Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Peace? Making Visible Epistemic Exceptionalism in Peacebuilding Discourse

The murder of George Floyd on 25 May 2020, at the hands of a Minnesota police officer in the United States propelled social justice-related discourses and the normative agenda of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) to the fore in media, academia, and popular culture. Even during a heightened moment of structural violence, Global North peacebuilding institutions located in Turtle Island (North America) remained largely silent in critical debates around the potentials and limits of DEI in confronting structural oppression in its own context, while promoting ‘inclusive peace’ in conflicts located in the Global South. This article problematizes this dynamic, drawing on decolonial theories in IR and peace studies to signal the tension between DEI literature and decolonial theory to develop the concept of epistemic exceptionalism that makes visible the bypassing of coloniality within peace studies and its production of knowledge. It argues that critically relating DEI to peacebuilding discourse (beyond a performative box-ticking exercise) creates the emancipatory potential to reframe and address structural conflicts in the Global North.