Anti-DEI efforts and laws have reshaped colleges, including the closing of DEI offices and the firing of employees. Get tips and background to better report on how this ongoing Republican-led campaign is affecting campuses.
Photo credit: f11photo/Bigstock (The University of Texas at Austin)
Colleges and universities across the country are unraveling policies and offices designed to widen education access and improve outcomes for a range of student groups, including those who have been historically marginalized.
The University of Texas at Austin dismantled its multicultural center and laid off dozens of staffers in roles dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion. The University of Florida eliminated all positions dedicated to DEI. The University of Utah announced it would stop asking questions related to diversity as part of its hiring processes. These are just a few examples. The Chronicle of Higher Education has tracked similar changes at 200 colleges in 30 states since January 2023.
Campus officials took those steps after Republican lawmakers in several states advanced legislation targeting work that aims to make higher education more diverse, equitable and inclusive. University leaders in states that haven’t passed any anti-DEI legislation also have closed or restructured offices once dedicated to DEI. Vague laws amid the ongoing Republican-led anti-DEI campaign have contributed to colleges overcorrecting, which is an issue ripe for additional reporting.
Republican politicians aren’t the only ones who have criticized DEI, however. Some anti-racist activists believe DEI didn’t necessarily address failures to make college campuses diverse and welcoming. Additionally, college faculty have shared a range of opinions on DEI programs, including how some programs can be “exclusionary and counterproductive.”
DEI is a broad term used to describe practices, policies, initiatives and training intended to correct educational inequities, bolster outcomes for students and staff, and improve campus structures to better serve all students.
This explainer will help journalists better understand how to cover politically motivated attacks to DEI on college campuses. Plus, learn how to elevate the perspectives of those most harmed by the attacks – students.
Many anti-DEI laws are based on model legislation promoted by conservative think tanks that touted the new laws as a correction to the “illiberal takeover of higher education.”
Conservative critics argue offices dedicated to DEI “ironically stifle intellectual diversity, prevent equal opportunity, and exclude anyone who dissents from a rigid orthodoxy,” according to a brief published by the Manhattan Institute. It’s a conservative think tank that has distributed model legislation in addition to the Goldwater Institute.
The scope of anti-DEI laws differ slightly in each state.
In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law that prohibits public higher education institutions from influencing hiring decisions “with respect to race, sex, color, or ethnicity.” It also prohibits campuses from “promoting differential treatment” to people on the basis of race or ethnicity and eliminates training and programs regarding race, ethnicity, gender identity or sexual orientation.
In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill barring public colleges and universities from spending state and federal dollars on diversity, equity and inclusion programs. And in Utah, Gov. Spencer Cox approved a law that prohibits campuses from having employees sign paperwork promising their commitment to diversity and inclusion efforts.
The laws have already reshaped the educational experiences for tens of thousands of students, worsening safety fears for students from diverse racial, gender and sexuality backgrounds. But they are not the only students who suffer when policies and programs developed to promote diversity are abolished.
Research has shown diverse learning environments benefit all students socially and academically, sharpening their critical thinking, analytical skills and preparing them to challenge stereotypes and bias.
Here are three tips from experts on how to better cover the dismantling of DEI on college campuses.
Laws evolved over time to address discrimination and systemic inequities faced by certain student groups – including women, students with disabilities and students of color – and to accommodate their needs.
During a March webinar held by the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, the project’s director, provided an overview of how anti-discrimination legislation that developed in the 1950s and 1960s – including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – have supported modern DEI efforts.
In the 1990s and 2010s, many companies as well as colleges and universities arrived at an understanding that greater diversity is necessary in a changing world. More recently, and particularly during the aftermath of the 2020 police murder of George Floyd in Minnesota, institutions began acknowledging the need for equity as “a way of trying to make sense of the failure of diversity to solve for a number of ways in which representation stagnated or reversed,” according to Muhuammad.
