attempts by legislators to curtail DEI programs on campus. In Florida, which has topped the leaderboard on state efforts to suppress DEI, the majority of anti-LGBTQ legislation stalled in last year’s legislative session. Recently, a US District Court of Appeals struck down Florida’s Stop WOKE Act, a law banning some mandatory DEI training in the workplace, and one of the earliest salvos in the current conflict. This backlash to the backlash may prove to be a healthy corrective, a signal that “this too shall pass.”

What This Means for Museums

Many college and university museums have been affected by the laws restricting DEI programs in higher education. Others are bound by state laws that affect the operation of any business, for-profit or nonprofit. AAM’s 2024 Snapshot of American Museums suggests that DEI backlash is having a significant impact on the field as a whole. In that survey, one-third of respondents indicated they had experienced some kind of backlash: over 11 percent reported that donors had threatened to withdraw support in response to content related to diversity, race, gender, or sexuality, and nearly 7 percent said government entities had withheld or threatened to withhold funding for similar reasons. Almost 10 percent said educators had requested to preview content their students would see or do during a visit (presumably fearing protests by parents or conflict with district policies), and 5.6 percent said they were constrained by legislation governing what they could do regarding DEI training. Eight museums (2 percent of respondents) were facing lawsuits or threats of lawsuits regarding DEI-related internships, fellowships, or other programs.

Museum people are also worried about what is yet to come. A third of attendees participating in an AAM webinar in September 2024 felt that the current cultural discord could lead to decreased funding from the government and donors; 27 percent were concerned about the risk of public controversy or negative press and the risk of self-censorship.

Fear itself can have a real impact, even if the things we worry about don’t come to pass. For example, the specter of legal action can curb museums’ willingness to take bold, potentially controversial actions. Even if they are confident that they would prevail in court, museum leaders may not want to risk a lawsuit because of the financial costs, time, and attention such actions would divert from museum operations, and from the stress they would impose on staff.

To advance the museum’s values, leaders will have to choose their battles wisely, focusing on effective actions that do the most good while incurring the least harm.

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Sidebars

Museums Might …

• Engage legal counsel to conduct an audit of policies and programs and identify vulnerabilities. Even if a museum does not have access to, or can’t afford, paid council, staff can look for clear exposures (e.g., programs or application processes that may appear to have eligibility components linked to race).
• Assess the museum’s capacity to respond to DEI backlash, whether in the legal system or the court of public opinion.
• Factor potential backlash into planning for potentially controversial exhibitions and programming (e.g., budget for additional communications or legal counsel, or procedures for responding to group protests or individual concerns).
• Lead broad, inclusive discussions with members of the governing authority, leadership, and staff to identify when the museum might want to avoid exposure and when actions core to the museum’s mission and values are worth the risk.
• Consider areas in which they may have leeway regarding DEI decisions. For example, not being beholden to stockholders, private, nonprofit museums can invest their endowments to serve their mission and values as well as their financial needs.
• Review hiring procedures to ensure that DEI processes are effective, are helpful to managers, and cannot be framed as explicit racial quotas.
• Build deep, enduring connections with communities that have been underrepresented and underserved in the past. (See “Cultivating Organic Staff Diversity” sidebar on p. 33.)
• Ensure the physical and psychological safety of staff from potential abuse by visitors in response to the museum’s content. This may involve training, a clearly communicated code of conduct for visitors, emergency response procedures, and support for the mental health and wellbeing of staff.
• Study the data on DEI training programs, and use approaches that are shown to maximize impact on DEI goals while avoiding backlash.
• Be sensitive to language and thoughtfully evaluate terminology that might trigger anti-DEI activists OR alienate marginalized groups. Consider using words like “unity,” “community,” and “belonging,” which resonate across the political spectrum.

Cultivating Organic Staff Diversity

The need for museums to take specific steps to “build diversity” in their board, staff, and audiences is rooted in their history as institutions that, for the most part, were founded and funded by white individuals and centered on a white, Eurocentric approach to their collecting and interpretation. This history, in turn, has resulted in museums creating spaces that people of color may feel are not “for them.” Also driving this gyre, many core museum roles (educators, curators, development, management) are predominantly filled with graduates of academic programs that are themselves disproportionately white.

