Editor’s note: We welcome a guest blog post from Dustin Fife, College Librarian at Colorado College Library.
As with so many people who have recently completed a dissertation, I worry/assume that it will not find a broad audience, which is okay. However, there was one aspect of my study that felt so essential to the daily life of higher education that I translated it into this format and have focused on what I believe is a particularly important and illuminating illustration. I spent time with academic library administrators (deans and directors) exploring their experiences with DEIA work and had a key framework reinforced throughout the interviews for better understanding almost everything they do. It will not sound monumental at first, but the lived experiences of the people with whom I worked, along with my own experiences leading libraries and observing campuses, tells me that we have not accepted this reality within our many academic communities. In the shortest terms possible, department chairs, deans, directors, and academic library administrators are institutional middle managers.
Throughout my research project, one quote more than any other captured this sentiment and the reality that the work of these positions is shaped and constrained by positionality. This quote was given by a library dean using the alias Justice, and I began colloquially referring to it as, The Allegory of the Meniscus.
So, one of the vice presidents here…she used to have this great metaphor that she used. She said department chairs, deans in particular, are in what she called meniscus positions. So, you picture the meniscus in the knee, right? It is subject to constant pressure from above and constant pressure from below. And the meniscus’s job is to try to keep things aligned so that the knee doesn’t blow out. And one of the things that you have to ask yourself when you’re a dean is, do I see myself primarily as a representative of the people organizationally below me up to the university administration, or do I see myself primarily as a representative of the administration down to the people organizationally below me? And of course, the reality is you’re both. You’re always both. (p. 25-26)
So, if you do not always accept that the people in these roles are middle managers, or you do not believe that your chair or dean are constrained by their positionality, spend an afternoon thinking of them as a meniscus. Feel that knee grinding and twisting and balancing. Maybe even try to hop around on one leg. This reframing can change how we all conceptualize what is possible in colleges and universities from these positions and lead to more realistic conversations about DEIA work and a bevy of other topics.
Now, before the organizational scholars scoff, I want to say that I know this is not an earthshaking concept. I know that anyone who looks at an organizational chart should realize that these folks are institutional middle managers. But our daily expectations at colleges and universities do not seem to align with this reality and neither did the lived experiences of my interviewees. Interestingly, the library administrators with whom I worked reported having to convince people within their teams that they were middle managers, with all the obligations and constraints that come with that positionality. When one of the interviewees, Quinn, was discussing the frustrations of middle management and being stuck in the middle with her colleagues, she said, “and I’m like, I know, I feel that way too. And they’re like, no, you’re not, you’re the director. And I’m like, no, I have a boss. We’re all in the middle of something” (p. 27).
I asked library administrators what their role is, or should be, in DEIA work and so much of our conversations revolved around the concepts of middle management that I concluded,
Without this middle management framework in mind, it would be hard to truly understand the experiences of the interviewees. Their structural positionality created the opportunities and constraints by which they experience DEIA work…In short, to better understand the experiences of these library administrators with DEIA work and the choices that they make, we must understand that they are institutional middle managers. Accepting this reality, along with the constraints and opportunities provided by this positionality, should create more realistic conversations within libraries about what is and is not possible within DEIA work. (p. 77)
And while this is not a naked attempt to garner sympathy for people who serve in positions like my own, I think it does provide a pathway to greater understanding within educational organizations.
This concept was further reified by the ways that these library leaders comprehended their roles within DEIA work. “The interviewees emphatically conceptualize their role as facilitators, modelers, prioritizers, strategic emphasizers, and allocators. Their narratives focused heavily on actions that enabled or empowered DEIA work through facilitation and modeling” (p. 77-78) and not on controlling DEIA work. This is emblematic of middle management. The most successful middle managers make things happen for other people by removing barriers and communicating vision.
While this research study was not intended to focus entirely on middle management and DEIA work among library administrators, middle management was a key factor once the stories were collected and analyzed. However, this dissertation also relays so much more about the experiences of these library leaders. They believe that DEIA work is inherently library work and that it is their job to prioritize, enable, and fund it. They believe that hiring processes and policies are one of the best ways for them to influence the culture of DEIA work and the general culture of the institution. They also identified that DEIA work is culture work. Shay summed this up well when they said, “the [DEIA] work is culture work, and it’s always been culture work” and culture work just takes time (p. 45). These voices were paramount to the study and add so much to our understanding of how library leaders experience DEIA work, especially as a phenomenology during the upheaval of 2025 as the Trump Administration worked to nullify and undo diversity, equity, and inclusion work from generations of people.
Regardless, the purpose of this discussion is not to minimize the role of these leaders or diminish their importance. Another thing that was made utterly clear by the interviewees was that for DEIA initiatives to be successful, they needed intentional support from people in these positions, which is true of many types of initiatives in my experience and should not come as a surprise. These constraints do not make leaders any less responsible; however, it is much easier to run an obstacle course with a map of the obstacles. Accepting that chairs, directors, deans, and library administrators are institutional middle managers and do sit in “meniscus positions” helps to chart a map of some of the most important obstacles.
Fife, D. (2026). Diversity, equity, inclusion & access, middle management, and facilitating change in academic libraries during a time of disruption: A phenomenological study of the experience of academic library administrators (Order No. 32788361). Available from Publicly Available Content Database. (3366955209). Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/diversity-equity-inclusion-amp-access-middle/docview/3366955209/se-2