Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Access in the Real World

Appropriately, a book launch for The Community Solution: The Power of Radical Cooperation in Higher Education by Michael Horowitz, a maverick in higher education who looked for unusual examples to figure out how to create a system of cooperative private not‑for‑profit universities, was held in a private room at Chicago’s Frontera Grill.

Appropriate partly because Horowitz is a foodie. And because he’s been married to fellow foodie, Jeannie Gutierrez, for nearly 40 years and they are big fans of real Mexican food. But mostly, it’s because Horowitz learned some things from the celebrity chef Rick Bayless about not trying to be, in the cliché parlance of higher ed, all things to all people and instead focusing on a niche. That lesson—do one thing well for a specific community instead of promising everything to everyone—is exactly what higher ed needs if we’re serious about diversity, equity, inclusion and access.

When people at Frontera Grill asked for chips and salsa, Bayless said, “Nope. That’s not how Mexicans eat.” After a lot of nerdy research, he wanted to create an authentic dining experience. This isn’t surprising for someone with a serious academic bent. Bayless spent six years doing doctoral work in anthropological linguistics at the University of Michigan. Then he turned that deep interest in culture toward something, arguably, more fun: the food of Mexico.

Frontera Grill opened in 1987, featuring regional Mexican cuisine. Two years later he created a fine‑dining version, Topolobampo, which snagged a Michelin star. Bayless has earned all the usual honors and awards for his cooking, and he’s a champion of sustainable agriculture and local farms.

Along the way, naturally, he attracted haters. A celebrated white guy cooking “authentic” Mexican food was a no‑no. He was called a whole bunch of names. Questions about cultural ownership and who gets to be seen as an authority are real, especially in a city like Chicago, but I’m less interested in relitigating that than in what’s actually happening on the ground. Bayless created a foundation that supports organic farming and another that assists Chicago’s theater companies.

At the book party, we talked about something that really excites him: his nonprofit training program, Impact Culinary Training. Chatting with him reinforced how hosting the TCS event at Frontera Grill made sense. Both organizations are about real access and equity in education, and not just in theory. Impact offers what Bayless calls a “boot camp” for 18‑ to 24‑year‑olds on Chicago’s West Side. It’s free and teaches young people who, as Bayless said, “have not yet gotten into trouble” essential kitchen skills. He asks them, “Are you ready to change your life?” and then helps make that possible.

Students are outfitted with all the equipment they’ll need to go right into internships at high‑end Chicago restaurants. They learn food handling and preparation, equipment identification, knife skills, product identification, storage, cooking methods and nutrition. More important, they’re mentored into the kind of professionalism that helps them succeed in life and then placed in four-week paid internships. Many have gone on to rise to the top of the fancy-food pyramid. Impact is one version of what we say we want in higher ed: real access, targeted support and a clear pathway to meaningful work.

Bayless meets with students and brings in other well‑known chefs. Foundations aren’t eager to fund it, he says, because it’s not scalable, at least in Chicago. But like TCS, Impact provides a model that could be adapted if more people knew about it and more chefs were as committed to—and I’m just going to keep using the words—diversity, equity and inclusion.

The next day, I did something I wouldn’t have opted for, but I (try to) go with the flow: a bus tour with friends who have lived in Chicago for decades guided by an “amateur historian.” After a first career publishing scholarly books in American history, to say I was skeptical—well, let’s not go there. As a product of academe, I can wax snobby.

But some years ago, I devoured Margo Jefferson’s beautiful memoir, Negroland, about growing up in Bronzeville, so, OK, I tagged along to Hyde Park to board a Mahogany Tours bus that started at the DuSable Museum of Black History, designed by famed Chicago architect Daniel Burnham. His words are a good reminder for these times, especially in higher ed: “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency.”

The guide, Shermann “Dilla” Thomas, took us on a two-hour tour of the historical neighborhood to show us why he believes “everything dope about America comes from Chicago.” Implicit in how he frames his argument is this: America’s rise to greatness on many fronts is largely thanks to the lives and work of Black people.

Dilla is the kind of person who proves to students who say, “I hate history,” that they just haven’t had the right teachers or read the right books. A man of passion and appetite, his love for Chicago comes through in everything from da Bears (duh) to urging us all to get the peach cobbler with homemade vanilla ice cream at Shawn Michelle’s.

Most striking to me is his ability to explain historical forces at play, to point out details in architecture crafted by Black hands and to serve as a reminder to academics how telling the stories of real people is how we understand the world. In front of the church that held the open-casket funeral of a Chicago teenager in 1955, he argued that the child’s brave mother had helped catalyzed the civil rights movement. He explained how a certain fancy-pants university that forever warned its students not to cross the street to Cottage Grove actually led to the gutting of commerce in a once‑thriving community. This is pedagogy, not tourism.

Dilla shared that his daughter had just been admitted to law school and his wife was going for a Ph.D. As a proud Black man, he said, his ego couldn’t take it for her—smarter, as he’d told us repeatedly—to have more education than him. So, he plans to return for a master’s.

Too many academics get the real beaten out of them as they adopt the jargon of the guild in order to be accepted in academe. They contort themselves to fit into archaic forms and write in ways that are no longer recognizably human, let alone voice-driven. I only hope Dilla ends up with an adviser who will encourage him to write the book I know only he could produce.

Flying back home after an action‑packed few days, I thought about what connected these experiences—a system of not-for-profit universities that reject some of what holds higher ed back, a specialized workforce training program that educates the underserved and a nerdy dude without a fancy-pants pedigree who brings American history to vivid life.

I found myself wondering about the snobbery of higher ed, our preoccupation with pedigrees and professionalization, and what the real work of diversity, equity and inclusion looks like in the real world. These educational enterprises are more than just a dessert. They’re the kind of meal many hunger for.