One of the main draws that attracted Lissie Morales to the University of North Florida was its LGBTQ Center. The “explosion of rainbows” — both literal and metaphorical — gave visitors a friendly, affirming vibe. “If I was going to continue to live and study in a state that doesn’t accept or tolerate people like me, I wanted to find a campus that would accept me,” said Morales, who is now a senior.
The center’s program coordinator, Dwan Love-Dinkens, helped Morales, who uses they/them pronouns, to register for classes and became a friend and mentor. Now, because of a law signed last year by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, banning diversity, equity, and inclusion programs unless they’re required by federal law, the university is phasing out the center, with its walls decorated with colorful pride flags, and its resource library jammed with books, DVDs, and videos related to gender, sexual orientation, and the LGBT community. By closing the university’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion, which oversaw the LGBTQ center, administrators also shuttered the intercultural, interfaith, and women’s centers.
Morales misses the lounge where students refueled between classes, and Love-Dinkens has moved to Virginia, where she can continue her DEI work more openly. “I’m left trying to figure out who I can be without the wonderful team of people who were always in my corner,” Morales said.
What’s happening in Florida, and in a growing number of states that are restricting DEI efforts, is unsettling to some students of color, women, and sexual and gender-minority students who enrolled at campuses in those states expecting to be affirmed in their identities and to be actively protected from harassment.
When Morales was finishing high school, in 2020, the nation was reeling from the Covid pandemic and wrestling with doubts about the role race plays in society after the police killing of George Floyd. College presidents were promising that their campuses would be safe and welcoming places, particularly to those from marginalized groups. Morales, who had struggled with their gender identity, feeling “too masculine to identify solely as a girl and too feminine to identify as a boy,” began to embrace a queer identity at age 16. It was a relief to find a campus with a center where queer and nonbinary identities were validated and supported.
Across the country, antiracism task forces were created, and new centers, affinity groups, and mentoring programs sprang up. Colleges expanded their DEI offices and committed to becoming more equitable and inclusive. Emboldened by these promises, students escalated their demands on campuses to crack down on perceived acts of discrimination, accelerate the hiring of minority faculty members, and involve students in important decisions.
But, over the years, a growing number of critics accused colleges of giving unfair advantages and excessive attention to minority students, and pushing a progressive orthodoxy on campus. By early February, in 25 states at least 73 bills had been introduced that would restrict diversity training, diversity statements, DEI offices, and the hiring and promotion of people based on identity, according to The Chronicle’s DEI Legislation Tracker. So far, eight of those bills have become law.
In response, colleges have taken the word “diversity” out of the names of offices and titles. They’ve halted diversity-training programs for incoming students and new hires. Majors and minors in gender studies have been eliminated. In late 2022, Texas Tech University celebrated the opening of its Black Cultural Center, with plans for a Hispanic/Latino cultural center next. “This facility is part of our commitment to recruit, support, and retain our students,” the university’s president, Lawrence Schovanec, said. “It will be a place for students, faculty, staff, and alumni to gather and was designed to enhance academic programs across campus.”
Less than a year later, in response to state legislation, the Black Cultural Center was renamed the “Campus Engagement Center.” By the end of last year, the university’s diversity and LGBT offices were being phased out.
Of the three tenets of DEI, the third, inclusion, would seem to be the hardest to find fault with. Colleges describe it as working to create conditions where students feel they belong, where they can learn from each other and their professors in an environment that is cooperative rather than combative. But critics say that, in trying to create these environments, colleges trample on free speech and deprive students of exposure to ideas that differ from their own.
Inclusion “elevates and supports the well-being of aggrieved minorities instead of or at the expense of the supposedly privileged,” the Claremont Institute, whose role in the battle to dismantle DEI was recently outlined in The New York Times, wrote in a report on DEI efforts at two Alabama universities. “In short, inclusion means excluding everything that makes allegedly aggrieved minorities uncomfortable and including everything that makes them feel affirmed.”
Adding to the uncertainty about colleges’ long-term commitments to inclusion, the U.S. Supreme Court in June struck down the consideration of race in college admissions. That ruling raised questions about whether public and private institutions can use race as a factor under any circumstances when offering extra resources aimed at particular groups of people.
Now, administrators who remain committed to the priorities of DEI offices face the tough task of assuring students that the work will continue, without suggesting to wary lawmakers, board members, alumni, or donors that they’re making an end-run around the new restrictions.
The recent clashes over the Israel-Hamas war, which have left students on both sides feeling attacked and threatened, have forced difficult questions about whether inclusion, a central animating ideal that’s guided higher education for years, is even possible. Colleges can’t promise that students will at all times be comfortable, but how much discomfort is a necessary part of the learning and maturation process? How much should students be shielded from? And perhaps most importantly going forward, how can colleges encourage students to treat each other with civility and respect even if they disagree vehemently on issues that are core to their identities?
