Now that the state is banning DEI, some universities are finding a solution: a new name
At the University of Tennessee, the DEI program on campus is now called the Division of Access and Engagement.
Louisiana State University also renamed its diversity office after Jeff Landry, a Trump-backing Republican, was elected governor last fall. The Division of Inclusion, Civil Rights and Title IX is now the Division of Engagement, Civil Rights and Title IX.
And at the University of Oklahoma, the diversity office is now the Distribution of Access and Opportunity.
In what appears to be an attempt to appease, or even fake, to mislead opponents of diversity and equity programs, university officials are reopening their DEI offices under different names, changing the titles of officers, and rewriting requirements to eliminate words like “diversity” and “equity.” In some cases, only the words have been changed.
For some universities, the pushback against diversity programs comes at a challenging time. They are facing a growing student shortage, the result of declining birth rates and skepticism about the value of a high-dollar college education. Others worry about how banning race-conscious admissions will affect the image of their campuses.
In either case, many college officials feel they need DEI offices to advertise to an increasingly diverse generation of students and the faculty who might attract them. While no two campus diversity programs are exactly alike, they often oversee a variety of functions, including running student cultural centers, ensuring regulatory compliance, and hosting racial bias workshops for students and faculty.
Conservative critics have questioned the costs of what they call DEI bureaucracies, whose budgets in some places reach tens of millions of dollars. They also criticize the programs because they consider them left-wing indoctrination factories.
In a recent one Webinar Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a professor of history, race and public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, argued that the backlash is based on “a few anecdotal examples of a terrible training module gone wrong.”
In announcing the name change of the Louisiana State DEI program, the school’s president said, William F. Tate IV said there had been no political pressure.
But he also recently told the faculty council that “we have certainly paid attention to the domino effects that have occurred on campuses across the country.” He pledged that the university, one of the most diverse in the Southeastern Conference, “remains committed to DEI.”
Todd Woodward, a spokesperson for the university, said the idea of ”engagement,” now used instead of “inclusion,” has been a centerpiece of the university’s strategic plan since before Governor Landry’s election.
According to The Chronicle of Higher EducationSince 2023, at least 82 bills against DEI in higher education have been introduced in more than two dozen states. Twelve of these have become law, including in Idaho, Indiana, Florida and Texas.
This has led to layoffs and closures. The University of Florida recently announced that this will be the case fire more than a dozen diversity officers. At the University of Texas at Austin, the Multicultural Engagement Center has closed. And about 60 administrators receive notifications that they would lose their jobs, according to state chapters of the NAACP and the American Association of University Professors. Some Texas campuses closed their LGBTQ centers.
But some schools, even in states where DEI has cracked down, have responded more moderately.
Florida State University in Tallahassee appears to be taking a “harm reduction approach.” Will Hanley, professor of history at FSU, said in an interview.
The school has reshuffled its positions and transformed the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Office into the Office for Equal Opportunity Compliance and Engagement.
But there are limits to how far it will go.
FSU students are required to take two “diversity” courses, which cover dozens of topics such as Buddhist ethics, German Literature and LGBTQ History. A faculty committee recently proposed changing the name of the requirement “perspectives and awareness.”
The faculty senate rejected the idea. During the senate meeting, Dr. Hanley, who specializes in the Middle East, that the new name would obscure the intent of the demand.
“In the context of attacks on DEI, I wondered whether changing the name of this requirement gives weight to those attacks,” he said, according to the minutes of the meeting.
In Georgia, David Bray, a finance professor at Kennesaw State University, sees things a different way, saying diversity officers should have been eliminated rather than given a new title. Kennesaw State announced last December that its head of diversity would now be the vice president overseeing the Department of Organizational Effectiveness, Leadership Development and Inclusive Excellence.
The move came after the state Board of Regents approved a policy change banning Georgia’s 26 public colleges from requiring applicants and employees to complete diversity statements.
“It’s the same lipstick to the ideological pig,” said Dr. Bray, who is gay and opposes diversity programs, arguing that they promote equal outcomes rather than equal opportunities. “As soon as DEI was discovered as politically left, they reinvented the language and transformed into the ‘sense of belonging’ crew.”
But for many executives, name changes are often an attempt to keep the mission of diversity programs intact.
Donde Plowman, the chancellor of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, told the faculty council in November that the school “historically has not done a good job” of attracting students from underrepresented groups to campus. The percentage of black students declined between 2020 and 2023, from 5.5 percent of total enrollment to 4.2 percent.
After a professor asked whether potential educators and legislators “looking for red meat” would be put off by the name change of the DEI program, the Department of Diversity and Inclusion, Dr. Plowman said, “What happened is that those words have become a weapon. — they create noise and distractions outside of the real work.”
Thus the recently renamed Department of Access and Engagement.
Dr. Plowman has “consistently spoken about the change in access and engagement on campus as an extension of our mission to reach and support students, faculty and staff,” said Tisha Benton, a spokeswoman for the chancellor.
Tennessee lawmakers seemed sensible about the solution. A bill introduced in January specifically stated that such offices would not be allowed to operate “regardless of name or designation.”
The legislation seemed destined to pass in the predominantly Republican legislature. But the mood changed at a committee meeting after members considered a letter from the Knoxville Jewish Alliance raising concerns that the ban would place restrictions on how the University of Tennessee would support Jewish students.
The bill was unanimously defeated after a voice vote.
