Charting New Imaginaries for DEI: Lessons from a Capabilities Approach to Justice

Abstract

In the face of ongoing debate surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in higher education, this essay examines the limitations of current DEI frameworks by interrogating the theories of justice on which they are implicitly based. While DEI initiatives aim to address both the symptoms and structural roots of marginalization, they often fall short of realizing transformative change within entrenched institutional dynamics. This essay contends that the justice paradigms most commonly underpinning DEI—rooted in rights-based and utilitarian traditions prevalent in modern liberal institutions—fail to fully engage the conditions necessary for human freedom, flourishing, and self-determination. In response, it advances a capabilities approach to justice as a more expansive framework for understanding and guiding DEI efforts. Emphasizing individuals’ real freedoms to achieve well-being in context, the capabilities approach foregrounds the relational, material, and institutional dimensions of justice. Reframing DEI through this lens, the essay invites higher education professionals to engage in equity work that is not only compliant or symbolic but rooted in the transformation of the conditions that support human and ecological thriving. Rather than offering a definitive model, this intervention aims to animate new questions and practices that expand the horizon of what justice-oriented DEI work in higher education can become.

1. Introduction

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts have become a contested yet persistent feature of the higher education sector’s response to entrenched societal inequities, even as scholars continue to interrogate their efficacy and implications—examining their moral imperatives, institutional enactments, and the consequences of metric-driven implementation (Barnett, 2020; Byrd, 2022; Cumming et al., 2023). Although often framed as vehicles for institutional transformation, DEI efforts have produced uneven results, generating concern. Detractors question their legitimacy altogether, while critical scholars warn of their co-optation and performative whitewashing—where symbolic gestures substitute for structural change.

Such tensions are not just a matter of polarized viewpoints or institutional inertia but signal deeper issues within the conceptual and institutional logics that shape how DEI is conceived and practiced. While practical challenges such as inadequate implementation, limited resources, and political pushback are often invoked to explain the shortcomings of DEI, they fail to account for why even well-resourced, institutionally supported efforts often stall or devolve into symbolic gestures, entrenched bureaucracies, or dynamics that reproduce the very exclusions they aim to address. This was vividly illustrated by the prominent and substantial DEI investment at the University of Michigan and ensuing internal fractures—marked by student disaffection, faculty skepticism, and widespread questions about the program’s legitimacy (Confessore, 2024). This suggests a deeper conceptual misalignment. Despite its increasing visibility, DEI remains conceptually diffuse and under-theorized. As Prasad and Śliwa (2024) argue in their critique of anti-DEI backlash, diversity strategies emerge from varied empirical traditions and cultural contexts, often lacking a coherent theoretical anchor as implemented. This heterogeneity reflects DEI’s pragmatic evolution but also contributes to its vulnerability to both misinterpretation and co-optation. Such ambiguity, we suggest, is not merely a symptom of definitional looseness, but a deeper issue rooted in unexamined normative assumptions about justice and institutional purpose.

As Stein (2021) notes, such dynamics can be understood through the concept of a field imaginary—a term defined by Pease (1990) as the shared “norms, working assumptions, and self-understandings” (p. 3) that shape what is considered legitimate knowledge, how inquiry (or similarly innovation and change) is conducted, and what kinds of problems are seen as worthy of attention. A field imaginary is not a formal doctrine, but a kind of disciplinary unconscious that configures the horizons of possibilities. From this perspective, many DEI initiatives are constrained not simply by their design or persons’ commitment, but by a deeper institutional logic that frames equity work as a technical problem to be solved within existing structures, often stripping it of its political urgency and epistemic complexity—realities that many practitioners know intimately, but that institutional logics tend to marginalize. This helps explain why even well-intentioned DEI efforts are so often depoliticized, co-opted, or rendered symbolically potent yet practically inert. The same dynamics that hollow them out from within also make them especially susceptible to external backlash and rapid institutional retreat.

2. Purpose and Positioning: Where This Paper Intervenes

At its core, then, the conundrum of DEI in higher education is not merely practical but deeply philosophical. In this paper, we argue that seemingly ingrained challenges of DEI reflect the limitations of the justice paradigms that undergird its assumptions in society generally speaking and in the field imaginaries of higher education in particular—paradigms that emphasize individual rights or aggregate outcomes yet often sideline the systemic, material, and epistemic conditions that make equity and flourishing possible. The ways institutions define and pursue equity are shaped by these frameworks, often narrowing the scope of DEI work to compliance, outcomes monitoring, or procedural fairness, rather than substantive transformation. As such, justice frameworks are not abstract theories operating in isolation—they are operative logics that shape the field imaginaries of higher education institutions (HEIs) and their socio-cultural responsibilities.

This issue becomes especially urgent when situated in the broader context of our time: a moment of both rupture and possibility in social, ecological, and institutional life. A growing number of observers question whether contemporary systems—including higher education—are structurally equipped to confront the extractive, unsustainable, and inequitable dynamics in which they are entangled (Andreotti, 2016; la paperson, 2017; Stein, 2021). Within this landscape, HEIs are under intensifying scrutiny: positioned as incubators of innovation and progress, they now face growing public skepticism and internal disillusionment about their role in perpetuating the very conditions they claim to solve.

Whether DEI remains a viable framework for justice work in higher education—or whether it must be significantly reimagined or even transcended—requires renewed critical attention to the conceptual foundations on which it rests. This paper responds to that need by examining the limitations of prevailing DEI frameworks by applying an analysis of the justice paradigms embedded within higher education’s dominant field imaginaries.

As one potential reorientation, we advance the capabilities approach (CA) to justice (Robeyns & Byskov, 2023) as a generative framework for rethinking DEI. Emphasizing the substantive freedoms and social and material arrangements necessary for individuals and communities to achieve well-being, the capabilities approach foregrounds human flourishing as a central concern. Yet its evaluative openness also invites reflection on what—and who—counts in our visions of justice. It opens possibilities for conceptualizing DEI work that centers the lived, material, and epistemic conditions required for fostering just and sustainable futures through new and generative field imaginaries.

