The contemporary national and higher education contexts have experienced a wave of backlash, pushback, and retrenchment in the efforts to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). These terms that once invoked discourse that offered hope and promise as it related to how they would be operationalized in colleges, schools, universities, and workforce settings has now been deemed at best divisive and at worst counter productive to uniting the States of America. Thus, this session will shed light on how seasoned higher education scholars and administrators have navigated and continue to negotiate the terrain as it relates to advancing their administrative and scholarly engagements in environments. And, how they have ultimately shifted their foci to foreground Belonging when the focus on DEI left them at a crossroads.