College Uncovered: DEI Backlash – The Hechinger Report

College campuses have become battlegrounds in America’s culture wars, with diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the center of the debate. In at least 20 states, Republican lawmakers are pushing to limit or even ban DEI initiatives at public universities.

College Uncovered cohost Kirk Carapezza heads to North Carolina, where rollbacks in DEI are raising concerns. At the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, some students fear these changes could make campus less welcoming for certain people. Conservative students worry about a chilling effect on free speech.

Off campus, voters are questioning whether taxpayer dollars should fund DEI programs at all. Even among supporters of diversity and inclusion, some progressive and independent academics concede that some elements of DEI could discourage discussion of controversial topics for fear of offending some students. Harvard Law School professor Jeannie Suk Gerson argues that while DEI programs were well-intentioned, they’ve gone off course.

GBH senior investigative reporter Phillip Martin joins the podcast to trace the historical roots of DEI policies and explain what scaling them back means for today’s students and their families.

Listen to the whole series

TRANSCRIPT

[Students singing a cappella]

[Kirk] This is College Uncovered. I’m Kirk Carapezza with GBH News. And that’s the Tarpeggios, a college a cappella group at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

UNC is the oldest public university in America, and it was a hotbed of civil rights protest in the 1960s. It wasn’t until 2018 that the college formally acknowledged that enslaved people helped build the campus. It also apologized for the — quote — ‘profound injustices of slavery.’

But today on campus, things are considerably different. Millions in state funding originally set aside for diversity, equity and inclusion programs, or DEI, is now being redirected to race-neutral programs, including civics education.

UNC student Samantha Green believes the university is trying to turn back the clock. Green heads the Black Student Movement at UNC.

[Samantha Green] We do a lot of work on the ground trying to support diversity, equity, inclusion. However, recently those at the legislative level that have authority over our actions have stepped in, deeming some of the policies that we’ve had in the past as being non neutral or non effective, and in some ways even harmful to the student body.

[Kirk] Across campus, others see the issue very differently. UNC student Preston Hill is a sophomore studying journalism and political science. A leader of the College Republicans, he sees the need to move toward what he calls a colorblind society, and he’s all for the repeal and replacement of DEI.

[Preston Hill] I think going back to neutrality, back to just simply looking at people based off of their personalities, their achievements, as opposed to the color of their skin or their sexual orientation — I think that that’s the way to go. And I think that that’s been the problem with DEI and why so many companies — not just universities, but companies, are rolling it back as well.

[Kirk] This is College Uncovered, a podcast pulling back the ivy to reveal how colleges really work and why it matters to you. I’m Kirk Carapezza from GBH News. …

[Jon] … and I’m Jon Marcus with The Hechinger Report. We’ll be joined later in this episode by Phillip Martin, an investigative reporter at GBH News who’s been following controversies around DEI for years.

[Kirk] Dozens of state or local bills are now targeting DEI funding. These are programs intended to expand universities’ demographic reach and make all students, regardless of their backgrounds, feel welcome and safe. That idea was born in the civil rights era and then embraced by many college campuses and some workplaces after the murder of George Floyd. But now it’s facing a big backlash.

[Jon] Beginning this year, Texas banned all DEI offices, as well as diversity training and — quote — ‘ideological oaths and statements,’ at all public institutions. Florida has eliminated all DEI programing at public colleges. And universities in both of those, states have also announced cuts to DEI office staffs.

[Kirk] At least 20 states have Republican proposals aimed at limiting DEI programs at public universities. In Wisconsin and Alabama, public university systems have decided to ban DEI preemptively after threats by lawmakers to withhold money and raises.

[Sound of voting] We are in order.

[Kirk] In May, North Carolina became the latest state to repeal its policy on diversity and inclusion.

[Peter Hans] Higher education does not exist to settle the most difficult debates in our democracy.

[Kirk] UNC System President Peter Hans speaking to the Board of Governors.

[Peter Hans] Our role is to host those debates, to inform them, to make them richer and more constructive. That’s a vital responsibility, and we can’t fulfill it if our institutions are seen as partisan actors in one direction or another.