Importantly, this paper resists the pull of epistemic certainty by declining to prescribe what field imaginaries ought to be. In keeping with the capabilities approach, we emphasize ongoing, participatory processes for surfacing and interpreting the value-laden foundations of justice. As argued elsewhere (Hatch-Tocaimaza et al., 2025a), institutional responses to justice often default to solutionist logics that marginalize uncertainty, nuance, and relationality—especially amid complex socioecological crises. In contrast, we follow justice and sustainability scholars who caution against “Western illusory notions of solutionism” (p. 185) and call for more situated, adaptive, and praxis-oriented engagements with justice. While we draw on multiple justice theories to interrogate the conceptual foundations of DEI, our aim is not to adjudicate among them or to discount the value of rights-based or utilitarian approaches. These frameworks remain vitally important and continue to offer necessary protections and organizing principles. Rather, we aim to surface the logics they rely on and explore how attending to their limitations might open space for alternative or complementary paradigms to reveal how particular logics shape higher education’s equity work—and to invite deeper, collective inquiry into what might emerge when those logics are critically reimagined.

3. Guiding Question and Structure of the Argument

This paper proceeds from a central inquiry: What becomes possible when diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education are reimagined through a theory of justice that departs from dominant rights-based and utilitarian frameworks—one that instead centers flourishing, sustainability, and epistemic freedom within and beyond prevailing field imaginaries?

To address this question, the paper unfolds in five major sections. First, it outlines the conceptual and practical challenges of DEI in higher education, examining how competing meanings, institutional logics, and normative assumptions have constrained its transformative potential. By situating DEI within a dominant field imaginary shaped by liberal, meritocratic, and managerial rationalities, this section traces how equity work is often depoliticized, instrumentalized, or rendered precarious under the pressures of institutional legitimacy and political backlash.

Building on this premise, the paper then examines how two prevalent normative theories of justice—rights-based and utilitarian—shape the conceptual logics and institutional practices behind these persistent DEI challenges, highlighting how such paradigms both enable and limit justice work. In response, we introduce the capabilities approach as a more expansive framework for justice and explore its foundational tenets, including substantive freedoms, contextual valuation, and the conversion of resources into real opportunities. We then apply this framework to the conceptual and practical challenges of DEI, illustrating how a capabilities lens can open new institutional possibilities for equity, participation, and human flourishing. Finally, the paper concludes by reflecting on the limitations and potential of the capabilities approach, offering provisional directions for research, practice, and institutional change—emphasizing the value of inquiry that is participatory, reflexive, and responsive to the complex realities of justice in higher education.

4. Making Sense of DEI’s Limits: Imaginaries, Assumptions, and Practice

Although DEI is often approached as a practical toolkit for institutional reform—comprising initiatives, metrics, training, and key objectives in strategic plans—it must also be understood as a conceptual phenomenon, one that is shaped by and struggles within the dominant field imaginary of higher education. That is, DEI operates not in a vacuum but within a broader set of institutional logics, values, and epistemologies that define what counts as legitimate knowledge, meaningful change, and credible action. These imaginaries operate similarly to Schütz’s (1962, 1964) notion of stocks of knowledge: socially inherited, taken-for-granted frameworks through which actors interpret and navigate the world. Because stocks of knowledge operate through habitual familiarity and tend to surface only in moments of breakdown—when the limits of established approaches are exposed by a demand for more fundamental transformation, as in the contemporary case of DEI (McGowan et al., 2025)—they help explain the durability of field imaginaries and their resistance to meaningful change. In this light, DEI is not positioned outside or above the institutional structures it seeks to reform but is instead entangled within them—its ambitions shaped and often curtailed by the very norms and political dynamics that necessitate its existence. This contradiction does not simply limit the scope of DEI, it also defines the contours of the field imaginary within which DEI must continually justify its relevance and fight to sustain legitimacy.

The field imaginary of higher education is preserved by dominant assumptions about the purpose of institutions and what constitutes legitimate knowledge. As Stein (2021) argued, this imaginary is not merely a backdrop but an active force that reproduces the university’s investment in settler colonial, capitalist, and racial logics, even within efforts that appear progressive or justice oriented. These logics, as Stein suggested, underwrite the institution’s self-conception as a neutral authority on truth and a site where inclusion can be pursued without disrupting its foundational commitments, allowing inequality to be cast as a problem of access or representation that is addressable through technical solutions that leave the existing structure intact. This field imaginary, shaped by liberal individualism, meritocratic ideals, and market-oriented rationalities, narrows the scope of what DEI can achieve as much as what it can be. While the field imaginary sets the stage for what institutions are willing to recognize as legitimate, the concept and practice of DEI are further shaped by a distinct set of assumptions that inform what justice entails and how it ought to be enacted.

These assumptions are not necessarily explicit, yet they significantly influence how DEI is interpreted, implemented, and appraised. In this paper, we focus on assumptions of justice as they manifest in DEI conceptions and practices. These include beliefs about what will bring about transformational change, whether DEI can be uniformly applied across institutional contexts, and whose experiences are assumed to be adequately and appropriately represented in the scope of DEI. As these assumptions are filtered through dominant institutional logics, DEI is rendered both more palatable and contained while addressing inequity without fundamentally disrupting the systems that produce it. Diversity becomes something to be managed, equity something to be tempered against competing interests, and inclusion something to be extended without altering who or what the institution ultimately serves. Efforts challenging dominant institutional assumptions that prioritize neoliberal logics and deprioritize equity-driven critiques are dismissed as too political, out of the purview of the institution, or are altogether overlooked (Hicks, 2024; McMurray, 2023; Nixon, 2017). As a result, the scope of DEI is narrowed by the limits of what the institution is willing to recognize as valid or important.

4.1. Theoretical Challenges of DEI

The narrowing scope of DEI is intensified by the theoretical instability at the core of DEI itself. It remains a contested and conceptually unstable construct despite its wide invocation across institutions. As a bundled acronym, DEI suggests coherence, yet each component—diversity, equity, and inclusion—carries its own set of meanings, applications, and ideological assumptions. DEI is variably understood as a moral commitment, compliance mechanism, pedagogical approach, or strategic tool for institutional competitiveness. These divergent interpretations are not just differences in emphasis; they reflect deeper tensions in how scholars, practitioners, and policymakers theorize DEI in its aims and effectiveness. Consequently, DEI functions less as a unified concept than as a flexible container that is adaptable to different aims but difficult to pin down. This elasticity enables broad uptake along with conceptual ambiguity, which undermines the clarity of DEI and complicates efforts to evaluate its aims and outcomes. Some scholars see the potential in DEI as a tool for structural transformation and social justice in higher education (Claville, 2024; Smith, 2015), while others critique it as an extension of institutional whiteness or function of neoliberal interests (Abrica & Oliver Andrew, 2024; Mayorga-Gallo, 2019).

