Good morning, and welcome to Tuesday, December 17. Rick Seltzer wrote today’s Briefing. Julia Piper compiled Comings and Goings. Get in touch: dailybriefing@chronicle.com.

DEI decisions

Some institutions are pivoting away from diversity, equity, and inclusion amid a broad conservative offensive against the practices. Others are pivoting away from a pivot. Recent news highlights both paths.

An accreditor about-faces

A November proposal from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior College and University Commission would have replaced the term “diversity, equity, and inclusion” at several points in the standards that member colleges must meet. Instead of DEI, they would have referred to “success for all students.”

It didn’t last a month.

WSCUC backtracked on Monday from its proposal to cut DEI from its standards. It pointed to input from “interested organizations” and its members.

Feedback “made clear that a deeper examination of any change would be necessary,” WSCUC announced. “Therefore, the institutional ‘commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion’ will remain in all the standards.”

• Supporters of the existing language made clear that the accreditor’s “respect for and promotion of these values is important and asked for the reaffirmation that the commission is now providing,” Jamienne S. Studley, WSCUC’s president, told the Daily Briefing.

The reversal comes after WSCUC defended the proposal as not being about ditching DEI. The change was meant to reinforce “outcomes and success for every student using clearer language that moves institutions beyond commitments and into action and results,” Studley had said in a statement to the Daily Briefing earlier this month.

• “The three words were not serving us well,” Studley told The Chronicle’s Eric Kelderman, “and if we were eventually going to have to change them, why not do it now?”

But the idea drew concern given a broad Republican backlash against DEI and accreditation:

• State lawmakers have introduced 86 bills in 28 states over the past two years, seeking to ban or restrict DEI efforts at colleges. Fourteen have become law, according to The Chronicle’s running tally.
• President-elect Trump’s platform promised to “fire radical left accreditors.” Trump’s election victory strengthened the anti-DEI movement in the eyes of many Republicans, Axios has noted.

A free-speech advocate had criticized WSCUC. Moving to nix DEI created the perception the commission “is bowing to political pressure and abandoning its nonpartisan mission to uphold the quality and autonomy of higher education institutions,” Jeremy C. Young, program director of Freedom to Learn at PEN America, wrote earlier this month.

PEN America commended WSCUC for showing “bravery” on Monday. “When politicians threaten to dictate what ideas are permitted on a college campus, the answer’s simple: institutions of higher learning should not comply in advance,” Young wrote.

Some colleges get ahead of the law

At the same time, hundreds of institutions have executed plans to walk away from DEI, with many doing so even before they had to, our Declan Bradley reports.

More than 200 campuses have rolled back DEI efforts since April, according to The Chronicle’s tally. They took various actions, including:

• Restructuring or closing offices, departments, and centers.
• Changing job responsibilities or eliminating the jobs entirely.
• Renaming departments and job titles.
• Revamping policies on the use of diversity statements in admissions, hiring, and promotion.
• Stopping training programs or making them optional.
• Reallocating funding.

Eighty-six campuses changed their policies even though lawmakers didn’t require them to do so, or in response to preemptive university-system directives. Twelve were in states where no DEI-related bill had even been introduced.

More than four million students are enrolled at the colleges putting these changes in place, which are often large public universities.

The bigger picture: The partisan polarization around DEI makes it hard for institutions to do their jobs in a way that everyone sees as apolitical.

“The inquiry has been driven by a desire to make clear what institutions need to do to be effective,” Studley, of WSCUC, told the Daily Briefing. “That is evergreen. It has been our central motivation through many different administrations, through many ways of thinking about it and different terms over time. It’s not a response to the political environment.”

