At the University of Tennessee, the campus DEI program is now called the Department of Access and Engagement.
Louisiana State University also rebranded its diversity office after Trump-supporting Republican Jeff Landry was elected governor last fall. The Division of Inclusion, Civil Rights, and Title IX is now known as the Division of Engagement, Civil Rights, and Title IX.
And at the University of Oklahoma, the Office of Diversity is now the Office of Access and Opportunity.
In what appears to be an attempt to placate or out-think opponents of diversity and equity programs, university officials have relaunched the DEI office under a different name, changed the titles of officials, and The requirements have been rewritten to remove words such as “diversity” and “diversity.” “fairness”. In some cases, only the words have changed.
The pushback against diversity programs comes at a difficult time for some universities. They face a shortage of students enrolling as a result of declining birth rates and skepticism about the value of expensive college degrees. Some worry about how a ban on race-based admissions will affect the state of campuses.
In either case, many university officials feel they need a DEI office to market to an increasingly diverse generation of students and the faculty who are likely to attract them. While no two campus diversity programs are exactly alike, they often preside over a variety of functions, including running student cultural centers, ensuring compliance, and hosting racial bias workshops for students and faculty.
Conservative critics questioned the cost of the so-called DEI bureaucracy, whose budgets run into the tens of millions of dollars in some places, and attacked the program as a left-wing indoctrination factory.
In a recent webinar advocating for continued DEI efforts, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a professor of history, race, and public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, said the backlash was due to “a few anecdotes of terrible training modules. “It's based on that,” he said. It's gone crazy. ”
In announcing the name change for the Louisiana State DEI program, the school's president said: William F. Tate IV said there was no political pressure.
But he also told the Faculty Senate recently that “we've definitely been paying attention to the ripple effects that have occurred on campuses across the country.” He vowed that the university, one of the most diverse universities in the Southeastern Conference, “remains committed to DEI.”
Todd Woodward, a university spokesperson, said the concept of “engagement,” now used instead of “inclusion,” was at the center of the university's strategic plan even before Governor Landry was elected. said.
At least 82 bills opposing DEI in higher education have been introduced in more than 20 states since 2023, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Twelve of those bills passed, including those in Idaho, Indiana, Florida, and Texas.
This led to layoffs and closures. The University of Florida recently announced it would lay off more than a dozen diversity-related employees. At the University of Texas at Austin, the Multicultural Exchange Center has closed. About 60 administrators have received notice that they will lose their jobs, according to the state branch of the NAACP and the American Association of University Professors. Some campuses in Texas have closed their LGBTQ centers.
But even in states with crackdowns on DEI, some schools are taking a more moderate approach.
Florida State University in Tallahassee appears to be taking a “damage reduction approach.” FSU history professor Will Hanley said in an interview.
The school has restructured its roles, changing the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion department to the Equal Opportunity, Compliance and Engagement department.
But there were limits to how far it could go.
FSU students are required to take two “diversity” courses that include Buddhist ethics, Buddhist ethics, and dozens of other topics. German literature and LGBTQ history.The faculty committee recently proposed renaming the requirement “Perspective and Perception”.
The Faculty Senate rejected this idea. Dr. Hanley, who specializes in the Middle East, told the Senate that the new name would obscure the very intent of the requirement.
“In the context of attacks on DEI, I wondered if renaming this requirement would put more emphasis on those attacks,” according to the minutes. meeting.
In Georgia, Kennesaw State University finance professor David Bray sees things differently, saying the diversity officer should have been eliminated rather than given a new title. Kennesaw State announced in December that its director of diversity would become vice president of organizational effectiveness, leadership development and inclusive excellence.
The move comes after the state Board of Regents approved a policy change that prohibits Georgia's 26 public universities from requiring applicants and employees to fill out diversity statements.
“It's like putting lipstick on an ideological pig,” said Dr. Bray, who is gay and opposes diversity programs, arguing that diversity programs promote equality of outcome rather than equal opportunity. “As soon as it was discovered that DEI was on the political left, they reinvented the word and morphed into a ‘belonging’ gang.”
However, for many administrators, a name change is often an attempt to keep the mission of a diversity program intact.
University of Tennessee at Knoxville President Donde Plowman told the Faculty Senate in November that the school has “historically not been successful” in attracting students from underrepresented groups to campus. The percentage of Black students decreased between 2020 and 2023, dropping from 5.5% of total enrollment to 4.2%.
After one professor asked if future faculty and legislators “looking for red meat” might be deterred by the name change for the DEI program, the Office of Diversity and Engagement, Dr. Plowman said, “What? What happened is that those words were weaponized.” — It creates noise and distracts you from your main task. ”
The Access and Engagement department has therefore been renamed.
Dr. Plowman has “consistently discussed changes to 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. Ta.
Tennessee lawmakers seemed wise about the workaround. A bill introduced in January specifically states that such offices should not operate “regardless of name or designation.”
The bill seemed destined for passage in an overwhelmingly Republican Congress. However, after members reviewed a letter from the Jewish Federation of Knoxville expressing concerns that the ban would limit how the University of Tennessee provides support to Jewish students, the committee During the meeting, the atmosphere changed.
The bill was unanimously rejected by voice vote.