The logics of DEI have also been taken up—or alternately motivated—by developments in leadership and organizational theory. For instance, DEI is invoked in enactments of transformational, inclusive, and adaptive leadership, as well as in efforts to drive culture change, enhance strategic responsiveness, and maintain institutional legitimacy through isomorphic practices. These applications often rest on the assumption that DEI can or should catalyze transformation. Yet this assumption frequently collides with the practical realities of implementation—especially when abstract commitments must be enacted across structurally and culturally diverse units. A related assumption contributing to DEI’s conceptual ambiguity is the belief that it adequately encompasses all minoritized experiences, including those related to gender, sexuality, disability, age, and other intersecting dimensions of identity. As a result, DEI is often deployed as an all-purpose frame for justice work, but in doing so can flatten difference, universalize marginality, or reproduce institutional blind spots even as it seeks to redress them. These tensions underscore DEI’s elasticity—its ability to mean many things to many people—which makes it adaptable but also vulnerable to dilution, conceptual looseness, and dysfunction in practice.

4.2. Practical Challenges of DEI

The limitations of DEI as a cohesive conceptual framework do not remain theoretical; rather, these tensions carry into practice where the challenges stem not only from institutional resistance and political opposition but also from the interpretation and operationalization of DEI. Another tacit assumption complicating the practical application of DEI in higher education is the belief that it can be universally applied across campus units and departments, aligning seamlessly with both institutional goals and the specific needs of each area. In many cases, DEI is implemented through models like Inclusive Excellence (IE)—introduced by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U; Williams et al., 2005)—which frames educational excellence and inclusion as mutually reinforcing aims. The IE model encourages institutional leaders to examine systemic, bureaucratic, collegial, political, and symbolic dimensions of organizational behavior to facilitate meaningful change.

Across international contexts, DEI is similarly framed as integral to institutional aims, though strategies and outcomes diverge based on structural and cultural conditions. For instance, Claeys-Kulik et al. (2019), in a report from the European University Association, documented how European HEIs have articulated DEI as a precondition for institutional excellence, emphasizing that inclusive environments support creativity, collaboration, and full participation within the academic community. While many institutions make explicit connections between DEI and goals in research, teaching, and overall institutional advancement, strategies differ widely as they are shaped by each country’s legislative frameworks, welfare systems, and governance structures. The report highlighted the need for a holistic, system-level approach to DEI, cautioning against treating institutions in isolation. Yet, across both U.S. and European contexts, the complexity of implementation reveals cracks in the assumed cohesion of DEI, as varied institutional norms, resources, and practices often complicate alignment across academic and administrative units.

A policy analysis of Canadian colleges further illustrated these tensions, showing that definitions of DEI often appear fragmented or selectively applied, with many institutions invoking only one or two components in ways that dilute its potential as an intersectional and justice-oriented framework (Tamtik & Balasubramaniam, 2024). In Australia, efforts to expand participation in line with global competitiveness goals have increased attainment overall but failed to close longstanding equity gaps, disproportionately benefiting already advantaged groups (Dean, 2024). In another context, Mexico’s intercultural universities were created to expand access to Indigenous students and prioritize a model of culturally relevant and community-based education, yet these institutions have limited autonomy, face chronic underfunding, and experience internal tensions between Indigenous knowledge systems and dominant academic norms (Lloyd, 2024).

Taken together, these cases demonstrate that even as higher education systems across diverse global contexts adopt the language or ethos of DEI, operationalization is constrained by national policy, institutional logics, and hierarchies of power. Navigating these constraints, institutions manifest DEI through partial or symbolic gestures—what some might call “doing what we can”—which become acceptable stand-ins for sustained structural transformation. This pragmatism, often formed from limited resources or political calculation, contributes to uneven implementation and widens the gap between the aspirational rhetoric of DEI and the reality of its application within higher education. Minoritized staff and faculty are frequently positioned at the center of this dissonance, reconciling the institutional push for coherent and productive DEI strategies with the lived complexity and fragmentation of their own units. These individuals are called upon to lead these efforts without adequate resources, authority, or support while also managing the interpersonal, emotional, and political dimensions of their environments, (Jones & Kee, 2021). This labor is often invisible and undervalued, worsened by the frustration of engaging with ineffective allies, as in those who speak the language of social justice but are unwilling to engage in self-reflection or take meaningful action toward equity (Mathew et al., 2023; Sawyer & Waite, 2021). DEI work is not only professionally precarious but personally taxing, especially for those already navigating the burdens of underrepresentation and systemic marginalization (Ahmed, 2012; Squire, 2016; Zamudio-Suarez, 2021).

Even as DEI is elevated as a strategic priority, institutions often fail to provide the infrastructure, protections, or political will needed to support its aims. The burden of advancing equity is offloaded onto marginalized individuals while systems remain largely unchanged. This disjuncture signals a broader shift: the absorption of DEI into bureaucratic and political structures that prioritize institutional image over meaningful transformation. These processes and pressures have reshaped DEI into a performance of commitment and now withdrawal as institutions abandon these efforts to avoid funding repercussions. The shift in focus from advancing justice to managing controversy, resistance, and economic risk demonstrates the dysfunctional nature of this framework. In 2025, guidance from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights directed higher education to dismantle DEI efforts, prompting even the foremost leaders of DEI to divest from multimillion-dollar programs aimed at change (Bianco, 2025); eliminate DEI offices and scholarship programs (The Ohio State University, 2025); and to halt searches for DEI administrators (Ki, 2025). This guidance builds upon the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, functioning as a sweeping expansion of model legislation first circulated by conversative policy organizations in 2023. That legislation has since materialized into state and federal bills seeking to abolish DEI offices, ban diversity-related training, and prohibit identity-conscious considerations in hiring and admissions (Rufo et al., 2023). At the time this essay was written, 129 bills had been introduced across 29 states, and 19 had become law (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2025). These efforts recast DEI as a threat to neutrality, merit, and institutional tradition, further destabilizing already precarious equity work.

The practical limits of DEI are clearest in this paradox. That is, the more DEI is framed as transformative, the more it invites interference from those invested in preserving institutional power. Like overprotective guardians of the institution, detractors react when DEI initiatives are seen to challenge the existing ideological foundations of higher education itself. These reactions show the limits of institutional commitments to equity, revealing that what can be presented as progress can quickly be reframed as problematic. DEI is not only constrained by limited resources or conceptual ambiguity but is actively shaped by the political atmosphere in which it operates. The practical challenges of DEI work, then, cannot be separated from its contested meanings or from the structural conditions that render it simultaneously necessary and precarious. These contradictions cannot be resolved through technical fixes or rhetorical gestures, rather, they require deeper interrogation of the very meanings and assumptions that underlie DEI itself. To better understand how justice is conceptualized within DEI, and how those conceptions shape both its possibilities and limitations, we now return to the central concern of this paper: the normative assumptions about justice that animate DEI efforts in higher education.