Kirk] Hunt says students and faculty should be ready to engage with liberal, conservative and traditional ideas and even explore progressive ones like DEI, but that college administrators ought to stay out of it altogether, leaving faculty and students free to grapple with competing ideas and pursue truth and discover knowledge with an open mind.

I wanted to hear from the people most affected by these changes. So I visited Chapel Hill, where student groups were recruiting new members outside the student center. I talked to the Tarpeggios, that a cappella group we heard earlier, about what DEI programs offer and what might be lost without them. Here are seniors Lou Lindsley, Ella Breiner and junior Valentina Fernandez Escalona.

[Ella Breiner] I have no words. It’s so incredibly upsetting. And I think as a senior, I hate the idea that, like, I’m leaving this school and that’s going to be, like, that’s going to have a huge effect on our student population.

[Lou Lindsley] I think what’s frustrating to me is that, like, people are reorienting their focus from the ways that race affects people’s opportunities to, like, thinking about it just in terms of wealth and income. But there are so many different ways that, like, people’s race, people’s sex, all those different sort of identifying characteristics, like, how those factor into people’s future opportunities.

[Valentina Fernandez Escalona] Especially as a person of color on campus. I think that representation is super important and, like, being able to talk about diversity is something that should not be a question. I feel like it’s just something that’s so simple that everyone should be able to talk about freely.

[Kirk] On and off campus. I found DEI advocates who see these initiatives as essential to making underrepresented students and faculty feel more welcome and included by providing advising and support for them.

[Chantal Stevens] If I were, you know, a Black student from a rural town in North Carolina and I’m struggling, where do I go? And I think that’s what’s really scary.

[Kirk] Chantal Stevens is executive director of the ACLU of North Carolina.

[Chantal Stevens] If you are in an underrepresented group, you need to know where your resources are, because your experiences are different. And so to have this idea of, you know, being colorblind or issue blind, that really doesn’t work, right? Because we experience the world in very, very different ways. And so I really see this as a setback.

[Kirk] Over the long run. That can mean fewer Black and Hispanic students come to schools like UNC.

[Chantal Stevens] There’s so much at stake, right? When you think about the way we live. Let’s take, I don’t know, science and technology, just for an example. And let’s think about it in the form of AI and you’re developing voice technology. If you don’t have diverse people at that table, if you don’t have people who understand that different people bring certain inflections and certain words and your dialects might be different, think about what’s missed when that technology gets developed.

[Jon] Even before its repeal of the DEI, UNC took down its web page for its office of diversity and inclusion. The Board of Governors has since reallocated millions of dollars it used to spend on DEI to what the administration calls student success programs and civics education, at a school where most of the students come from within the state.

[Kirk] So to hear how voters and taxpayers who subsidize the university are responding to these changes, I took a 30-minute drive south of Chapel Hill to a diner in a small town called Pittsboro

[Hostess answering phone] Hello, Virlie’s Grill.

[Kirk] At the bar, people chatted quietly over ham and eggs while Fox News aired on big flat screens overhead. All the patrons I spoke to agreed their taxpayer dollars should not be funding DEI on campus. Here’s Christopher Partain, Carollyn Lloyd and Hal Gwynn.

[Christopher Partain] I disagree with most of those policies, but I do believe that we should treat everyone as equal going into it. But it doesn’t have to be an equal outcome.

[Kirk] When you say you oppose DEI policy, specifically what do you oppose about it?

[Christopher Partain] I don’t think that we necessarily need to teach ideologies that are politically driven and motivated.

[Carollyn Lloyd] You’re there to get an education, nothing more. Focus on your education. You take up politics when you leave.

[Hal Gwynn] They should be learning about science, math, education English if we’re covering the costs. We don’t want them to learn about woke and the LGBTQ thing. That’s just my opinion.

[Kirk] So when you think about American colleges, what concerns you the most?

[Jimmie Phar] That’s pretty easy: all the liberal indoctrination now. They’re almost all that way now.

[Kirk] That’s Jimmie Phar, who’s a graduate of UNC Chapel Hill.

[Jimmie Phar] I went twice. I went in ‘69 and ‘73. And then I was in the Air Force for five years, then I went back in the ‘70s. And my experience was you get a lot of socialism indoctrination. I call it indoctrination, they call it teaching. Being an alumni, I can I can poke fun at them, you know? I still like their sports. I just don’t like their politics.

