\n<\/p>\n
Under repeated threats to their funding, higher ed institutions began to rebrand or shut down cultural centers, Black student resource centers and LGBTQ+ and women\u2019s programs. Many campus diversity officers lost their jobs or were shuffled off to other offices, barred from doing much of the work they were hired for. Some institutions scrapped celebrated traditions such as affinity graduations and campus residential communities geared toward students of certain racial or ethnic backgrounds. Some student groups, like Esperanza, lost university funding because of their identity-based missions.<\/p>\n
In one recent example, the University of Alabama ended two student publications, one focused on women and the other on Black students, citing federal policy concerns. The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga shuttered its Women\u2019s and Gender Equity Center, an LGBTQ center, its Office of Multicultural Affairs, and the Office of Student & Family Engagement, replacing them with a Center for Student Leadership, Engagement and Community. The changes have affected faculty and staff as well as students; earlier this fall, the University of Illinois System banned consideration of race, sex or country of origin not only in financial aid decisions but in hiring, tenure and promotion as well. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s very sad to see a lot of universities fall to their knees,\u201d Luna said. Higher ed institutions \u201care supposed to be the places where the exchange of ideas happen, where leaders are developed and where you\u2019re just taught about how the world objectively is\u00a0\u2026 It\u2019s a very dangerous sign for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
State-level anti-DEI laws have proliferated for several years now, but diversity-related programs and services were dealt a double blow this year when Trump took office.<\/p>\n
On Feb. 14, the Education Department\u2019s Office for Civil Rights issued a Dear Colleague letter declaring race-conscious student programming and resources illegal, based on an expansive interpretation of the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision against considering race in admissions in Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard. It gave colleges and universities 14 days to eliminate such offerings or risk losing their federal funding. A month later, ED launched investigations into 51 colleges for ongoing DEI activity. Federal judges struck down the department\u2019s anti-DEI guidance in April, pausing enforcement, but colleges nonetheless scrambled to review and scrub DEI language from their programs and offices or shutter them altogether.<\/p>\n
Over the summer, the Department of Justice came out with a sweeping guidance memo declaring an even wider set of practices off-limits, including those that use \u201cpotentially unlawful proxies\u201d for race, such as recruiting students from majority-minority geographic areas. In a series of contentious legal battles, the federal government pressured some universities to agree to settlements that included anti-DEI provisions, including bans on race-conscious programs and transgender athletes. For example, the University of Virginia, which the DOJ targeted for DEI practices, recently agreed to quash all DEI programming to maintain federal funding.<\/p>\n
I am a person who still believes, and I will forever believe, that it is important to call it diversity, equity, inclusion, anti-racism.\u201d <\/p>\n
Shaun Harper, founder and chief research scientist at USC\u2019s Race and Equity Center<\/p>\n
All the while, federal agencies have slashed, frozen and stalled billions of dollars in research grants to universities, often for perceived ties to DEI concepts. More than 120 TRIO programs, which support disadvantaged students, also lost their federal funds over alleged DEI connections. And in September, the Education Department abruptly ended grants for many minority-serving institutions, calling such programs\u2014used to fund supports like extra peer mentoring or streamlined STEM programming at colleges with burgeoning minority student populations\u2014\u201cdiscriminatory\u201d and \u201cunconstitutional.\u201d<\/p>\n
States, meanwhile, enacted an unprecedented number of new laws cracking down on DEI: 14 in 12 states, including Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming. That\u2019s double the number of states that passed anti-DEI laws last year.<\/p>\n
A higher education consultant and lawyer in the Washington D.C. area, who asked to remain anonymous, said campus leaders are increasingly asking, \u201cHow do we keep ourselves off the radar? How do we avoid scrutiny from the federal government?\u201d At the same time, they face \u201cincreasingly disgruntled and disappointed communities within who are saying, \u2018We thought you cared about this issue\u2019,\u201d the source said. University leaders have come under \u201cvery real pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Diversity officers and scholars fear that this year\u2019s seismic policy shifts and campus crackdowns on DEI will have ripple effects across academe and beyond.<\/p>\n
Kaleb L. Briscoe, associate professor of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Oklahoma, is concerned that some institutions have responded to DEI bans by limiting what\u2019s taught in the classroom.<\/p>\n
For example, Florida colleges removed hundreds of courses related to race, sex and gender from their general education requirement options. Classes at Texas A&M University that \u201cadvocate race or gender ideology, sexual orientation, or gender identity\u201d now require approval from the university president. And other Texas universities have undertaken reviews of course syllabi and curricula for anything that runs afoul of state or federal DEI bans.<\/p>\n