5. Mapping Justice Logics: Constraints and Possibilities for DEI Transformation

Contemporary, modernist discussions of justice in policy and institutional life are most often shaped—whether explicitly acknowledged or not—by two dominant philosophical traditions: rights-based and utilitarian (or consequentialist) perspectives (Meyer & Sanklecha, 2016; Miller, 2025). These paradigms quietly structure the assumptions underlying equity efforts in higher education, influencing how institutions define fairness, assign responsibility, and assess progress. A third, still emergent framework—the capabilities approach—offers an expansive, relational view of justice that has only recently begun to gain traction in educational discourse. The following section outlines them in turn, illustrating how they illuminate both the conceptual foundations and the practical limitations of prevailing DEI approaches. Here, we wish to pause at the outset of our analysis and state emphatically that we do not dismiss rights-based or utilitarian justice frameworks. Each separately and together offers indispensable tools for action and theory. Our analysis is necessarily concise and sharp—not to diminish their value, but to surface and examine some of the quieter logics and consequences these frameworks can carry with them.

Lastly, before proceeding, it is helpful to distinguish between normative theories of justice and domains of justice. Normative theories—such as rights-based, consequentialist, or capabilities approaches—offer philosophical accounts of what justice is, what it requires, and how it should be pursued. In contrast, domains of justice refer to the areas of social life where questions of justice arise—such as distributive justice (who gets what), procedural justice (how decisions are made), recognition justice (whose identities are acknowledged), epistemic justice (whose way of knowing is respected), and ecological justice (our responsibilities across generations, species, and more-than-human entities). A given domain can be interpreted through multiple normative lenses, each offering a different account of what justice demands. This distinction aligns with Snauwaert’s (2011) formulation of justice as encompassing multiple interrelated dimensions—including orientation, domain, foundation, and process—each offering different entry points for analyzing justice in educational practice. In this paper, we explore through normative lenses a domain that we think of as the institutional conditions that variously foster or foreclose possible futures, ultimately a form of ‘relational justice’ writ large. In the instance of this paper, to delimit things where we can, these futures refer to possible ways forward through the predicament of contemporary DEI practices and discourse.

5.1. Predominant Theories of Justice in Modernist, Classical Liberal Institutions

The predominance of rights-based and utilitarian justice theories in higher education reflects the influence of modernist and classical liberal traditions, especially Enlightenment political thought, which emphasized the inherent dignity of individuals and the moral or legal entitlements that follow (Miller, 2025). In contemporary theory, rights may be understood as claims, privileges, powers, or immunities—including freedom of expression, due process, and protection from discrimination, among others—often combining these elements into complex legal and moral structures (Wenar, 2023). In higher education, this orientation often appears in compliance frameworks—such as nondiscrimination policies, grievance procedures, or protocols in U.S. HEIs associated with Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which address sex-based discrimination and harassment in federally funded institutions—that aim to uphold formal guarantees of fairness and due process. Similar systems internationally may fall under human rights or equity offices, ombuds services, or national anti-discrimination frameworks. While these mechanisms are essential for protecting individual claims, they can promote a narrow legalistic view that equates the existence of rights with the realization of justice. This can mask deeper structural issues—such as cultural exclusion, epistemic marginalization, or procedural inequity—that fall outside the scope of formal rights enforcement.

Rights-based theories of justice emphasize universal entitlements and institutional obligations to protect individual dignity. Key tenets include the following:

• Justice entails the consistent protection of moral or legal rights, regardless of outcomes.
• Individuals possess inherent dignity and must be treated as ends in themselves.
• Rights serve as constraints on institutional actions, even when those actions might yield beneficial consequences.
• Fairness is assessed by whether procedures respect and uphold these rights equally.

Utilitarian (or more broadly, consequentialist) theories of justice, in contrast, assess the morality of actions or structures based on their outcomes—particularly in terms of promoting collective well-being. Rooted in the moral philosophy of thinkers like Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, utilitarianism classically holds that just policies are those that produce ‘the greatest good for the greatest number.’ Variants of this logic continue to shape public policy, including in higher education, where they underpin cost–benefit analyses, outcomes-based accountability frameworks, and contentious debates over race-conscious admissions and the metrics used to justify diversity efforts (Brown-Nagin, 2005; Vargas-Tamez, 2019). Within DEI work, this reasoning often manifests in efforts to improve aggregate outcomes—such as increasing graduation rates among historically excluded students or enhancing institutional performance through diversity initiatives. Yet, while outcome-oriented, this logic can obscure underlying structural inequities by privileging what is measurable over what is meaningful. In doing so, it risks instrumentalizing equity—valuing it for its contribution to institutional goals rather than recognizing it as intrinsically tied to recognition and dignity.

The core commitments of utilitarian (consequentialist) justice frameworks can be articulated through the following propositions:

• Justice is defined by the consequences of actions or policies.
• The goal is to maximize collective well-being or utility.
• Institutional decisions are justified if they produce the best overall outcomes, even if they disadvantage some.
• Equity is often framed instrumentally, as a means to enhance institutional performance or efficiency.

The historical dominance of rights-based and utilitarian justice frameworks is closely tied to the evolution of liberal democratic institutions—including universities—which adopted administratively legible models aligned with secular governance, market rationality, and expanded access. As Shils (1989) notes, higher education has long-reflected layered and sometimes conflicting strands of liberal thought—from Humboldtian ideals of personal cultivation to Benthamite efficiency—resulting in competing institutional aims. Marginson (2011), drawing on a comparative policy analysis, similarly traces how equity policy in higher education is shaped by contradictory logics, where ideals of fairness and institutional neutrality clash with entrenched status hierarchies and the need for empowered inclusion. Marginson contends that these unresolved tensions compromise efforts toward transformative justice, betraying the deeper contradictions within liberal democratic ideals of modern higher education systems. While a range of justice theories have been advanced in education scholarship—including pluralist and domain-specific models such as Walzer’s spheres of justice, which caution against applying a single distributive logic across contexts (Resh & Sabbagh, 2016)—the field imaginary of higher education remains largely shaped by rights-based and utilitarian logics.