[Jon] Back at the UNC campus, junior Matthew Trott is from Pittsboro. He feels the same way as the people at that diner in his hometown. Trott is double-majoring in political science and public policy. And he’s on board with ending DEI.

[Matthew Trott] Speaking for myself and a lot of other Republican students, we of course are very much in favor of having a diverse and inclusive student body. The problem is that, in the past, many of these policies have been used to silence differing viewpoints that are not even opposed to diversity and inclusion.

[Jon] Trott says these policies have made it difficult for the College Republicans to host certain conservative speakers like far-right commentator Candace Owens.

[Matthew Trott] We eventually did, of course, get her approved, and it was a huge event where we had a full house of about 750 and had to turn away probably an equal number.

[Kirk] So now let’s bring in Phillip Martin, a senior investigative reporter with GBH News, who’s covered DEI and its backlash for years.

Hey, Phillip.

[Phillip Martin] Hey, how’s it going?

[Kirk] All right. So, Phillip, what goes through your head when we talk about this controversial topic?

[Phillip Martin] Well, first of all, when you talk about DEI, you can’t limit it to what’s going on on campus. Campuses are reflecting what’s going on nationally. The backlash against DEI is the issue. The backlash against DEI is formed from a national perspective. It’s an ideological backlash. So it’s not neutral. Right? That’s the first thing that has to be clear. Some of the same advocates who are advocating, for example, for free speech on campus are some of the same people who are pushing back against DEI, and who are silencing various progressive speakers, like former Black Panther Angela Davis on some campuses. So, in other words, the notion of talking about DEI on campus can’t be extricated from the larger conservative goal of anti wokeness, as it’s called.

[Kirk] And it’s part of our national narrative now. We heard it with, you know, Republicans saying Kamala Harris is just a DEI higher, or the DEI candidate.

[Phillip Martin] Precisely. It’s become a metaphor for race. And the same is true by and large on campus. That’s not to say that you don’t have some legitimate concerns about DEI institutionally, but for the most part, this is an ideological frame. It’s an ideological backlash. It’s not something that is neutral, as some people have advocated or stated. And it’s certainly not colorblind. You don’t go walk into a supermarket and not see what color the fruit is. It’s a question of what you do with that fruit. It’s a question of if you buy it or don’t buy it. The same thing is true about the whole issue of colorblindness. It’s a term that basically obfuscates all of reality. And it’s a way of not of really dealing forthrightly with the issues in front of you.

[Kirk] So, Phil, what do you hear in those voices from the campus in North Carolina and the diner in Pittsboro?

[Phillip Martin] I love the diner in Pittsburgh. I mean, what’s the name of the community?

[Kirk] Pittsboro.

[Phillip Martin] You gotta love that diner.

[Kirk] What do you hear in those voices?

[Phillip Martin] I hear hungry people. No, seriously, what I hear are people who have basically — it made sense to me that Fox News was on in the background, because what I heard was Fox News. When you hear someone talk about liberal indoctrination when you’re talking about DEI, what does that mean? That DEI is somehow counterposed to progress, that it’s counterposed to expertise, to qualifications. And that is exactly what you hear in these voices of where folks say things should be colorblind. Now, that’s my point. Colorblindness is, in fact, some would argue, and from my reporting, color blindness has been blindness. The notion of seeing things in terms of of neutrality. How could it possibly be colorblind if someone like Donald Trump got into the Wharton School as an undergraduate, and most reporting by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal showed that he did not get in on the basis of his academics. George Bush, he did not get into Harvard Business School on the basis of his academics or to Yale. This the issues that are involved — legacy, money, nepotism and other factors. DEI is simply another way of expanding the campus population, its diversity, and to include larger voices. And as some of your people you’ve interviewed, Kirk, have said, this actually expands the voices and it expands the type of people who are on these campuses.

[Kirk] Right. And so it sounds like what we’re hearing is some conflation of DEI and, you know, quote-unquote socialism or indoctrination.

