What Lawmakers in One State Talk About When They Talk About Diversity

Caitie McMekin, Knoxville News Sentinel via AP Images

When Republican leaders in the Tennessee legislature passed a resolution in December declaring that the University of Tennessee at Knoxville had become a “national embarrassment” for its online posts promoting gender-neutral pronouns and inclusive holiday parties, university officials knew they would face a demanding legislative session this spring.

Conservative lawmakers saw the controversies as a sign that political correctness was running amok on the flagship campus. So Knoxville’s Office for Diversity and Inclusion has played a starring role in committee meetings and hearings since the session began, in January. Multiple Republican-backed bills, introduced over the past four months, have sought to strip the office of all or part of its funding.

Both the House and the Senate passed a bill on Thursday that would divert roughly $437,000 of the office’s budget into a scholarship fund for minority engineering students during the 2016-17 fiscal year. It would also ban the use of state money to encourage gender-neutral pronouns or to “promote or inhibit the celebration of religious holidays.” Gov. Bill Haslam has not said whether he will sign it, and a spokeswoman said he would review the bill in its final form before taking any action.

One earlier proposal would have spent the $437,000 on placing “In God We Trust” decals on state law-enforcement vehicles. Another measure would have limited the Tennessee system’s diversity spending to $2.5 million, down from about $5 million, and banned all university employees who do not serve primarily in diversity-related roles from participating in those kinds of programs during work hours.

University of Tennessee officials have tried to frame the scrutiny in a positive light. Joseph A. DiPietro, the system’s president, and Jimmy G. Cheek, chancellor of the Knoxville campus, say the prolonged debate in the legislature has given them an opportunity to explain why diversity and inclusion are priorities. Still, the university and the legislature have clashed over a number of key questions surrounding the diversity office.

Following are some of the points that higher-education officials and Republican lawmakers have argued about.

What does the diversity office do?

Sen. Joey Hensley raised pointed concerns about the issue in December, while explaining his rationale for wanting to curb the flagship’s diversity budget. “If these diversity offices spend all their time on these recent posts, if that’s a good indication of what they spend their time on, then I think that we can cut out a lot of it,” he said, according to The Tennessean.

Rep. Martin Daniel was even more direct in a February interview with The Chronicle. “What does a diversity employee do when they come into the office in the morning?” he asked. “It’s a mystery to us.”

And during a committee meeting last month, Sen. Todd Gardenhire went as far as to call much of the office’s programming “silly stuff.” Mr. Gardenhire, the primary sponsor of the bill that would use Knoxville’s diversity money for minority scholarships, also tied his concerns to Sex Week, a longtime political target of his conservative colleagues.

Mr. Cheek told The Chronicle in a February interview that Knoxville’s core mission on diversity “is attracting, retaining, and graduating a more diverse student body and having the student body interact with a staff and faculty that are more diverse.” He said diversity investments on the campus were paying off, citing a nearly 30-percent increase in undergraduate minority enrollment since 2007.

Both he and Mr. DiPietro have also repeatedly stressed a common argument in support of diversity programs and education: the importance of producing students who are prepared to participate in an increasingly diverse work force.

What, exactly, should “diversity” mean?

Several lawmakers have expressed support for university programming that targets the recruitment and retention of racial-minority students. “But they’re straying into areas that they just don’t need to be in — transgender issues, religious issues, homosexuality,” Representative Daniel told The Chronicle.

At one committee meeting, Rep. Rick Womick called gender-neutral pronouns “the most insane thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” and added that, in his view, they have “nothing to do with diversity.”

Rep. Eddie Smith suggested that, instead of defunding the Knoxville diversity office, lawmakers could try to refocus the office’s mission around different activities, such as recruiting and supporting more students from rural areas.

The Tennessee Board of Regents — which runs the other public-college system in the state — gave a presentation on its diversity efforts at a hearing last month held by a House joint education committee. Two students — an Asian woman who was a veteran and an older white man — explained to lawmakers how such programs supported their academic success. “This is what diversity is supposed to be,” said Rep. Roger Kane.

Mr. DiPietro and Mr. Cheek have emphasized all spring that the University of Tennessee’s commitment to diversity covers much more than just race. Mr. DiPietro told lawmakers in March that the university defines diversity to include gender identity, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, geography, physical ability, socioeconomic status, veteran status, and family educational attainment, among other things.

Why doesn’t Knoxville’s diversity office promote more programming tailored to the people lawmakers view as “majority” students, such as Christians?

Representative Kane argued at last month’s hearing that the university’s diversity office appeared to be “reaching out to some groups at the exclusion of others,” namely Christian students. He suggested that such an approach “creates a tunnel vision.”

“If we’re going to be inclusive and diverse, we have to include the majority of people that are out there,” Mr. Kane said. Mr. DiPietro acknowledged that the university could consider putting links to Christian student organizations on the diversity office’s website, though Mr. Cheek added that “we can’t put everything on the diversity website.”

One student at the flagship who considers himself a white evangelical Christian doesn’t buy Mr. Kane’s assertion. Matthew Bowers, a sophomore, wrote in an op-ed that the diversity office should be focused on catering to underrepresented groups, not him.

“I have no need in becoming ‘included’ because I make up the demographic that people are trying to be a part of,” Mr. Bowers said. “Yet for many, many people who go to this school, this is not the case.”

Kristen Godfrey, a graduate student at the flagship and member of the UT Diversity Matters coalition, an advocacy group that formed in part to protest the proposed cuts, pointed out that most of the lawmakers leading the push against the diversity office were white men. “I don’t think it’s fair for them to state what diversity should be or what we need,” said Ms. Godfrey, who is African-American. “They’ll never know.”

Why is the diversity office’s job not done after a college recruits and retains a significant number of minority students?

During a committee meeting last fall, Rep. John D. Ragan asked when the University of Tennessee could “declare victory” on diversity. “Your diversity goals should have numbers assigned to them so that you know when you’ve got to the goal line,” Mr. Ragan told university leaders.

Representative Kane echoed those concerns in March: “I’m not sure, at $5 million a year, what is the target we’re shooting for so that we finally feel good about ourselves?”

Senator Hensley questioned why the diversity office even needed a budget for activities not related to recruitment. “Is it not just good enough that the students are going to college and being in class with diverse people,” he asked, “rather than spending millions of dollars to tell people how to act right?”

Mr. DiPietro offered lawmakers recent examples of incidents in the University of Tennessee system that “have demonstrated everything from a serious lack of racial and cultural sensitivity to open hatred, blatant disrespect, and prejudice against certain groups.” Among them: fraternity members’ parading to a party in blackface and bananas’ being thrown at prospective minority students.

Such offensive actions, he said, illustrate the need for students to be educated on cultural competencies while they are on the campus.

Mr. Cheek said that his campus still had plenty of work to do. For one, Knoxville doesn’t graduate enough African-American students, he said. “It’s a journey,” he told lawmakers. “And I don’t think we’re at the end of that journey.”

Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.