5.2. DEI Through the Lens of Predominant Justice Frames

This section maps common DEI strategies onto two predominant normative theories of justice: rights-based and utilitarian. It does not aim to critique DEI wholesale or prescribe a singular alternative, but rather to clarify how justice logics shape institutional DEI practices—both enabling and constraining their scope. By identifying which assumptions are at work, and how they align with or diverge from these justice theories, the analysis surfaces underlying tensions that might otherwise go unexamined.

While both paradigms offer indispensable contributions to institutional life—ensuring protections or promoting collective well-being—their embedded assumptions can also delimit how equity is conceptualized and enacted. Applying the tenets of these normative justice theories to the conceptual and practical limitations of DEI in higher education offers a critical map of the field’s underlying assumptions. This section draws on those frameworks to examine how justice is imagined and operationalized in institutional DEI practice, thus showing how prevailing approaches are both enabled and constrained by the justice paradigms they implicitly rely on. By illuminating these patterns, the section helps to clarify what is at stake—and what remains obscured—when justice is defined primarily through the lenses of rights or outcomes.

Table 1. How rights-based justice concerns illuminate or limit DEI in higher education.

DEI Challenge	How Rights-Based Justice Illuminates the Issue	Limitations of the Rights-Based Lens
Conceptual
Conceptual Ambiguity and Competing Meanings	Engenders formal protections (e.g., non-discrimination), which shapes DEI as compliance or procedural	Offers little guidance for deeper conceptual clarity or epistemic pluralism
DEI as Transformative—or Reproductive—Force	Supports incremental change via policies and procedures; allows for DEI to be institutionalized without challenging institutional logics	Can treat institutions as neutral, missing critiques of institutional whiteness and systemic harm
DEI as Dysfunctional Heuristic	Helps explain legalistic categories as stand-ins for justice (e.g., protected status, checklists, diversity counts)	Struggles with intersectionality; justice is seen as achieved when rights are granted, not when power is shifted
Practical
Operational Complexity and Institutional Fragmentation	Leads to diffuse and siloed compliance structures that do not translate easily across contexts	Found wanting for integrated or relational approaches needed for cohesive/healthy relational structures
Emotional Labor and Burnout	Helps explain institutional inattention to the burdens borne by individuals—justice is defined as policy presence, not lived experience	Can sidestep the affective and relational dimensions of justice central to transformative DEI work
External Political Pressures	DEI framed through legal rights readily made a flashpoint in policy debates (e.g., affirmative action)	Provides limited protection when legal categories are politically targeted or coercively rolled back
DEI as Target and Tool	Helps explain how institutions use rights language to legitimize themselves and deflect critique	Offers little to interrogate co-optation, symbolic compliance, or the commodification of inclusion

and

Table 2. How utilitarian justice concerns illuminate or limit DEI in higher education.

DEI Challenge	How Utilitarian Justice Illuminates the Issue	Limitations of the Utilitarian Lens
Conceptual
Conceptual Ambiguity and Competing Meanings	Emphasizes measurable outcomes (e.g., representation, success metrics), framing DEI as performance-based	Can treat equity as a technical fix, sidelining values, meaning, or contested meaning of DEI
DEI as Transformative—or Reproductive—Force	Justifies DEI in the case of institutional goals like effectiveness or public image	Limited in challenging structures of oppression; risks reinforcing status quo if “benefits” outweigh disruption
DEI as Dysfunctional Heuristic	Encourages simplified frameworks for measurement and benchmarking	Tends to reduce complex identities and experiences to metrics and anecdotes, erasing nuance and relational depth
Practical
Operational Complexity and Institutional Fragmentation	Offers rationale for allocating DEI resources where they yield observable returns	Can overlook systemic coordination needs; encourages narrow interventions over long-term transformation
Emotional Labor and Burnout	Justifies DEI staffing or programs, especially where they show measurable impact	Can perpetuate the neglect of invisible labor, emotional toll, or organizational improvement efforts that resist easy quantification
External Political Pressures	Can frame DEI as a strategic matter—making the case for equity via economic or reputational gains	Leaves DEI vulnerable to rollback if no longer seen as “worth the cost” or politically advantageous
DEI as Target and Tool	Helps explain how institutions use DEI to attract funding, students, legitimacy	Risks commodifying diversity; treats inclusion as a means to institutional ends

provide a systematic mapping of how rights-based and utilitarian justice paradigms illuminate—but also constrain—responses to the practical challenges of DEI in higher education, as outlined above. The assertions within individual cells are not meant as blanket criticisms of these frameworks; rather, they are best read in relation to the challenges presented in the left column. We recommend reading each row from left to right to follow how these paradigms interact with specific institutional dilemmas. Without this framing, the cells risk being interpreted as isolated claims, rather than as prompts for critical reflection. Following the tables, we briefly comment on a few recurring tensions and patterns that emerge across both paradigms.

5.2.1. Mismatch Between Procedural and Experiential Justice

Many DEI strategies in higher education rest on procedural frameworks—such as Title IX processes, nondiscrimination statements, or campus bias response systems—grounded in rights-based justice. These mechanisms aim to ensure fairness through formal protections and consistent procedures. However, students and staff often experience these processes as opaque, alienating, or retraumatizing, particularly when institutional interests in liability management take precedence over healing or accountability. For example, a student reporting racial harassment may be met with procedural delays, legalistic communications, and uneven follow-up support, leaving them feeling further marginalized despite the “proper” process being followed. This illustrates a disconnect between institutional compliance and lived experience—where justice is enacted as the preservation of rights, but not necessarily as recognition, repair, or relational care. The implication is that institutional reliance on proceduralism reinforces a field imaginary in which justice is equated with due process without necessarily dignity or belonging.

Procedural justice questions can also be linked to broader dynamics of campus climate—an aggregate outcome treated as a proxy for institutional well-being—thus aligning with utilitarian logics that emphasize collective perceptions over individual experience. Leskinen et al. (2022), through a review of climate survey practices, highlight how sexual misconduct and diversity-related assessments are often siloed, obscuring overlapping experiences of harm and limiting the institution’s capacity to address polyvictimization and intersectional injustice comprehensively. Giacomini and Schrage (2020), meanwhile, conceptualize campus conflict not simply as disruption but as a potential site for transformative learning. They offer a framework that integrates conflict resolution with inclusive educational practice, emphasizing agency, relational repair, and structural change. In both articles, equity work operates within a tension—perhaps a necessary one—between procedural rights and the aggregate collective benefit, illustrating how utilitarian and rights-based frames can coexist, complement, or collide in institutional practice.