A variety of factors have spurred colleges’ efforts to prioritize inclusion, including Title VI, which bans discrimination based on race, color, or national origin, and Title IX, which prohibits discrimination based on sex. Accreditors are increasingly setting standards for inclusion, and have put colleges on probation for not doing enough to serve marginalized students. The accreditors are demanding more evidence, for instance, that colleges are reducing racial achievement gaps and promoting climates where all students feel respected.
Some of the most intense pressure to promote inclusion has come after high-profile incidents of discrimination. In 2015, the president of the University of Oklahoma expelled two fraternity members after a video went viral of them singing a racist anthem. The following year, Black students at the University of Missouri, feeling both isolated and targeted by racial slurs, lashed out in protest. In 2018, demonstrators at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill toppled an eight-foot statue of a Confederate soldier. And then came the mass protests in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd, which prompted promises to root out systemic racism.
Colleges can’t promise that students will at all times be comfortable, but how much discomfort is a necessary part of the learning and maturation process?
There’s also a financial imperative for pushing inclusion efforts. A growing number of colleges are experiencing sagging enrollments, and public confidence in higher education is sinking. Colleges have to work harder to persuade prospective students that their campus is a good fit and that a degree will be worth its escalating price tag.
While the share of Black, Latino and Latina, and Native American students increased in recent decades, members of those groups are now more underrepresented than they were in 2002, making up 40 percent of high-school graduates, but just 20 percent of enrollment at selective colleges, one recent analysis found.
Campus-climate surveys often show that students from underrepresented groups feel the weakest sense of belonging. Students of color, LGBT students, and those from other underrepresented groups who say they’ve experienced discrimination suffer more severe mental-health problems, according to a new report from the Center for Collegiate Mental Health, at Pennsylvania State University, which examines the experiences of more than 78,000 students.
Inclusion efforts offer a solution. When college administrators point to data that show students who feel supported are more likely to attend class, engage in class discussions, stick around for the next semester, and eventually graduate, student-support programs are less likely to end up on the chopping block, said Terrell L. Strayhorn, a vice provost at Virginia Union University and a consultant on diversity, belonging, and student success. “Students have to feel that they matter, that they’re cared about, and that if they run into trouble, they know who to turn to,” he said.
But rolling out and paying for inclusion programs isn’t easy. After affirmative action was banned in Michigan and Black student enrollment stalled at just under 4 percent, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor faced intense pressure to diversify its student body. The university now has more than 100 employees contributing to DEI efforts. They’re seeing success in some areas, including helping students from underresourced high schools prepare for the rigors of college. Other areas remain more challenging, like increasing the proportion of underrepresented minority members on the faculty. There’s no “achieving” DEI, said Tabbye Chavous, vice provost for equity and inclusion and chief diversity officer at Michigan, just ongoing efforts to battle misinformation and double down on practices that work.
Anti-DEI laws often include broad, ambiguous language, as well as numerous exceptions. Even states with the most sweeping restrictions typically carve out exceptions for student groups. The administrator-led Black Cultural Center might close, for instance, but the student-led Black Student Alliance can stay. In essence, the work of helping students is increasingly falling on students.
The new laws also typically make exceptions for inclusion efforts required by accreditors and federal agencies. Some carve out exceptions for programs that help veterans, first-generation students, or people with disabilities. But the changes that colleges are making aren’t always readily apparent.
Derrick Gay, a diversity and inclusion consultant, said that one of the biggest barriers to his work is the word “diversity” itself. Gay encourages diversity officers to do what many are doing today: changing the names of offices and programs to be more inclusive and less threatening to skeptics. “The term that cuts through a lot of the baggage is belonging,” he said. Everyone, he said, has a right to belong, whether it’s a 19-year-old white kid struggling with a learning problem or a Black or Muslim student who’s been targeted with a racial epithet. Different groups have different needs and benefit from different interventions. “I’ve found this reframing has allowed many people who otherwise would say ‘this has nothing to do with me’ to be more open to understanding the plight of other individuals,” Gay said.
Strayhorn agreed. “When we focus only on DEI … the temperature in the room goes sky-high,” he said. “We start stumbling over ourselves because these terms are so triggering.” Students need to know who to turn to, he said, if offices close and staff members are shifted to different offices. The fear is that the work will grind to a halt, jeopardizing decades of efforts to reduce achievement gaps.
Paulette Granberry Russell, president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, worries that the work can become diluted if a one-size-fits-all approach is used. These offices are already stretched thin, she pointed out, with too few resources to tackle a growing list of expectations.
