University of Richmond senior researches higher education’s responses to racial justice demands and federal mandates

The murder of George Floyd in May 2020 set off a racial reckoning at colleges and universities that still was reverberating when Abigail Green matriculated at the University of Richmond in fall 2022. In the last 16 months, Green has watched many colleges and universities work to adapt to President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive orders to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in higher education. These two phenomena bookended her undergraduate experience and inspired her Jepson School of Leadership Studies honors thesis, “A Critical Discourse Analysis of Racial Justice in Virginia Higher Education.”

“I wanted to understand how, after years of building up to it, DEI in higher education was dismantled by a couple of executive orders,” said Green, a senior majoring in leadership studies; philosophy, politics, economics, and law (PPEL); and Italian studies.

Guided by her thesis advisor, professor of education and leadership studies Dr. Tom Shields, she set up a study of four public universities in Virginia: the College of William & Mary, George Mason University, Longwood University, and the University of Virginia.

Specifically, she looked for emerging themes in university presidents’ and provosts’ statements to their communities in the academic years following Floyd’s murder and following Trump’s dismantling of DEI.

“I used a critical discourse analysis methodology,” Green said. “By that I mean that I identified and labeled text segments in college officials’ statements according to themes. I noticed more general appeals to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in the post-George Floyd period. Institutions were reevaluating their histories as a means of showing institutional progress.

“After the dismantling of DEI, the appeals didn’t disappear, but they shifted in their framing. Instead of talking about demographic diversity, such as race, ethnicity, and gender, higher education leaders began talking about ideological diversity. Now institutions are appealing to our collective identities and how our differences manifest in the way we think about things.” 

Researching education issues has been a constant of Green’s undergraduate experience. In 2023, she completed a directed study of parental rights in Virginia K12 public schools, focusing on the city of Richmond and four surrounding counties. Leadership studies and PPEL professor Dr. Thad Williamson and assistant professor of elementary education Dr. Patricia Stohr Hunt advised her.

The Jepson School awarded Green a Burrus Fellowship to support a credit-bearing internship with education nonprofit TNTP in summer 2025. She worked on a team that researched education systems in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Mississippi County, Arkansas.

“We identified these communities as having a lot of entry-level jobs, but low-achieving students,” she said. “I helped write policy briefs that suggested how the schools could align their curriculums more closely with employers’ and colleges’ goals.”

In addition to researching education issues, the senior has some teaching experience. She taught children English and helped lead a summer school program at the Assisi International School in Italy during summer 2024. At Richmond, she has worked as a tutor at the Weinstein Learning Center and as an Italian drill instructor.

Recently named a Jepson Scholar, Green received an all-expenses-paid scholarship to enroll in a master’s program in higher education at the University of Oxford. This will be her first step toward earning a doctorate, she said.

“I have a passion for research,” she said, “but it was faculty mentorship that solidified my goal to become a college professor. Faculty mentors in my three majors have had an important impact on my life.”