5.2.2. Equity as Measurable Versus Meaningful

Both rights-based and utilitarian frames reinforce the technocratic framing of equity as something that can be monitored, assessed, and optimized. Institutions may track demographic data, implement bias training modules, or launch strategic diversity plans, all of which are legible to campus members, funders, accreditors, and political stakeholders. This focus on data can overshadow more foundational questions—such as who holds power, whose knowledge is valued, and what true cultural change would require. Utilitarian justice paradigms often frame DEI success in terms of measurable institutional outcomes—retention, graduation rates, or climate survey improvements. These metrics serve administrative logics of accountability and performance, but they rarely map onto the actual conditions experienced by marginalized individuals. For instance, a university may claim success by increasing the enrollment of Black students, even as those students report persistent isolation, tokenism, or lack of culturally relevant support. Staff tasked with DEI may face excessive burdens of representation or invisible emotional labor, with little institutional recognition unless their work produces demonstrable gains in performance metrics. This misalignment reflects a field imaginary where equity is subordinated to institutional utility—useful when it yields visible returns, expendable when it does not.

Another example comes from efforts to “close equity gaps” in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), which often focus on individual student performance without interrogating how curricula, pedagogy, or faculty culture perpetuate exclusion. In this context, what counts as “progress” is defined by what is countable. The implication is a field imaginary that privileges institutional credibility over relational change—where justice is demonstrated through metrics rather than embodied in everyday practices. Nonetheless, this dynamic is evolving, particularly through sustained attention from major funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), which has emphasized the importance of broadening participation and meaningfully diversifying the STEM fields by requiring grant applicants to address the broader impacts of their research.

This emphasis has engendered considerable advocacy and pushback alike, and the shifting narrative surrounding NSF funding, broader impacts, and public accountability is emblematic of how justice frames show up in the academy, broadly speaking. For instance, rights-based logics often surface through appeals to academic freedom, equitable opportunity, and the protection of individual autonomy in defining STEM research goals (Telliel & Chen, 2024; Efimov et al., 2024). At the same time, utilitarian assumptions are evident in the emphasis on demonstrable societal benefit, representational gains, and institutional responsiveness—where justice is justified through its perceived impact on the public good (Carter-Sowell et al., 2023). These underlying logics structure how equity efforts are framed: as either a matter of procedural fairness and freedom from coercion, or as a vehicle for producing measurable, scalable benefit. What remain less visible in this discourse are justice paradigms grounded in relationality, recognition, or lived transformation—frameworks that are harder to capture through metrics but essential to cultivating deep, structural change.

Taken together, these themes expose how DEI practices and discourses—though often well-intentioned—remain circumscribed by justice paradigms that prioritize formalism, performance, and institutional risk management. They reveal a field imaginary in which equity is pursued to the extent that it aligns with dominant norms of governance and accountability. Reimagining DEI through more expansive logics of justice invites institutional actors to move beyond what is currently administratively legible or politically expedient, and toward forms of equity work rooted in relationality, transformation, and epistemic pluralism. These orientations—central to the capabilities approach introduced below—reappear in the conclusions, where we revisit their implications through illustrative scenarios and situated possibilities for practice and research.

5.3. A Capabilities Approach to Justice

A capabilities approach to justice offers an alternative to prevailing rights-based and utilitarian paradigms by reorienting attention toward the substantive freedoms individuals have to lead lives they have reason to value. The capabilities approach to justice was developed initially by economist and philosopher Amartya Sen (1999) and later elaborated by philosopher Martha Nussbaum (2011), who proposed a more defined set of central capabilities as a basis for evaluating justice. This normative framework shifts the focus of justice from formal entitlements (a hallmark of rights-based theories) or aggregate outcomes (central to utilitarian reasoning) to the substantive freedoms individuals have to be who and do what they consider meaningful. Justice, from this perspective, is understood not merely in terms of formal guarantees or aggregate benefits, but by whether individuals and communities are genuinely enabled to flourish within their specific social, institutional, and material conditions.

Sen introduced the capabilities approach as a critique of welfare economics and utilitarian models, which he argued often obscure the actual lives people can lead by focusing narrowly on income, utility, or resource distribution (Chiappero-Martinetti et al., 2015). Nussbaum extended the framework by proposing a list of central human capabilities—such as bodily health, practical reason, affiliation, and control over one’s environment—as a basis for assessing justice and well-being. Both versions insist that freedom is not simply about formal choice but about the conditions and supports that make meaningful choice possible. In this framework, capabilities refer to the substantive opportunities people have to achieve well-being, while functionings denote the actual beings and doings that individuals realize in their lives.

The capabilities approach has since traveled across disciplines—engaging development studies, education, disability theory, feminist ethics, and more—gaining traction as a normative and evaluative framework for understanding injustice in relational, context-sensitive terms. In education and youth development, for instance, scholars such as Walker (2003) and Hart et al. (2014) have drawn on the capabilities approach to reimagine equity in terms of what learners and young people are genuinely able to do and become, and how educational and social institutions continually shape themselves to enable those possibilities.

While interpretations of the capabilities approach vary (Byskov, 2018; Robeyns, 2017; Robeyns & Byskov, 2023), most accounts converge on several foundational commitments:

• Substantive freedom as justice: Justice centers on individuals’ capabilities—their real freedoms to achieve valuable functionings—rather than simply formal rights or access to resources.
• Conversion sensitivity: What people can do with available means (such as income, education, or services) depends on conversion factors—personal, social, and environmental conditions that affect the transformation of resources into actual opportunities.
• Plural and contextual valuation: The approach recognizes a plurality of valued doings and beings, emphasizing that relevant capabilities should be selected with attention to context, cultural diversity, and participatory deliberation.
• Means–ends distinction: Justice requires distinguishing between means (resources, rights, goods) and ends (capabilities and functionings), with priority given to the latter as surer indicators of enduring well-being.
• Normative individualism with relational insight: While the individual remains the central unit of moral concern, capabilities are shaped and sustained through relational, collective, intergenerational, and institutional dynamics.
• Open framework, not fixed doctrine: The capabilities approach is best understood as a normative framework rather than a complete theory. It can be adapted to diverse contexts, incorporating additional ethical, political, or cultural commitments as needed.

Empirical applications of CA have emphasized both its normative richness but also the challenges of translating it into institutional policy and practice (Chiappero-Martinetti et al., 2015). Despite a growing body of work, the capabilities approach remains underutilized within higher education research in spite of the promise we posit it has for analyzing institutional structures, policy logics, and field imaginaries in ways that attend to individual agency and systemic conditions as mutually constitutive. This gap presents both a challenge and an opportunity: the challenge lies in translating CA’s normative depth into actionable insights within complex organizations, while the opportunity lies in its openness as a framework—offering a flexible, value-sensitive orientation that can be adapted to new domains of justice-oriented inquiry.