When data, based on decades of research, show that different populations have different educational outcomes, and that different interventions increase graduation rates, “do we ignore that?”
When programs they’ve relied on are cut, students can lose faith, said Strayhorn. “We’re telling people if you come here, we care about inclusive excellence and diversity,” he said. “You will have a space where you can commune with people who are like-minded. Then these attacks happen and undermine, or at least call into question, all of these initiatives.”
The Israel-Hamas war has brought into sharp — and at times, embarrassing — focus the friction between colleges’ commitments to both inclusion and free speech. In December, congressional Republicans pounced on the statements of three elite-college presidents, accusing them of being less concerned about inclusion when the students who feel excluded are Jewish.
Inclusion is an especially difficult topic at Brandeis University, with its dual identity as a bastion of both free speech and Jewish belonging.
People argue over the meaning and intent of phrases like “Intifada, Intifada” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” But to students like Maya Stiefel, who enrolled at Brandeis in part because of its supportive Jewish community, these chants, shouted at a recent rally, felt threatening and shattered her sense of belonging at the institution. She wrote a column in one of the student newspapers that Brandeis’s campus “has now become a hostile environment to be a Jewish student.”
When we focus only on DEI … the temperature in the room goes sky-high. We start stumbling over ourselves because these terms are so triggering.
A Muslim student, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, said she also came away from a pro-Palestinian protest, in which seven people were arrested, wondering whether Brandeis was a “safe space” for an outspoken activist like herself. The free-speech advocacy group PEN America has warned that bills aimed at tamping down DEI activities, and recent campus crackdowns on protests, suppress protected speech.
For both of the Brandeis students, questions about whether they felt like they belonged weren’t as straightforward as whether there was a center or an office dedicated to their needs. Belonging was more about their perceptions of how they fit in and how supportive the environment was for people with their worldview or ethnic background.
In a recent forum on free speech and hate speech, Kent Greenfield, a professor of law at Boston College, said that some scholars argue that students should expect to be confronted with uncomfortable, “even despicable” ideas. They argue, he said, that students and scholars should “develop thick skins so ideas can be vetted.” He disagrees. Just because hateful rhetoric is protected by the First Amendment, colleges — even public ones — should be able to set higher standards for civility, Greenfield said. “Universities are not just places where views and ideas are exchanged, but places where people learn and live and try to improve their lives and the lives of their families,” he said. A hostile learning environment can make it hard for people to succeed, and colleges should be able to create “baseline rules of discourse,” he said.
“Mistakes will be made, but I’d rather teach and learn and serve at a school like Boston College, trying to make those difficult judgments, than a school that throws up its hands and says these judgments are beyond us, especially when the costs of open debate fall on our most vulnerable, on our most marginalized, and on our most at-risk students, staff, and faculty.”
As colleges reassess speech codes and protest policies with an eye toward promoting civility, they’re being constantly reminded of the dangers of stifling protected speech.
Columbia University’s president, Nemat (Minouche) Shafik, in December announced a series of efforts aimed at nurturing a “culture of empathy and care” when engaging in potentially polarizing conversations. They include listening sessions, campus dialogues, and a faster and more effective way to report hate speech and harassment. Conversations, she said, should be rooted in civil discourse, “not taunts and cruelty.”
Administrators at American University last month announced a series of steps to handle antisemitism and other forms of hate, including requirements that all posted materials and events “promote inclusivity” and that clubs welcome all students. Administrators will address any behavior that “negatively effects students’ sense of belonging and well-being.”
When the Florida Board of Governors voted last month to eliminate funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and activities at all of the state’s public colleges, the University of North Florida’s president, Moez Limayem, told the campus the DEI center would be phased out. (No date for its closing has been announced.) Student clubs wouldn’t be affected, he wrote, and staff members would be reassigned to other jobs.
Love-Dinkens said the uncertainty about where she’d end up, and what her new role would be, forced her to make the painful decision to leave Florida. She said she’s “sad and maybe a little bit angry” that a place she called “a second home” is closing. The centers that are shutting down, she wrote in an email message, “provided resources, a place to connect with others, learn about someone new, and just a place to be for a brief moment in time.”
The president’s reassurances weren’t enough. “Please know that as we implement these new changes, the university remains committed to ensuring that every member of our campus community is cared for and has the resources needed to be successful,” he wrote.
Exactly how that will happen remains unclear, leaving students whose programs have been cut skeptical. “In the beginning of my college years, you’d see half-ass and hollow statements coming from the administration, but you had people who genuinely cared about us doing the work on the ground,” Morales said. With the elimination of diversity offices and officers, such statements will continue, they said, but with no one left to deliver on those commitments.
