A new report from Defending Education found that hundreds of colleges and universities still have active DEI programs in place.
Over 300 DEI offices and programs are active across 253 higher education institutions in the United States, according to a new report by the organization Defending Education.
Out of the 253 colleges and universities examined in the report, 16 institutions have removed DEI webpages or shut down a DEI office, while 26 higher education institutions have simply rebranded their DEI offices. The report, released Thursday morning, found that 237 universities still have institution-wide DEI offices and/or programs in operation.
In total, the Defending Education report found 356 active DEI offices and programs. The researcher found active DEI units at every single Ivy League university, along with the University of Chicago, Stanford, Duke, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Additionally, the report discovered that nearly every single campus in the University of California system — Berkley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Francisco, Santa Barbra, and Santa Cruz — has at least one active DEI office or division.
“In a few cases, institutions appear to have moved DEI staff and programming under its ‘equal opportunity’ and ‘civil rights’ offices,” reads the report titled “University DEI: Status Quo and Rebrands.” As opposed to using “DEI,” some universities have opted for alternatives such as “access,” “advocacy,” “belonging,” “community,” and “resilience.”
“Despite an unequivocal directive from the White House to cease ‘DEI’ practices, too many institutions of higher education have sought to send their race essentialism underground by renaming or reorganizing race-based initiatives and DEI offices,” Defending Education vice president and legal fellow Sarah Parshall Perry told National Review. “Our work in this space will not cease until American higher education is returned to the promise of color-blindness that the civil rights leaders of the 1960’s sought to secure.”
At the University of Tulsa, for example, the “Office for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” is now called the “Office for Resilience and Belonging.” The previous and current versions of the webpage are nearly identical, although the current webpage has removed the words “equity,” “inclusion,” and “diverse.” One sentence that previously said “diverse backgrounds and cultures” now references “different backgrounds and cultures.”
Similarly, Kansas State University appears to have renamed its “Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging” website to simply “Access and Opportunity.” An archived version of the website and its current website have very few differences, and both versions state that “Kansas State University has long maintained a demonstrable commitment to diversity and inclusion.” In Louisiana, McNeese State University seems to have rebranded its “Office of Inclusive Excellence” as the “Office of Campus Compliance and Civility.” Both the archived and current version of the website commit to promoting a campus culture that “embraces diversity, enables inclusion, and provides equity.”
Although the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California has removed its “Office of Diversity and Inclusion” webpage, the university seems to have transformed its “Office of Diversity and Inclusion” into the “The USC Culture Journey.” Two individuals previously listed as staff members in the “Office of Diversity and Inclusion” are now described as working on the “Culture Team.” A “Culture Journey” website on “Unifying Values” states that “we value different experiences, cultures, identities, and perspectives,” and “we do not allow stereotypes, biases and assumptions to create barriers to inclusion.” Its section on “open communication” states that “we communicate with respect and cultural sensitivity,” “we do not accept blaming, judging, ignorance, [or] bias,” and “we do not contradict the vision.”
Some universities maintain several DEI units across their graduate schools and departments.
For example, Defending Education found that, at New York University, the College of Dentistry, Grossman School of Medicine, Tandon School of Engineering, Stern School of Business, and Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development each has a DEI office. Other NYU schools have centers or programs dedicated to DEI, such as the law school’s Meltzer Center for for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging.
The Grossman School of Medicine advertises that it bolsters its diversity by “actively recruiting individuals from groups that are underrepresented in medicine and encouraging them to apply for employment,” and it further “conduct[s] residency diversity outreach at conferences for the Student National Medical Association and the Latino Medical Student Association.”
At the faculty level, the NYU medical school hosts “unconscious bias training. . . to assist in the faculty hiring and resident selection processes,” and it has a “team provides guidance and supports efforts to recruit diverse talent for faculty positions.”
Additionally, NYU has an “Office of Global Inclusion” that is “proud to foster a university-wide culture of access, equity, and inclusion.” On its website, the Global Inclusion office has page dedicated to “Anti-Racism Education, Programs, and Resources” that provides a link to the office’s “Anti-Racism Education Resource List,” which recommends engaging with material such as the The 1619 Project, The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates, White Fragility by Robin D’Angelo, Policing the Black Man by Angela Davis, and How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi. On its “Toolkits and Resources” page, the Global Inclusion office has resources on “pronouns,” “trans inclusive practices in the classroom,” and “principles for teaching sensitive content.” In its guidance to faculty and staff titled “addressing contemporary issues and crises in the classroom or office,” NYU states the following:
Address the current climate and the tremendous ongoing impact this climate is having on our community—this includes making reference to the differential impacts as they may pertain to people of color, immigrant communities, women, persons who are socio-economically disenfranchised, members of our disability communities, LGBTQ+ communities, religious communities, communities of shared ancestry or ethnicity, etc., depending on the nature of the current event or climate. . .
Give specific examples of resources that are proactive in dismantling practices of racism, colonialism, ethnocentrism, xenophobia, religious oppression, transphobia, etc.”
The University of Virginia, the University of Michigan, the University of Louisville, and West Virginia University have removed at least one but not all of their respective DEI websites, according to the report.
Defending Education created a publicly available non-exhaustive list of DEI offices and departments at higher-education institutions that will be continuously updated.
“Defending Education’s investigation into the current state of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at American colleges and universities is the only resource of its kind in the nation,” Parshall Perry told National Review.