Curriculum changes that would normally \u201ctake years\u2019 worth of processes\u201d are sometimes happening quickly and without appropriate faculty input, Briscoe said. While proponents of DEI bans often call for viewpoint diversity, \u201cby implementing these bans, you are taking away voices and taking away knowledge\u00a0\u2026 which really counters what they are hoping to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
She also fears a \u201cblue, red, purple divide of education,\u201d where students have different levels of access to certain subject areas or perspectives depending on where they go to college.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are now going to see different people in different states learning and getting access to different things,\u201d she said. \u201cThat is horrible because, knowledge-wise, we should be preparing our students to be productive citizens across difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
What we\u2019re doing is reducing opportunities.”<\/p>\n
Paulette Granberry Russell, president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education<\/p>\n
Shaun Harper, founder and chief research scientist at the University of Southern California\u2019s Race and Equity Center, said he\u2019s mourning a \u201closs of momentum\u201d in improving the experiences and outcomes of underrepresented students, a movement that stretches back to the 1960s.<\/p>\n
He recently visited a campus where \u201cthe Black cultural center still exists in name, but it has no staff. It has no programming. It\u2019s just an empty room,\u201d he said. Harper, who also serves as USC\u2019s Clifford and Betty Allen Chair in Urban Leadership and Provost Professor of Education, Business and Public Policy, said he found a smattering of students still trying to use the space, sitting in the dark and talking. He remembers when the same center was \u201ca light, bright, vibrant space that was rich with culture that had employees\u00a0\u2026 who helped to make it a home away from home.\u201d <\/p>\n
To him, the darkened space was a symbol of what\u2019s been lost.<\/p>\n
Harper said he\u2019s been especially disheartened to see DEI professionals lose their jobs.<\/p>\n
Institutions dismissed \u201cgood, innocent, hard-working people who were expert at bringing campus communities together across racial, religious, ideological and other important divides,\u201d and who pushed for some widely-cared-about issues like pay equity for women and access for students with disabilities, he said. \u201cThe loss of those people has been catastrophic to higher education, to the students that they were serving and to those people\u2019s careers.\u201d<\/p>\n
A former diversity professional at a public higher ed institution in the South told Inside Higher Ed<\/em> that DEI officers were wrestling with the \u201ctrauma,\u201d \u201cshame\u201d and \u201chumiliation\u201d of suffering such a forceful, nationwide rejection.<\/p>\n The ex-diversity officer, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of career repercussions, spent years working to make their institution a more welcoming place for students of color\u2014and it worked, they said. Over their tenure, faculty diversity increased and the percentage of underrepresented students in the university\u2019s entering class more than doubled.<\/p>\n But you wouldn\u2019t know it from looking at the institution\u2019s website, the former diversity officer said. It makes no mention of the diversity office, which was dissolved. The university stripped any evidence of its work, including videos of events and educational programs, data reports and online community platforms. Unlike many of their co-workers, the former diversity officer retained an unrelated position at the institution, but their former role feels like a \u201cscarlet letter\u201d on campus and in the job market, they said.<\/p>\n They worry not only for their colleagues but also for students and faculty members left unserved.<\/p>\n \u201cI can tell you that students of color who had community, don’t,\u201d they said. \u201cThey\u2019re spitting on Black kids, they’re calling them the N-word, and kids don\u2019t know where to go. They don\u2019t know what office is going to support them.\u201d<\/p>\n The former diversity professional believes DEI is officially \u201cdead,\u201d at least as a label.<\/p>\n But \u201cthe underlying work of creating welcoming, diverse, inclusive, supportive cultures on campus and communities is not dead,\u201d they said. The \u201cbenefits of diversity, of inclusion, those are still there. It just can\u2019t be called that.\u201d<\/p>\n Students in Ann Arbor protested the University of Michigan’s decision last spring to close its DEI offices, putting up posters criticizing President Donald Trump and former UM President Santa Ono.<\/p>\n Bill Pugliano\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Harper argued that the work can’t really go on without using the term \u201cDEI.\u201d He believes replacement terms like \u201cculture\u201d and \u201dcommunity\u201d lack specificity in a way that makes them meaningless.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s giving weak sauce,\u201d he said. \u201cI am a person who still believes, and I will forever believe, that it is important to call it diversity, equity, inclusion, anti-racism.\u201d The same goes for \u201cantisemitism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia. It\u2019s important to call those things by their names.