For more:

• 📱 Read the full story on campus-level changes: We’ve Been Tracking Colleges’ Dismantling of DEI for 8 Months. Here’s What We’ve Found.
• 📧 Get updates in your inbox: Sign up to receive an email every time we update our DEI trackers

Quick hits

• Colleges paid higher prices last year: The Higher Education Price Index came in at 3.4 percent in the 2024 fiscal year, as increases in faculty salaries and clerical wages slowed and the cost of utilities decreased sharply. The index ticked down from 4 percent in 2023 and 5.2 percent in 2022, indicating that while the prices colleges pay for goods and services are increasing, they’re doing so at a more moderate rate than in recent years. The sector is still grappling with hotter inflation than it did from 2010 to 2019, when HEPI averaged 2.2 percent. (Commonfund Institute)
• Portland State U. sends faculty termination letters: Seventeen non-tenure-track faculty members will lose their jobs in mid-June as the institution cuts personnel costs in an effort to close an $18-million hole in its operating budget. All but two are in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Twenty-three faculty members have also opted to take early retirement. (Oregon Public Broadcasting)
• Board chair doesn’t plan to draw salary as interim president: Romaine Seguin says she’ll donate her time to serve as the acting president of William Woods University as the private institution in Missouri searches for a permanent leader. Seguin, who recently retired as chief executive of a charity, is stepping in as Jeremy Moreland plans to resign from the presidency in January to pursue “other professional opportunities.” (Columbia Missourian)
• Travel agent charged over scrapped basketball trip: Maurice Smith, 44, the chief executive of the Eugene Toriko travel agency, was charged with fraud after George Mason University paid nearly $160,000 for a men’s basketball team trip to the Bahamas in August that was supposed to include exhibition games, only to find out the reservations lapsed due to nonpayment. Prosecutors allege Smith ran his company like a Ponzi scheme, using money from George Mason to fund his personal expenses and to issue refunds for previous clients whose travel plans had likewise been canceled. (Associated Press)

Quote of the day

“Claims that I disparaged TSU students are categorically false.”

— Ronald A. Johnson, former interim president of Tennessee State University

Johnson said he was surprised to receive separation papers at a meeting with the university’s board chair last week.

He disputed published claims about his tenure at Tennessee State in a statement published by WSMV. At a Friday meeting, the vice chair of the university’s governing board alleged that Johnson didn’t provide “clear and consistent financial information” and that the former interim president said some students were “destined to work at Popeyes or Starbucks,” Axios Nashville reported.

• Johnson retorted that his team met all state requirements for financial reporting and that he has deep respect for the university’s students and employees.

Tennessee State’s board tapped its own member to succeed Johnson. Dwayne Tucker resigned as a board member so that he could be appointed interim president through June. He agreed to do so without pay.

The bigger picture: Tennessee State has been anything but stable since lawmakers overhauled its board this past spring, suggesting they wanted trustees who would push the institution to improve in the face of financial concerns. Johnson is now the second former Tennessee State leader to publicly defend their record in a month, after Glenda Glover issued a lengthy statement in November denying that she mismanaged the institution. Board members have accused Johnson of hiring Glover as an adviser without board consent.

Comings and goings

• Kenneth T. Christensen, provost, senior vice president for academic affairs, and chief academic officer at the Illinois Institute of Technology, has been named chancellor of the University of Colorado at Denver.
• Amy Nguyen-Chyung, co-director of the Institute for the Global Entrepreneur and an assistant teaching professor in the Rady School of Management at the University of California at San Diego, has been named dean of the College of Business at Hawaii Pacific University.
• Tamera Jahnke, dean of the College of Natural and Applied Sciences at Missouri State University, has been named interim provost after John Jasinski’s retirement.
• Matt Parlow, executive vice president and chief advancement officer at Chapman University, has been named president of the university.
• Troy A. Miller, vice president for strategic enrollment management at the University of Southern Indiana, has been named vice president for enrollment management at Connecticut State Community College.

To submit a new-hire announcement, email people@chronicle.com.

Footnote

Are holiday carols a disappearing art? It’s been years since someone knocked on my door with an unsolicited song. Even then, I remember them having a limited catalog.

Fortunately, a university is here with a solution: Dial-a-Carol.

At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, volunteers who are mostly students take time out of finals week to field telephone carol requests — at no charge. They do their best to track down any holiday song requested by callers from around the world.

The service, started in 1960, has become an annual tradition. This year’s rendition started last week and runs through tomorrow, so hurry up with your requests.

Dial 217-332-1882, and real people will sing to you, at any time of day. “Students, faculty, staff and members of the community are all welcome to take part,” a university website explains. “They have a book of traditional holiday music, but they will also search the internet to find the words and tune to even the most obscure song.”

Finally! Someone who will take my requests to sing “Dominick the Donkey” and “Snoopy’s Christmas.”