5.4. DEI Through the Lens of a Capabilities Approach to Justice

A capabilities approach to justice holds particular promise for rethinking DEI work in higher education because it foregrounds not only who is included but under what conditions they are enabled to thrive. It prompts institutional agents and the public to ask not just whether students are admitted or retained, but whether they are respected, resourced, and supported in ways that allow them to develop agency, belonging, and meaningful participation that makes alternative futures possible. Moreover, it offers a vocabulary for understanding how inequity is shaped not only by what individuals lack, but by how systems—through design, culture, and epistemic norms—limit or enable their capacities. Revisiting the DEI challenges we have explored in this paper, we offer the following observations about how a CA lens might respond, which are summarized in

Table 3. How the capabilities approach responds to DEI challenges in higher education.

DEI Challenge	Affordances of a Capabilities Approach to Justice
Conceptual
Conceptual Ambiguity and Competing Meanings	Offers a coherent normative anchor: justice as expanding people’s real freedoms to live and thrive; moves beyond access or outcomes to ask what people are genuinely able to do and be
DEI as Transformative—or Reproductive—Force	Emphasizes transformation of institutional conditions, not just inclusion within existing systems; supports critique of epistemic injustice and the need to reimagine the purposes of higher education
DEI as Dysfunctional Heuristic	Resists flattening identities by attending to context-specific capabilities and conversion factors; Prioritizes intersectionality and holistic well-being over checklist compliance
Practical
Operational Complexity and Institutional Fragmentation	Encourages attention to institutional arrangements and how they enable or constrain flourishing; supports differentiated, relational approaches across contexts
Emotional Labor and Burnout	Recognizes emotional, epistemic, and relational dimensions of labor as part of justice; calls for institutional arrangements that sustain the well-being of equity workers and those most affected
External Political Pressures	Frames justice in terms of human flourishing and freedoms—language that may be less polarizing than ‘DEI;’ can be mobilized outside of contested bureaucratic labels
DEI as Target and Tool	Shifts focus from symbolic presence to meaningful participation and agency; challenges instrumentalization by foregrounding dignity and the intrinsic value of inclusion

regarding the conceptual and practical challenges of DEI.

5.4.1. A Capabilities Approach Response to Conceptual Challenges of DEI

As discussed, efforts to advance DEI in higher education often struggle with conceptual ambiguity and internal contradictions, leading to fragmented implementation and symbolic, rather than substantive, change. The capabilities approach (CA) to justice offers a powerful corrective—not by prescribing a singular vision of justice, but by recasting the central question from “Who is included?” to “What are people actually able to be and do here?” This framework grounds DEI in a situated ethic of attentiveness, inviting institutions to ask how their policies, cultures, and structures enable or constrain people’s real freedoms to pursue lives they have reason to value.

Rather than viewing justice as a static ideal or outcome to be measured, the CA sees justice as an ongoing, relational process—one that resists flattening DEI into checklists or compliance regimes. This means asking not only whether students or staff are present, but whether they are supported in ways that account for their specific barriers and conversion factors—such as histories of marginalization, epistemic exclusion, or cultural alienation. In this respect, the capabilities approach resonates with and underscores the enduring salience of Stewart’s (2017) call to move beyond DEI’s focus on access and representation toward transformation that reckons with power, history, and lived experience.

Crucially, the CA offers a framework for transformation that is non-utopian and non-coercive. It does not rely on abstract ideals or moralizing narratives about what institutions should be. Instead, it proposes an operative reflective mirror—helping institutions examine their own commitments, diagnose systemic constraints, and choose capabilities that align with their mission and communities. This orientation fosters pluralism and ownership, empowering stakeholders to co-define what justice looks like in their own context and to act accordingly.

By inviting institutions to assess policies, workflows, and governance not only by procedural fairness but by their impact on people’s actual capabilities (Hatch-Tocaimaza et al., 2025a), the CA opens space for more participatory, context-sensitive approaches to DEI. It encourages a shift from transactional roles to relational responsibility, from standardized operations to structural responsiveness, and from performative gestures to a deeper engagement with epistemic and material justice. In short, the CA does not just clarify what DEI means—it helps reimagine what it can do.

5.4.2. A Capabilities Approach Response to Practical Challenges of DEI

While conceptual clarity is essential, the real test of any justice framework lies in its capacity to address on-the-ground challenges. The capabilities approach (CA) meets this challenge by offering a vocabulary and orientation for rethinking how higher education institutions organize their daily work, allocate resources, and make decisions in ways that expand human freedom and flourishing. It does so not by offering a blueprint, but by inviting institutions to examine where current practices fall short—and what it would mean to do otherwise (Stein et al., 2022). For instance, rather than merely identifying gaps in representation or outcomes, institutions might adapt tools such as equity audits into capability mapping processes—assessing how curriculum design, student services, or advising structures enable or constrain capabilities like voice, affiliation, or practical reason.

Importantly, the CA addresses a persistent blind spot in DEI work: the emotional and epistemic labor borne by minoritized faculty, staff, and students. Rather than treating this labor as invisible or incidental, the CA recognizes it as central to institutional well-being—and demands workflows, evaluation systems, and recognition practices that reflect its value. This could mean reimagining tenure and promotion criteria to credit community-based knowledge work or creating formal pathways for students to co-lead equity initiatives that shape institutional culture.

The CA also offers a pragmatic response to external pressures and political polarization. By framing justice as the expansion of real freedoms —rather than as alignment with polarizing ideological agendas—it can open space for broad(er)-based support, including among constituencies wary of DEI language. A capabilities-based approach is not less ambitious; it is more tactically agile. It invites institutions to align their work with publicly resonant values—like student thriving, opportunity, and dignity—while still advancing structural transformation.

Finally, the CA counters the instrumentalization of DEI for branding, compliance, or competitive advantage. It shifts the metric of success from presence to participation, from compliance to capability. Institutions are not just asked whether they include diverse individuals, but whether those individuals are meaningfully empowered to shape the institution itself. The CA equips higher education with a framework for redesigning policies, workflows, and governance to prioritize dignity, pluralism, and participatory justice. It responds not only to abstract questions of meaning, but to the real constraints, pressures, and tensions that define equity work in today’s landscape.

