What’s New
Public colleges in Idaho would have to close offices and centers that do diversity, equity, and inclusion work if a Republican-backed bill introduced last week is enacted.
But, in a shift from the other bills targeting DEI measures that The Chronicle is tracking, the Idaho legislation also lists three dozen examples of specific jobs at Boise State and Idaho State Universities and at the University of Idaho that would be prohibited upon its passage.
It’s the clearest example yet of the increasing specificity of DEI legislation, a result of the confusion and consternation about what sorts of work and positions were banned by new laws in Florida and Texas last year.
The Details
Idaho’s Senate Bill 1357 lists 11 examples of centers and offices at public colleges that it would defund. Among them are several multicultural-affairs, LGBTQIA, women’s, and Black cultural centers, the University of Idaho’s Office of Equity and Diversity, and Idaho State’s Office of Equity and Inclusion.
Also listed are 35 specific positions that the legislation counts as “diversity, equity, and inclusion officers,” including chief diversity officers and directors of affinity centers but also a range of administrative-assistant, office-manager, and coordinator roles in those centers. Those job cuts, the bill’s sponsors estimate, would save the state more than $3.2 million in the 2025 fiscal year.
Several of the targeted positions focus on gender violence, including the project directors in the University of Idaho’s Office of Violence Against Women and the Violence Protection and Response Initiative at Boise State’s gender-equity center. Much of the work performed by such staff members is required by federal law, as all colleges must educate new students and employees on sexual-violence prevention. The bill states that trainings and programs required by federal law would be exempt from the restrictions.
Most of the bill’s provisions — banning the use of state money to support diversity offices, ending mandatory diversity training, blocking identity-based preferences, and barring a required “political loyalty test” in the hiring or admissions process — follow model state legislation proposed last year by the Goldwater Institute and the Manhattan Institute. Legislators in at least 11 other states have proposed measures targeting colleges’ diversity offices this year; Utah’s governor has already signed one into law.
“This bill aligns Idaho with a growing national trend,” Sen. Brian Lenney, a Republican and the bill’s primary sponsor, said in a December statement. “We’re taking a stand against the unnecessary expenditure on DEI bureaucracies, focusing our resources on academic excellence and merit-based opportunities. Our goal is to ensure a fair and effective educational system for all Idahoans, free from the influences of identity politics.” (Lenney did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.)
The Backdrop
The Gem State has seen considerable political involvement in higher ed in recent years, notably a 2021 campaign by the Idaho Freedom Foundation, a free-market think tank, to “Fix Idaho’s Colleges.” At North Idaho College, a two-year institution, an ideological takeover and subsequent governance meltdown stemmed from the growing perception among local conservatives that higher education had veered into left-wing indoctrination.
Meanwhile, while not spelling out specific positions and offices they’d target, lawmakers in other states have included more-detailed descriptions of the activities they want to curb, hoping to avoid interpretations they say obey the letter but not the spirit of their bills.
In Nebraska, for instance, one bill prohibits promoting “any theory of unconscious or implicit bias, cultural appropriation, allyship, transgenderism, microaggressions, microinvalidation, group marginalization, anti-racism, systemic oppression, ethnocentrism, structural racism or inequity, social justice, intersectionality, neopronouns, inclusive language, heteronormativity, disparate impact, gender identity or theory, racial or sexual privilege, or any related theory.”
What to Watch For
Though a state representative joined Lenney in sponsoring the bill, a House equivalent has not yet been introduced. Lenney, meanwhile, is awaiting a hearing on the Senate floor, asking on X this week: “Is the Idaho Senate STILL the place good bills go to die?”
The bill joins two others introduced in Idaho this year that would prohibit public colleges from requiring diversity statements as part of the hiring or admissions process.