Including equity as part of diversity and inclusion efforts was a way to address persistent systemic issues that kept companies and higher education “very white at the top,” Muhuammad said, that left women underrepresented in many places and that rendered concerns about disability and LGBTQ+ rights to the back burner.
Paulette Granberry Russell, president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, said journalists should include descriptions of that history when they report on bans related to DEI work. It’s also important to define and differentiate concepts, such as “affirmative action” and “diversity.”
“If you’re going to talk about affirmative action, talk about the history of affirmative action – under what circumstances does it apply versus what circumstances does it not,” she said. “Diversity is very different from affirmative action. Affirmative action is intended to represent efforts that are to remedy past discrimination. Not everything that we do is intended to remedy discrimination that has occurred.”
Granberry Russell said the acronym “DEI” is often employed as a boogeyman to falsely claim that undeserving people are “taking something away from more deserving people” and “placing unqualified individuals in positions of authority.”
“It’s insulting. It’s demeaning, and it’s wrong,” she said. “So push back on that nonsense.”
Rather than give students from historically marginalized identities an unfair advantage, DEI efforts are intended to ease educational barriers that exist for those students and not others. They work to counteract harmful experiences that affect campus climate, including racism, gender bias, hate crimes, physical violence, student isolation and affordability.
Reporters can challenge and interrogate those assumptions by citing research and experts who have studied outcomes for students at campuses that have employed programs intended to boost DEI.
For example, a dozen scholars published a report with the University of Southern California Race and Equity Center debunking misinformation about DEI on campuses. NADHOE also regularly publishes a Journal of Diversity in Higher Education in collaboration with the American Psychological Association that offers a trove of research on the experiences and outcomes of people from underserved and underrepresented communities, and the benefits of diverse environments.
Colleges and universities have eliminated DEI efforts beyond what’s required by law, according to Granberry Russell.
Granberry Russell pointed to an example at The University of Texas at Austin. The state law signed by Abbott did not include language about stripping resources for undocumented students, but the university ended a program that supported undocumented students anyway.
She said colleges and universities are implementing an “overly broad application of the law.”
The specter of potentially violating the law creates a chilling effect where staff and faculty are apprehensive of mentioning diversity, equity and inclusion at all, according to Jihye Kwon, associate director for survey research at the USC Race and Equity Center.
“It’s likely that the effect itself is bigger than the actual legislation. People think that, ‘Oh maybe moving forward, we cannot mention this term in general,” she said. “Maybe they get a little afraid of promoting DEI actively. That’s another big side effect … in addition to the actual things that have been prohibited.”
Another scholar at the USC Race and Equity Center, Royel Johnson, added that the laws give campuses that weren’t truly committed to maintaining a diverse student body an opening to abandon those efforts.
“We’re seeing a rollback of diversity scholarships or identity-based scholarships, which is not part of what was included in this model legislation that’s been circulated across states,” said Johnson, director of the National Assessment of Collegiate Campus Climates.
Reporters should also emphasize student and faculty voices in their coverage of state laws banning DEI work.
Johnson said he hasn’t seen enough coverage documenting what the prohibitions mean for campus communities, including how students are reacting and finding ways to support themselves. Moving forward, Johnson said it’s key that journalists continue to follow the aftermath of the legislation and what that means for students and their experiences on campuses.
“For those of us who have engaged in DEI work, there is an overwhelming, compelling, rigorous corpus of research that underscores the incontestable benefits of DEI,” he said. “What often gets peddled from right-wing conservative organizations are just gross mischaracterizations, conflations and lies. And I don’t know that media does enough of decoding those things.”
He added that staff, especially people of color and women, are especially placed in a precarious position as they try to navigate such a “treacherous landscape.” One way reporters can document that conflict is by asking where faculty and staff ended up after losing their jobs, or after their offices were abruptly shuttered.
And it’s also important to cover how colleges that are continuing their DEI work are managing to preserve those values without running afoul of state laws.
“These stories are powerful for changing minds, hearts and even decisions at the state legislative level,” Johnson said.
Your post will be on the website shortly.
We will get back to you shortly