DEI dismantling is chaotic and confusing
When the movement against colleges’ diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts turned a year old, The Chronicle’s editors and reporters began an attempt to better understand how the intensifying political pressure was affecting the experiences of administrators, faculty, staff, and students.
Here’s what we discovered:
- Administrators and their institutional lawyers are interpreting new anti-DEI legislation in an inconsistent, haphazard way that’s frayed people’s little bit of trust that college presidents’ commitments since the murder of George Floyd were authentic.
- Some colleges have dropped their DEI programs without the pressure of enacted legislation, pointing out that some DEI efforts have proved ineffective, are no longer popular, or are damaging their reputation and not worth the political headache.
- The effects of the movement have, predictably, fallen disproportionately on students of color and LGBTQ students, as well as on Black women on college staffs and faculties, who have been asked to take on duties and bear costs historically picked up by administrators. (Half of chief diversity officers are Black or African American, and nearly two-thirds are women, according to a recent report.)
We surveyed public colleges in two states that have enacted anti-DEI laws, Florida and Texas. We asked about changes they’ve made to comply. The comprehensive picture that emerges shows some colleges are making big moves, while others are not reacting at all. As our reporters Erin Gretzinger and Maggie Hicks wrote:
Nearly four dozen campuses in the two states offered substantive responses to The Chronicle: Over all, 24 colleges made changes to an office or department; 23 cut or reassigned jobs; seven ended DEI training for admission or employment; two axed funding for DEI activities; and 15 eliminated other DEI-related programming. Interestingly, 19 said they were already in compliance with the law and didn’t have to alter anything.
The responses yielded a familiar aura of uncertainty as administrators grapple with what is permissible under the legislation. The changes campuses did make varied greatly. While one Texas college eliminated its multicultural center, another opened one to replace its DEI office. While some colleges in Florida have simply reassigned their DEI employees, the University of Florida recently terminated 13 of its full-time staff. Experts previously told The Chronicle that the vague, sweeping laws leave large room for interpretation. The immediate effects, spelled out here, prove just how vast that gulf is in practice.
In March, our reporter Katherine Mangan spent time with hundreds of DEI officers in Seattle at the annual conference of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, or NADOHE. Many worked in states where their roles were being retitled, banned, or defunded. In recent weeks, dozens of DEI officers have been fired.
From her story:
A study by the National Center for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan, in partnership with NADOHE, found that many chief diversity officers were feeling isolated, ignored, and discouraged.
“People told us, ‘I’m seen as the person people don’t want to talk to on campus. I haven’t talked to my president or supervisor in months,’” said Jeffrey Grim, an assistant professor at George Mason University who helped oversee the study.
“It’s hard to create inclusive change when people are afraid to talk to you” because you might be viewed as a DEI advocate, he said.
Many organizations that served as the glue for communities of color and LGBTQ communities are losing funding, services, and their advisers. From another of Katherine’s stories, about faculty affiliation groups, which advocate for diversity and help their members navigate implicit and explicit acts of discrimination on campus:
In what seems to be an effort to scrub the campus of anything that might sound to watchful lawmakers like DEI, the University [of Texas at Austin] has issued a list of new restrictions the groups say are essentially pushing them off campus. Leaders of the groups say they can no longer meet during paid work hours, use any university resources, or have departments pay members’ dues.
If inclusion groups want to meet in person, they’ll have to squeeze it into their lunch hour or other times when members are off the clock. If they want to print out fliers for an upcoming event, university copy machines are off limits. Paying for guest speakers might be tough since the money they’ve raised from membership dues has been temporarily tied up in university bank accounts they’re no longer allowed to access. They need that money to cover the cost of honoraria, social events, and professional development.
Passivity, ambivalence, and fear in one department at Texas A&M University at College Station led Arica Brandford, its only Black professor, to resign from her job after relentless attacks by a reporter, Breccan F. Thies, at the Washington Examiner. Citing Brandford’s anti-bias work and advocacy for more diversity within the department, Laura Morgan of Do No Harm, a conservative advocacy group, referred to her as a “pro-DEI foot soldier” and said Texas A&M should have never hired her.
From a profile of Brandford by Erin:
Brandford’s experience also illustrates how many faculty members, especially those of color, feel as the attacks on DEI have escalated. Until recently, expressing elements of their core identity and advocating for diversity programs were widely accepted — if not encouraged — throughout higher education. Now, they feel abandoned, unsure what could trigger a political bombshell, and, if it blows up, whether their institutions are willing to defend them.
In Brandford’s case, she felt her only option was to leave.
“I was used as a pawn in a game that we’re seeing play out nationwide,” Brandford said. “Through this experience, I realized there were certain people that did not want me here, or there were those that, in a sense, wanted me to stay in my place. So why stay somewhere that you’re not wanted?”
We are tracking the ways colleges are responding to the anti-DEI movement here. Did we miss something? Tell us by filling out this form or by emailing deitracker@chronicle.com.
What I’m reading …
- White Mississippians have organized a “pilgramage” to antebellum homes to boost tourism and fight negative stereotypes of Southerners like them, according to a New York Times story. Black residents say those efforts ignore the brutal history of slavery.
- From the archives: Jesse McCarthy takes down the ahistorical and misguided theories behind Afropessimism in this 2020 Los Angeles Review of Books essay.
- Aaron Timms at The New York Times profiles one of my favorite Instagram stars and his tidy eating.
Do you have an idea about race and higher education you think we should write about? Feel free to email me at daarel.burnette@chronicle.com.