[Kirk] That becomes the problem with these terms. It obfuscates reality when people say that DEI is anti-democratic or they call it socialism or they call it indoctrination. These are terms we’ve heard since the civil rights movement. I mean, when during the civil rights movement of when people were pushing back against civil rights, do you know what they advocated? Why don’t we just be colorblind, even as the need for civil rights was very clear and directly in front of their faces. It’s a go-to phrase or a go-to term for doing nothing or essentially embracing the status quo, which is, again, the priority of whiteness.

So, Kirk, this question to you. I mean, what does your reporting on the ground say about the effectiveness of DEI.

[Kirk] Well, you know, we’ve got to put this in context, right? All this backlash comes after the Supreme Court banned race-conscious admissions, or affirmative action, as it’s better known. And DEI advocates tell me that these campus programs are not just effective, but increasingly necessary to achieve true equity.

Dr. Tina Opie teaches organizational behavior at Babson College, and she says despite the backlash, colleges should recommit to DEI.

[Tina Opie] The concern that I have with people who are trying to repeal or ban DEI is, okay, so you don’t like that tool, but what tool or solution are you offering to redress the fact that there are so many inequities and higher education?

[Kirk] And Phillip, as a Black woman, Opie points out that, at places like Babson and UNC, Black, Hispanic and Asian professors are significantly underrepresented.

[Phillip Martin] Well, you know, she has a point. I mean, a recent USC study found Black and Hispanic professors only made up 5 percent of tenured faculty at four-year universities.

[Tina Opie] And it’s not because of a pipeline issue. There is something happening within institutions of higher education where people who are from historically marginalized groups are not ascending at the same levels as their white, male, straight counterparts. Why is that? What it feels to me that they’re doing, Kirk, is they’re banning DEI and offering no solution, which suggests to me that they’re content with the status quo.

[Kirk] And Opie says the same people who oppose DEI aren’t protesting the baked-in advantages eealthier students have, like tutoring or who may have a legacy edge in admissions.

[Phullip Martin] Well, that’s interesting, too. But so too, Kirk, is the fact that DEI is actually more popular than people think. There was this poll that was conducted by YouGov in 2023. It found that nearly 60 percent of Americans support having a DEI office on a college campus.

[Kirk] Sure. But even those who support the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion object to what they see as the bureaucracy of those offices. These critics say in many ways it’s all gone too far and it needs to be scaled back or at least do a better job of including conservative ideas.

Jeannie Suk Gersen teaches constitutional law at Harvard.

[Jeannie Suk Gersen] I think the problem begins when you take a set of principles that are really good, right? Anti-discrimination is really good. Diversity — that’s really good. Obviously, you should be including people. All those things are really good principles and they’re very beneficial to the educational setting. I think that there’s a tendency sometimes on university campuses to think you take principles that you’re committed to and that you want to promote, and you turn them into rules that become the basis of punishment. Either punishment through social shaming or sanction or through making it harder to do the job that you’re supposed to do because you’re having to deal with the threat that something, you know, maybe you’ll have, of course, taken away from you or that you could actually be investigated for discipline and for wrongdoing. That’s been the chill.

[Kirk] Have you seen that happen at Harvard?

[Jeannie Suk Gersen] So I can’t talk about specific cases, because I might have been involved as a lawyer. But I can say it is something that professors, whether at Harvard or elsewhere, have come to feel is a is an ordinary part of life now.

[Kirk] And even among some supporters of a diverse campus, Suk Gersen says there’s a growing sense that these relatively new, well-intentioned programs could go awry if they’re institutionalized.

[Jeannie Suk Gersen] With a whole bunch of personnel and officials dedicated to it and an office and, you know, funding for it, and then certain, you know, training modules and orientation procedures and things like that, then it becomes a whole new world.

[Kirk] Are you concerned that DEI is defined by or too narrowly focused on race?

[Jeannie Suk Gersen] To the extent that you’re really going to have a campus that’s truly inclusive, it must also include the viewpoints that one’s not very, you know, comfortable with or in agreement with.

[Kirk] She cites conservative viewpoints like the belief that abortion should be illegal or that Roe vs. Wade was wrong. Still, Suk Gerson, who describes herself as politically independent, cautions that conservative critics should not be so quick to just condemned DEI and hope that it will just go away or disappear.

