Roberto E. Barrios, a professor of anthropology at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, was looking forward to giving a virtual talk at a local community college about how this time of racial upheaval had prompted some soul searching about his own Hispanic identity.
Last week he learned that his talk, and all other planned diversity efforts at John A. Logan College, had been abruptly halted. The college’s president, Ron House, said it needed to put those programs on hold so it could review the implications of President Trump’s September 22 executive order banning diversity training he considers “offensive and anti-American.”
The order has colleges nationwide scrambling to respond, or in some cases wondering how.
Some, like John A. Logan, the University of Iowa, and Texas State University, have abruptly postponed planned events, while others wait for clarity on what the order means for them. A few have fought back, and others have decided to lie low, with a presidential election, and the potential for a change in the administration, just weeks away.
This kind of defiance is admirable and, if it catches on, may prove to be a real headache for the thought police in D.C.
House has promised that the delayed events will be reinstated once the college clears them for compliance, but Barrios said he wouldn’t return unless he got an apology and an assurance that all diversity efforts were immediately back on. “My talk was canceled without anyone consulting me about the contents,” he said. “They in no way violated the executive order.”
The title of Barrios’s virtual presentation was “Reflections on Hispanic and Latinx Identity in a Time of Upheaval,” and it was in commemoration of National Hispanic Heritage Month, observed September 15 to October 15.
Emails to House and a campus spokesman were not returned.
Trump’s order is a sweeping condemnation of what it describes as “destructive ideology”
prevailing on many campuses and “grounded in misrepresentations of our country’s history and its role in the world.”
“This ideology is rooted in the pernicious and false belief that America is an irredeemably racist and sexist country; that some people, simply on account of their race or sex, are oppressors; and that racial and sexual identities are more important than our common status as human beings and Americans,” it states.
The order bans certain topics from diversity-and-inclusion training programs provided by federal contractors and federal grantees. Specifically, it bans “workplace training that inculcates in its employees any form of race or sex stereotyping or any form of race or sex scapegoating.”
Eye of the Beholder
One challenge for colleges is that determining what constitutes race or sex stereotyping can be subjective. Heads of federal agencies that dole out money may view a particular component of a training session as reinforcing a stereotype, while the person who developed or delivers it might strenuously disagree.
The executive order specifically calls out phrases like “critical race theory” and “white privilege” as problematic. But colleges that use a heavy hand to purge such phrases from diversity manuals and training run the risk of violating faculty and staff members’ free-speech and academic-freedom rights, says Peter F. Lake, a professor of law at Stetson University.
The executive order “is such a broad statement that people are going to spend a lot of time noodling over it and trying to second-guess what the government might do,” Lake said. “That’s where the chilling effect comes in.” Lawyers, diversity officers, and professors sitting around virtual tables hashing out what to do resembles how Title IX review committees have searched their own content for triggers like “trauma -informed,” an approach toward investigating sexual-misconduct cases that critics claim is weighted too heavily toward the complainant.
For large universities with dozens of diversity-related events happening in any given week, Lake said, “it would be almost impossible to stop the train right now.”
Brett A. Sokolow, chair of TNG Consulting, which advises colleges on risk management, , said his group had advised colleges “absolutely to proceed” with diversity training.
“Four or five of the presidents we have talked with have determined they absolutely will not comply, no matter what, and will fight the EO and organize other universities to do so,” he wrote in an email. “This kind of defiance is admirable and, if it catches on, may prove to be a real headache for the thought police in D.C.”
He said his consultants had reviewed the diversity content for several colleges that contacted them and determined that “it’s solid and appropriate,” even if the executive order applied to all of their programs. But even that isn’t clear. “The majority of our clients are taking a smart wait-and-see attitude, to determine how to proceed post-election,” Sokolow wrote. “That’s been our advice. Why overreact if we may not have to? Any college or university that is limiting its programs already does not understand how this EO will be implemented, or how the federal grant and contracting process works.”
Fear of Penalties
The University of Iowa was among the institutions that responded to Trump’s order by halting diversity training for two weeks. “Let us state unequivocally that diversity, equity, and inclusion remain as core values within our institution,” Liz Tovar, interim associate vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion, wrote on the university’s website.