5.4.3. Cautions and Considerations

While the CA provides a robust framework for addressing DEI challenges, it is not without limitations. Its conceptual strength lies in flexibility, but that same openness can make it difficult to specify which capabilities matter most in complex, pluralistic contexts. Much of the literature wrestles with how to translate CA into actionable institutional policies without oversimplifying its critical edge, particularly regarding how to identify and prioritize capabilities, balance individual and institutional responsibilities, and avoid reducing rich evaluative frameworks into administratively legible metrics (Chiappero-Martinetti et al., 2015; Gale & Molla, 2014). And like other justice paradigms, it is still vulnerable to co-optation: capabilities discourse risks being diluted into language of “well-being” or “success” that serves institutional branding more than transformation. Even as it offers a less polarizing language than traditional DEI rhetoric, the CA’s emphasis on human flourishing and reflexive deliberation may still be dismissed as ideological in politically contested environments. Finally, unless explicitly integrated, CA does not inherently center race, colonialism, or structural power—though it is compatible with these critiques. This limitation has led some scholars to advocate for intersectional or decolonial extensions of CA, or to combine it with frameworks like epistemic justice, participatory parity, or indigenous knowledge systems (Kalafatis et al., 2019; Klein, 2016; Watene, 2016).

Still, the capabilities approach opens a generative space for reimagining justice in higher education—one that moves beyond compliance and performance metrics to ask whether individuals and communities are substantively free to pursue lives of dignity, meaning, and interdependence. Central to this approach is its emphasis on participatory, situated processes for determining which capabilities matter, for whom, and under what conditions—challenging the routine embedding of normative assumptions into bureaucratic scripts (Diamond & Gomez, 2023). Rather than applying fixed equity models, a CA demands that justice claims be answerable through reflexive engagement with impacted communities. This orientation aligns with principles of just governance by advancing epistemic plurality, relational accountability, and institutional praxis. It envisions universities not merely as implementers of equity policy, but as reflexive actors in a broader public project—where justice is co-constructed and enacted through sustained deliberation across scholarly, academic, and operational domains.

6. Concluding Remarks

If a capabilities approach reframes justice as an ongoing process of scrutinizing and advocating for the conditions and freedoms needed for people to live lives they have reason to value, then DEI practice, too, must shift. This is not a prescriptive claim, but a call for rethinking the kinds of questions, methods, and institutional roles that justice work demands. In what follows, we offer several illustrative examples—not as models, but as situated glimpses of praxis-informed possibilities that reflect themes we have explored in related work: including analyses of campus climate as a just sustainability challenge (Hatch-Tocaimaza et al., 2025a), the potential of boundary-spanning approaches to DEI and sustainability leadership (Hatch-Tocaimaza et al., 2025b), and how DEI efforts are entangled with institutional logics and hegemonic Whiteness, undermining their transformative potential (Abrica & Oliver Andrew, 2024).

Whether a capabilities approach proves resonant or generative for DEI in higher education remains an open and compelling question. To date, its application in this space has been limited, with few studies examining how capabilities-informed frameworks might inform institutional change and professional practice (Hatch-Tocaimaza et al., 2025a). Yet, this very underdevelopment is part of its value—because it calls for working in ways that are as relational, contextual, and ethically attuned as the injustices they seek to address.

This may look like DEI professionals co-creating inquiry spaces with students and staff—through listening sessions, community asset mapping, or participatory action research—to surface shared concerns and aspirations. These spaces are not meant to diagnose deficits, but to collectively name what thriving could mean in a specific place. Climate surveys, for instance, might be redesigned not simply to gauge perceptions but to elicit stories and foster relational patterns that empower people to act, speak, belong, and contribute in ways that align with their values and needs (Museus et al., 2017).

In some institutions, this work could take shape through cross-functional collaborations that dissolve the boundaries between DEI, sustainability, and student affairs—working together to address how food insecurity, ecological disconnection, or mental health struggles disproportionately affect marginalized students and shape their access to belonging and opportunity. But unlike conventional DEI approaches that may address these issues through programmatic interventions or resource allocation alone, a capabilities perspective calls for inquiry and resource mobilization around the institutional conditions and cultural logics that constrain flourishing (Hatch-Tocaimaza et al., 2025a). It asks not just who is affected, but what relational, material, and ecological conditions make certain harms predictable—and what futures are foreclosed as a result. Importantly, the only way to know the answer to such questions is to try to alter the conditions that make other futures possible.

In revisiting professional development, the work may include designing co-facilitated workshops on improvement science or organizing multi-stakeholder learning cohorts that experiment with shared governance practices through action research and case work. These are not programmatic solutions as much as invitations to see our roles as co-inquirers navigating unfolding, place-based predicaments—where our responsibilities emerge in relation to others, rather than from institutional scripts alone.

The same invitation holds for educational research itself. In contrast to dominant approaches that emphasize empirical analysis leading to implications—what Stein et al. (2022) call the “description-prescription” model that predominates in educational research (p. 145)—a capabilities perspective invites reflexive, participatory, and situated inquiry. This includes not only what questions are asked, but how they are framed, for whom, and to what ends (Hurtado, 2023). In this light, research and practice are not readily disentangled. Taking the capabilities approach seriously calls for a holistic vision of DEI scholarship—one that purposefully integrates research, creative activity, teaching, service, outreach and other forms of academic labor (Boyer et al., 2016) that shape working conditions and, in turn, learning environments and campus climates. Such integration not only troubles dominant incentive structures around how academic labor is practiced but also motivates their transformation: from privileging a narrow scholarship of discovery toward a genuine, equal valuing of integrative, applied, pedagogical, and community-engaged forms. This move is not coercive or ideological but, drawing from Andreotti’s (2016) framing, flows from deliberative efforts to attend to the conditions that shape the desires, relations, and futures people mobilize to create. It warrants broad scholarly and professional engagement across the field—involving journals, presses, professional associations, and funding agencies—in addition to reckoning with the institutional logics and organizational habits (Diamond & Gomez, 2023; la paperson, 2017) that operate within higher education institutions themselves. As should be plainly apparent, these questions do not typically fall within the bounds of conventional DEI research or practice. Yet, they illustrate how a capabilities approach to justice recasts the kinds of questions, commitments, and collaborations that might be integrated into the evolving field imaginary of what DEI can and should entail.

What would it mean to treat justice work not as a project to complete but as a mode of inhabiting institutions otherwise? This is the practical question that remains. And while we do not claim to offer its answer, we suggest that committing to its pursuit—with humility, persistence, and collective imagination—is itself a practice worth institutionalizing.