Those diversity, equity and inclusion programs that were all the rage in academia are falling like dominoes, crumbling under the weight of state pressure, legal threats and the growing sense that dividing people by race is doing more harm than good on college campuses.
At least 158 colleges in 22 states have scaled back their DEI footprints since January 2023, cutbacks that include eliminating DEI offices, banning diversity statements, and laying off staff, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Assault on DEI” tracker.
“I think the reason for this is simple: DEI has been proven to be not just very divisive and malign, but it causes dissension,” said Mike Gonzalez, Heritage Foundation senior fellow and co-author of the newly released book “Next Gen Marxism” (Encounter). “It doesn’t really fix any problems. It doesn’t work.”
It’s also wildly unpopular with Republicans. The vast majority of the shutdowns have occurred in red states in reaction to executive orders, legislation, state board of education policies, or budget cutbacks targeting what Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis refers to as “discrimination, exclusion and indoctrination.”
States where DEI has been hit the hardest include:
• Florida: The University of Florida and other public institutions moved to shut down their DEI offices and eliminate DEI-related job positions following the Florida Board of Education’s vote in January to prohibit DEI expenditures at the 28 state colleges. The vote came after Mr. DeSantis signed legislation in May 2023 banning state spending for DEI and diversity statements in hiring and admissions.
“These niche subjects like critical race theory and other types of DEI-infused courses and majors — Florida’s getting out of that game,” said Mr. DeSantis, a Republican. “If you want to do things like gender ideology, go to Berkeley.”
• Texas: The University of Texas at Austin, the state’s flagship college, eliminated about 60 DEI-related jobs this year and closed its Division of Campus and Community Engagement and its Gender and Sexuality Center in response to legislation signed by Gov. Greg Abbott last year banning public DEI offices in higher education and mandatory diversity training.
More than 50 state universities, including the 13-campus University of Texas system and the four-campus University of Houston system, have reacted by scaling back or shuttering their diversity initiatives and offices.
• Utah: The University of Utah and Weber State University shut down their equity, diversity and inclusion divisions and ended the use of diversity statements in hiring after Gov. Spencer Cox signed anti-DEI legislation in January.
Next up: The University of North Carolina, where the Board of Governors is poised to scuttle the 16-campus system’s DEI programs at its Wednesday meeting, less than two weeks after the UNC-Chapel Hill board voted to shift $2.3 million in DEI funding to public safety.
The defunding mechanism also has been deployed in states like Wyoming. The University of Wyoming announced last week that it would close its Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion after the Republican-led Legislature cut $1.73 million from its budget.
The bill included a footnote saying no funding may be used for the DEI office starting July 1.
“We received a strong message from the state’s elected officials to change our approach to DEI issues,” said University of Wyoming President Ed Seidel in a May 10 statement.
Other states where universities are rolling back DEI initiatives include Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.
While most of the DEI rollbacks are happening in red states, there are a few exceptions.
Last month, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology abandoned its requirement for faculty job candidates to submit diversity statements, a hurdle condemned by critics as an ideological litmus test.
“We can build an inclusive environment in many ways, but compelled statements impinge on freedom of expression, and they don’t work,” MIT President Sally Kornbluth said in a May 5 statement.
In December, the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents stunned onlookers when it reversed its DEI stance, voting to cap DEI hiring for three years and restructure DEI initiatives as part of a deal with Republican legislators that included an $800 million bump in funding.
Wisconsin Republicans, who control both legislative houses, pushed through the agreement over the objections of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who said afterward he was “disappointed and frustrated” with the outcome.
Mr. Evers said he expected “that every individual who promised in this process that the important work of building diversity, equity and inclusion and making sure our campuses are welcoming and work for everyone would not be diminished by this action.”
The principles of DEI can be traced as far back as the affirmative-action programs of the 1960s, but the phenomenon took off during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and riots spurred by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
About 67% of U.S. universities currently “require students to take courses in DEI — an ideology that promotes race-based discrimination — just to graduate,” said the conservative Goldwater Institute.
In other words, nobody expects DEI to disappear without a fight.
“It’s going to be a protracted battle. We shouldn’t kid ourselves,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “The left is not going to take this lying down. They’re going to fight this, and they’re going to try to have their cake and eat it, too, and get things in a roundabout way and find loopholes.”
Battling the anti-DEI tide is the American Association of University Professors, which said that between 2021-23, “more than one hundred and fifty bills were introduced in state legislatures seeking to actively undermine academic freedom and university autonomy.”
“We know that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts are under direct and sustained attack across U.S. colleges and universities,” said Laura Sanchez, a sociology professor at Bowling Green University, and Meredith Gilbertson, an associate teaching professor at Bowling Green, in an April post on the AAUP website.
Advocates for DEI aren’t just fighting the legislatures. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down “race conscious” admissions criteria in a case against Harvard and UNC, prompting some colleges to seek legal avenues to bypass the decision.
“College presidents are striving to maintain diverse faculty and student bodies by ‘working around’ the affirmative action ban while remaining technically compliant with its legal requirements,” the Bowling Green professors said.
In addition, some universities are rebranding their DEI offices by dropping the “DEI,” raising questions about whether the mission has changed or simply the name.
At Ashland University in Ohio, for example, officials changed the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion last year to the Office of Community and Belonging.
The rebranding phenomenon prompted Texas state Sen. Brandon Creighton, a Republican, to warn university officials that he was “deeply concerned with the possibility that many institutions may choose to merely rename their offices or employee titles.”
“This letter should serve as a notice that this practice is unacceptable,” Mr. Creighton said in his March 26 letter to the chancellor of the University North Texas system.
Calls to dismantle DEI have surged since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians, which prompted Israel to declare war. Many of DEI’s principles, such as viewing society as an epic struggle between the “oppressed” and “oppressor” have been on full display at anti-Israel campus protests.
Timothy Minella, senior fellow at the Goldwater Institute, said the protests show “the logical endpoint of this poisonous ideology.”
“The pro-Palestinian encampments, which really should be called the pro-Hamas or anti-Israel encampments, are the logical outgrowth of this world view — that no matter what the situation, we should be trying to lift up the oppressed class, even if it has committed atrocities,” Mr. Minella said.
He cheered the recent anti-DEI victories in North Carolina, Wyoming and Virginia, where George Mason University and Virginia Commonwealth University rejected proposals for mandatory DEI classes under pressure from Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
He also noted that the mandatory diversity statements in particular have come under fire on the left, including Harvard Law School professor Randall Kennedy, who said in an April 2 op-ed that they “make me wince.”
“Although the battle is far from over,” Mr. Minella said, “these victories show that DEI is on the defensive.”
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.