[Jeannie Suk Gersen] Because it is actually DEI that could end up making people understand the value of inclusivity toward conservative viewpoints on liberal campuses.

[Kirk] Phillip, in my reporting, I heard this idea again and again. Jeannie Suk Gerson and other critics talk a lot about the DEI bureaucracy.

So if I’m a student or parent, what, if anything, do I need to know about that bureaucracy?

[Phillip Martin] Well, first of all, there is a bureaucracy. It’s becoming less and less, however, as part of this backlash against DEI. There has been a commitment since the civil rights movement, at least verbally, to the notions of equality, diversity and inclusion. It wasn’t always called DEI.

[Kirk] These aren’t new ideas, right?

[Phillip Martin] These aren’t new ideas at all. But there have been attempts to try to institutionalize them. Those attempts only became serious, most people believe, after the death, after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Suddenly there was this reawakening, if you will, and an acknowledgment that the country was beset by institutional racism, systemic racism, not just a problem of attitudes, but institutional racism. And to counter that, it was suggested, okay, we need to create some form of some mechanism to bring in greater voices, to bring in more students of color onto campuses, those who might be poorer and those who might be more females, or more transgender students, so on and so forth. There was a legitimate effort to basically remedy this.

[Kirk] And by setting up offices, did that just create a bigger target?

[Phillip Martin] Yes. When you put up a sign, you’re asking for criticism. It expanded the bureaucracy. And any bureaucracy is going to be beset by problems and contradictions. And what happened here was that a lot of folks believed, okay, suddenly, you know, you’re being asked to take what some folks construe as a loyalty test before you are hired.

[Kirk] Right. You’re talking about diversity statements.

[Phillip Martin] That’s right. Right. Now, that in itself is not problematic when you consider that we do statements on all types of things. We agree not to curse out the person in the cubicle next to us. We agree not to sexually harass someone. So on and so forth. So this was yet another set of agreements. But you also had people who felt that it went too far and you had other people, sometimes liberals, sometimes progressives, who felt that these diversity statements expanded a bureaucracy that shouldn’t exist and that you’re not going to solve or push back against racism by having someone sign a statement, because it’s simply an action as opposed to a commitment or belief.

[Kirk] But do you think that whether we’re talking about diversity statements or we’re talking about DEI offices and the mechanism that you describe — do you worry or do you think that this is all creating a chilling effect on campus where people just aren’t even talking?

[Phillip Martin] Well, I think the chilling effect actually comes from the pushback against DEI. I mean, DEI has never said let’s ban books. Many critics of the idea call DEI socialist. But that doesn’t make sense if you’ve read any written rudimentary studies of socialism, that doesn’t make sense. If you call it liberal indoctrination, that, too, is a is a conservative catchphrase that doesn’t make sense. So I think that DEI has done a lot of good in terms of expanding or truly creating a diverse campus and asking folks to live up to equitable ideas, if you will. But I think it also serves as a convenient target for folks who already see liberal education as problematic or as a threat, who already see the academy as problematic. You see what’s happening in Florida with dissenters on college campuses trying to re-create the ideal on college campus as a conservative frame.

[Kirk] And what does your reporting over the years say about this idea of a quote-unquote, post-racial or colorblind society? And how far along or not along are we?

[Phillip Martin] Well, first of all, we’re not anywhere close to post-racial. Post-racial is a term that’s been introduced into society, but it does not reflect the objective reality of, we can’t be post-racial if, in fact, you know, like, we were, for example, demonizing Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. And you have more than half the country that have gone along with that demonization, or at least half the country, I should say, has gone along with that demonization. That’s not post-racial.

[Kirk] On this podcast, we’re very consumer focused. And so, what’s your advice to students and families who are trying to navigate this really tricky moment on campus right now?

[Phillip Martin] Find the most diverse campus you can, because that is going to reflect real-world experience once you graduate four years later. The type of world we live in is not a monochromatic world. We live in a world of different colors, different ethnicities, of men, women, nonbinary. This is the reality. And so, look for a diverse campus. Look for a diverse campus also in terms of thought. And that’s out there. Even when many conservatives say that a university does not adhere to the foundations of freedom of speech, my experience has always been that you have these debates, you have these discussions, and one frame may be more dominant than another on the campus — again, that might be the nature of the university — but that doesn’t mean those voices will be drowned out. And I say, look, for the greatest diversity you can find and inclusion of all types of folks, and where people feel they belong.