“However, after consulting with multiple entities, and given the seriousness of the penalties for noncompliance with the order, which include the loss of federal funding, we are recommending that all units temporarily pause for a two-week period to evaluate any trainings, workshops, or programs that may include language or materials that could be deemed in violation of the executive order.”
In a statement issued on Monday the university said it was “deeply disappointed in both the intention behind and the language used” in the executive order. “Institutions of higher education should be at the forefront of eliminating barriers, and to do that we must acknowledge and work to end our own prejudices and biases.” Diversity, equity, and inclusion education and training are therefore important, it suggested. “However, the UI is a government contractor and the recipient of federal grants, so we are taking the necessary time to review the breadth of the order and understand the serious implications of noncompliance.”
The university has 923 active federally funded projects on campus, Iowa’s statement said. In the 2020 fiscal year, it was awarded $346,721,973 in federally sponsored projects.
“General Counsel believes,” the statement says, that “the provisions regarding training of employees may be read as applicable to all our employees and not just to those working on or funded through federal contracts.”
The two-week pause will affect certain antiharassment and antidiscrimination training for university employees, certain diversity training, and any training, workshops, or programs for employees “that describe race or sex stereotyping and race or sex scapegoating.” It will also affect employee training that includes concepts the order defines as divisive.
Texas State University made a similar move. Its president, Denise M. Trauth, notified faculty and staff members on Monday that the university was putting a “temporary pause” on all diversity training for employees while it evaluates how the executive order affects Texas State.
“While the order may ultimately require some changes to our training, it does not in any way diminish Texas State’s commitment to supporting an equitable and inclusive learning, living, and working environment for all members of our community,” she wrote.
Texas State receives money through the federal TRIO program to support precollege students. Pell Grants go to current students, and federal grants fund faculty research. “We do not want to jeopardize this critical financial support that so many in our community rely upon,” Trauth wrote. “Therefore, we are focused on understanding what the executive order means for diversity, equity, and inclusion training at Texas State University as quickly as possible through our legal counsel and with the help of numerous national associations.” A campus spokesman declined to elaborate on what that review might look like.
The president and provost of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Mark S. Schlissel and Susan M. Collins, released a statement saying that they too were examining the implications of the order. But theirs took a harsher tone, saying Trump’s order is “a direct violation of our right to free speech and has the potential to undermine serious efforts to acknowledge and address longstanding racist practices that fail to account for disparate treatment of our citizens throughout our society.”
Hedging Their Bets
Summer Lopez, PEN America’s senior director of free-expression programs, released a statement on Tuesday calling the order “a danger to our fundamental rights” that must be revoked immediately.
“A lot of people are waiting to see what happens in a few weeks” in the presidential election.
“It was already clear this executive order was on its face a disgraceful and politicized effort to shut down public discourse about racism, a degradation of the First Amendment, and a blatantly authoritarian move to control what ideas are acceptable to discuss and debate,” she wrote. “But now that we’re seeing it play out, it’s clear just how concerned we should be.”
In addition to Iowa’s decision to re-evaluate its diversity programs, Lopez cited reports that some military academies balked at showing the film Malcolm X for fear of government retaliation.
While some colleges are suspending programs and others are “tempting fate” by speaking out against the administration, “a lot of people are waiting to see what happens in a few weeks,” Lake said, in the presidential election.
“If Trump wins and this thing stands up in court, they’ll have to cancel a bunch of programs,” he said. But given that Trump might lose, “many are probably going to hunker down for three months and try not to be on anyone’s radar screen.”
Barrios, the professor whose talk was canceled, urged colleges to stand on principle and defend their diversity programs. “President Trump assumes any talk of race or class amounts to a vilification of one group of people,” he said.
Barrios had planned to talk about growing up, until age 13, in Guatemala, where as someone with mixed European and Indigenous heritage, “I enjoyed privileges that vanished when I came to the United States.”
Benefiting from the power structure in Guatemala, “I didn’t see race and ethnicity,” he said. If he hadn’t experienced discrimination firsthand, he might have grown up with the same biases and assumptions about Indigenous people that were later made about him. It’s the kind of critical reflection, he said, that higher education should encourage, not squelch.