It can be tempting to break this chain at the proximal link—in the case of staff, through the hiring process. There are two strong arguments against this strategy. As recent events dramatize, structuring recruitment in a way that can be interpreted as reflecting racial preferences may expose museums to backlash, including legal action. And, over the past decade, this approach has failed to create the level of progress the field desires.

It may be both more effective and less contentious to take a more organic approach to building diversity through a museum’s partnerships, collaborations, and relationships. By cultivating meaningful, enduring relationships with groups with deep roots in the communities they want to serve, a museum can come to be seen, and trusted, as a potential employer. BIPOC religious and fraternal organizations, social service groups, community arts groups, and health and wellness centers can be valuable and valued partners in shaping museum programs and services to align with community goals. These relationships, in turn, can help increase the diversity of a museum’s board of trustees, which AAM’s Facing Change initiative has identified as an essential step in DEI practice.

This approach may require organizations to make different choices. Any organization, even the biggest, has limited time, attention, and budget. Cultivating new partnerships may mean giving less time and attention to some historic relationships, or even sunsetting them entirely.

It’s not enough to attract a diverse applicant pool—museums may need to refresh their hiring procedures to remove counterproductive barriers as well. For example, requiring applicants to have a college degree excludes 70 percent of Black job seekers, 80 percent of Latinos, and three-quarters of American Indians and Alaskan Natives. Ensuring position descriptions reflect the training and experience needed to do a job can eliminate some spurious filters. BIPOC Americans are overrepresented in the criminal justice system and, therefore, disproportionately affected by policies that exclude them as job applicants. Museums may want to join the movement to “ban the box,” also known as fair chance hiring, by removing check-box questions about criminal convictions and arrests from applications and delaying background checks until a conditional offer has been made.

Sometimes the most effective strategy in making change is to concentrate on what we can do while quietly working to change the systems that dictate what is not allowed.

Museum Examples

In 2022, a school district served by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, proposed an addition to its contract with the museum: “All services provided by [Organization] under this Agreement will be secular, neutral, and non-ideological in content.” Staff felt this was problematic on several levels. It would seem to exclude showing students any work containing religious imagery (much of the museum’s African and European collections), that conveys or engages with ideology (most of its modern and contemporary art), or that holds any non-neutral perspective (arguably any work of art). In response, the museum negotiated alternative language: “All services provided by [Organization] under this Agreement will be non-dogmatic in content.” Rather than reacting to the district’s proposed language as an attack, staff worked to find mutually acceptable ways to frame what museum education can be at its best: non-dogmatic and able to approach and consider radically different perspectives in a productive learning environment.

 

 

 

 

 

Colonial Williamsburg, the world’s largest US history museum, reaches millions of visitors each year who bring a wide range of perspectives and attitudes toward the history the museum interprets, both on its historic grounds and online through its digital channels. One journalist called the museum “ground zero for all the contradictions and moral conundrums America represents.” To manage these various and conflicting expectations, the museum’s interpreters receive ongoing training from staff historians, including sessions in which they learn how to build on visitors’ own experiences to foster understanding of the past and the present. Using a pedagogical framework based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, interpreters help build a sense of belonging, so that guests feel safe enough to open up to new ideas and potentially uncomfortable thoughts. Skilled interpretation can do the emotional and intellectual work needed to bridge conceptual and ideological divides.

Believing that deep and authentic community engagement inoculates organizations from shifting political viewpoints on DEI, the Mississippi Museum of Art has implemented initiatives that deepen trust with undervalued communities. The museum’s Center for Art & Public Exchange (CAPE) is a think tank that explores issues and tests solutions around how the museum is accessible and relevant to diverse communities. CAPE went to the community and asked what tools people needed to make sense of the artwork, focusing on feedback from underrepresented groups and those in ZIP codes near the museum. The initiative integrated successful pilot practices, including Community Advisory Councils and community co-creation, into the organization as a whole. The initiative has helped the museum reach its goal of being a third place where people can convene and have compassionate civil discourse.

Resources

Museum Best Practices for Managing Controversy, National Coalition Against Censorship
This document is designed to provide museums and other cultural institutions of any size or scope with guidelines that can help manage controversial content and transform controversy into an opportunity to learn about the nature of diverse opinions and an institution’s ability to address them.
ncac.org/resource/museum-best-practices-for-managing-controversy