\u201d<\/p>\n Whether DEI will continue in some form is an open question currently under debate by current and former DEI officers and researchers. Some retain their optimism; others argue it\u2019s going to take years, even decades, for campus infrastructure to recover from the full extent of this year\u2019s losses\u2014if a comeback is even possible.<\/p>\n The DEI rollbacks mark a retreat from \u201c60-plus years of effort to broaden access and address inequities,\u201d said Paulette Granberry Russell, who\u2019s stepping down as president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education in January after five years at the helm. \u201cSo, do I see this work coming back? Bouncing back? No.\u201d<\/p>\n Regardless of who wins the next election, she believes federal funding cuts and stymied DEI-related research will cause long-lasting damage. She\u2019s spoken with scholars studying issues related to race and gender who have been doxed and threatened, and who fear continuing the work they\u2019ve done for years.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019re doing is reducing opportunities,\u201d Granberry Russell said. \u201cYou\u2019re not going to make that up in two, three, four years.\u201d<\/p>\n But she\u2019s not without hope. She emphasized that a \u201csystems approach\u201d to improving academic outcomes for students\u2014making such work the entire university\u2019s responsibility\u2014could be the next phase of these efforts as diversity offices fade. Doing so would require leaders to express \u201ctheir commitment, which at least at this point, requires a certain amount of courage, given the very heavy-handed\u00a0\u2026 taking away of resources to bring colleges and universities into line,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n A chief diversity officer who lost their job in a state with a DEI ban but now works in the same role at an east coast institution, said they\u2019re doing a \u201cpost-mortem\u201d on where DEI went wrong. They believe the DEI movement might have tried to accomplish too much too fast, without explaining the research behind the practices developed to boost student outcomes.<\/p>\n Practitioners introduced concepts \u201creally new to people\u201d and sometimes \u201cbegan to cancel people quickly\u201d who didn\u2019t get it, said the CDO, who asked to remain anonymous. But \u201cyou can\u2019t run a marathon with people who are not fit. You have to bring them up to where you want them to be. And that requires teaching. It requires patience.\u201d<\/p>\n They noted that the field of DEI grew rapidly in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. Scholarship on improving campus climate flourished, and diversity professionals enjoyed a wide berth to try new strategies to close equity gaps. But it was short-lived. Less than a year into the CDO\u2019s role at their previous institution, the anti-DEI movement gained traction in the state. An anti-DEI law ultimately passed, and the diversity office later closed for good.<\/p>\n \u201cThat great rebirth or Renaissance\u201d was \u201clike a star that just had its last final flash of wonder\u2014and then the death began,\u201d they said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t know at the time that the star was shining brightly to die.\u201d<\/p>\n They believe DEI could be on the brink of a new era, one that rectifies some of its past mistakes and garners more support. \u201cMy fear is that we won\u2019t be given the opportunity to do so,\u201d they said. But they\u2019re confident diversity professionals won\u2019t give up on the programs, practices and strategies they believe students need.<\/p>\n \u201cFear not. Rest up, my friends,\u201d they said. \u201cWe will be back.\u201d<\/p>\n The D.C.-based higher education consultant and lawyer believes DEI isn’t dead; it\u2019s just shifting. Campus DEI work has never been unlawful, they argued, so colleges and universities simply need to emphasize that fact, not scale back their work. They encourage campus leaders to state explicitly that cultural centers and programs are open to all, and to train everyone on campus, including student group leaders, how to frame their programming that way\u2014even though the programs didn\u2019t discriminate in the first place.<\/p>\n \u201cMany times, I’m just trying to remove language that I know is going to draw scrutiny and then trying to offer them a way to continue to live out their values,\u201d they said. \u201cThere may be ways to thematically describe the intended purpose of a program without using an identity marker that really just is a lightning rod in this moment.\u201d<\/p>\n They acknowledged that \u201cthis transition has been really painful\u201d for all invested in diversity, equity and inclusion work.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I think people are resilient,\u201d they said. \u201cThey\u2019re evolving, and they\u2019re trying to figure out a pathway to make the work of universal access and opportunity evergreen.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Under repeated threats to their funding, higher ed institutions began to rebrand or shut down cultural centers, Black student resource centers and LGBTQ+ and women\u2019s programs. Many campus diversity officers lost their jobs or were shuffled off to other offices, barred from doing much of the work they were hired for. Some institutions scrapped celebrated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[3215,1596,2274],"class_list":{"0":"post-37596","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-changing","9":"tag-dead","10":"tag-dei"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}DEI\u2019s Murky Future<\/h2>\n