[Kirk] But there’s a difference between belonging and feeling comfortable all the time.

[Phillip Martin] Well, that’s right.

[Kirk] So the campus is where you feel most comfortable might not actually be the best fit.

[Phillip Martin] Well, that’s true. And so you have to also feel that you belong there. And it has to be acknowledged. The university has to acknowledge that you, my friend, belong here with us, and so on and so forth. Not that we’re tolerating you, but that you actually belong here and you feel comfortable being here and you can contribute.

[Kirk] And you can contribute.

[Phillip Martin] That is the type of space I would look for as a student.

[Kirk] And what about when it comes to the bureaucracy? And, specifically, what’s your advice to students trying to navigate the DEI space?

[Phillip Martin] Well, I think, first of all, I would think that colleges have to be very careful. Again, if a DEI statement is construed as a loyalty statement, that’s probably no good for anyone. That’s been my experience in reporting that. It simply creates a backlash. So I think what you have to do is figure out how to get people to commit in other ways — commit in the way they teach, commit in the way students feel they belong to that institution, to that campus, to each other.

[Kirk] So it’s not just window dressing, but it’s actually part of the plumbing.

[Phillip Martin] It’s built into the campus. It’s the wiring and it’s the tiles.

[Kirk] Phillip Martin, a senior investigative reporter with GBH News. Phillip, thank you so much.

[Phillip Martin] Thank you.

[Kirk] These decisions to roll back DEI have the greatest impact on students living and studying on the margins. Samantha Green is one of those students. She’s transgender and leads UNC’s Black Student Movement. And I met her in UNC’s Upendo Lounge. Upendo is the Swahili word for love.

[Samantha Green] And it’s kind of a testament to what DEI on our campus has done. So I really wanted to show it to you all because it really shows the progression of from the establishment of this space that’s meant to be a location where Black students who at the time especially were not allowed to be really in a lot of locations and really thrive in those locations. We made a space of our own and we got it chartered.

[Kirk] Nearly 60 years later. Green says the repeal of DEI and the loss of funds will hurt students this space was designed to support, on a campus that was actually built by slaves in the 1700s. Today, about 70 percent of UNC students are white and about 8 percent are Black.

[Samantha Green] We are setting up infrastructure for our students that are coming back onto campus, and a lot of our infrastructure is based around state funding. It’s based around community organizing. And these DEI repeals have basically taken away the footing that we normally stand on.

[Kirk] Green is studying public health and says the effects of repealing DEI will be felt far beyond the walls of the Upendo Lounge.

What message does this sent to students if the office shuts down or is stripped of funding and staff? What message does that send to a student like you?

[Samantha Green] It tells me that I have to fight harder. But to many students, it tells them that they’re not supported, that they’re not welcome, and that they’re either going to need to find another place to be or get out of here as quickly as possible or whatever they can do. And I fear that means that more students are not going to come to our university and the university could be negatively impacted by this.

[Kirk] This is College Uncovered from GBH News and The Hechinger Report. I’m Kirk Carapezza.

[Jon] And I’m Jon Marcus. We’d love to hear from you. Send us an email to GBHNewsConnect@wgbh.org or leave us a voicemail at (617) 300-2486. And tell us what you want to know about how colleges really operate.

This episode was produced and written by Kirk Carapezza ….

[Kirk] And Jon Marcus, and it was edited by Jeff Keating. Meg Woolhouse is supervising editor. Ellen London is executive producer. Production assistance from Diane Adame.

Mixing and sound design by David Goodman and Gary Mott. Theme song and original music by Left Roman. Mei He is our project manager and head of GBH podcasts is Devin Maverick Robins.

Keep listening after the election to hear how the results will affect your college plans.

College Uncovered is a production of GBH News and The Hechinger Report and distributed by PRX. It’s made possible by Lumina Foundation.

Thanks so much for listening.

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