DEI goes on defense as universities shutter diversity offices, ban ‘poisonous ideology’

Diversity, equity and inclusion programs are crumbling under the weight of state pressure, legal threats and a 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. Their actions include eliminating DEI offices, banning diversity statements and laying off staff, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education’s “The 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.” “It doesn’t really fix any problems. It doesn’t work.”

The vast majority of the shutdowns are in conservative-leaning states. Officials have used executive orders, legislation, state board of education policies or budget cutbacks to target what Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis calls “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 after the State Board of Education’s vote in January to prohibit DEI expenditures at the 28 state colleges. 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 school, 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 scaled back or shuttered their diversity initiatives and offices.

• Utah: The University of Utah and Weber State University shut down their equity, diversity and inclusion divisions and stopped using diversity statements in hiring after Gov. Spencer Cox signed anti-DEI legislation in January.

Next up: The University of North Carolina. 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 has also been deployed in Wyoming. Last week, the University of Wyoming announced 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,” University of Wyoming President Ed Seidel said 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.

The DEI rollbacks are in conservative-leaning states, with a few exceptions.

Last month, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology abandoned its requirement that faculty job candidates submit diversity statements, a hurdle critics condemned 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 voted 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 Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat who said 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 in the custody of Minneapolis police.

About 67% of U.S. universities “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.”

The American Association of University Professors reported that from 2021 to 2023, “more than one hundred 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,” Laura Sanchez, a sociology professor at Bowling Green State University, and Meredith Gilbertson, an associate teaching professor at Bowling Green, said in an April post on the association’s website.

Advocates for DEI aren’t fighting only state legislatures. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down “race conscious” admissions criteria in a case against Harvard University and UNC. Some universities started seeking 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 or simply the name has changed.

At Ashland University in Ohio, officials changed the office of diversity, equity and inclusion last year to the office of community and belonging.

Texas state Sen. Brandon Creighton, a Republican, told 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 and Israel’s declaration of war in the Gaza Strip. Many DEI principles, such as viewing society as an epic struggle between the “oppressed” and “oppressor,” have been on full display at 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 worldview — 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 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 Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican.

He noted that the mandatory diversity statements have been criticized on the left, including by 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.”