CounterCurrent: Week of 03/17/25
Reforming academia is much like mopping up molasses on a cold day—and "diversity, equity, and inclusion" (DEI) is proving especially thick, sticky, and slow to clear away.
Even with the latest Executive Orders (EOs) from the White House, and directives from the Department of Education (ED), colleges and universities are sticking to their DEI guns. A notable example comes out of the Lone Star State, where despite having some of the most strict anti-DEI legislation in the country, Texas colleges and universities continue to host DEI scholarships and programs, says Louis Galarowicz, research fellow at the National Association of Scholars.
Activist pipelines abound in higher education. Even with sweeping anti-DEI legislation through Texas, academia has been allowed loopholes. Texas Senate Bill 17 (SB17), which became law in late 2023, outlawed DEI offices and practices state-wide in higher education, but provided exceptions for academic work. SB17 does not “restrict academic research or coursework” or “research or creative works by an institution of higher education’s students or faculty.” Galarowicz explains that under the guise of “research,” Texas colleges and universities continue to fund ideology-infused DEI programs, as well as faculty and postdoctoral positions.
“Equity” as a methodology is problematic. Public institutions should be “non-partisan institutions of learning.” When equity becomes the methodology of an institution rather than an area of study, discrimination and exclusion will abound. Institutions of higher education should not receive public funding for equity practices or programs.
Worse, Texas higher education continues to use affirmative action plans in hiring—An obvious violation of anti-DEI legislation passed by the state legislature. Clearly, enforcement of anti-DEI legislation is lacking.
In a follow-up article on Minding the Campus, Galarowicz details how most Texas public universities submit affirmative action plans as part of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines on “increasing representation of underrepresented groups.” “Once hiring goals are set,” writes Galarowicz, “they inform strategic planning, vision statements, hiring manuals, and job postings as the mandate to ‘increase diversity.’” As a further example,
Similarly, Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas, notes in its hiring procedure that ‘funds are available through the Human Resources Office for minority recruiting advertising.’ Universities disguise race-based recruitment strategies such as this one as ‘active’ or ‘targeted’ recruitment, emphasizing discrimination.
The loophole provided in Texas SB17 is clearly being exploited to fill racial quotas in staff, even though it explicitly bans “DEI offices, employees, statements, trainings, programs, and activities state-wide in higher education.” If a historically conservative state like Texas is struggling to shrug off DEI, then the rest of us must be ready for a long fight.
States that continue to disregard the EOs and ED Dear Colleague Letters will likely face penalties in the coming weeks—specifically through the loss of federal funding. The Trump administration is already proving it will not hesitate to dole out judgement—Columbia University serves as a case study.
While enforcement actions signal the seriousness of the administration, they would be better paired with Congressional legislation to ensure no future administration uses DEI to indoctrinate students.
Although DEI has gummed up institutions, some progress is being made to clean it up. Wyoming governor Mark Gordon has just signed into law anti-DEI legislation which bans community colleges and the University of Wyoming from requiring “instruction promoting institutional discrimination.” Florida has already done work to rid the state of DEI programs. Progress can be made, but it will take time and real enforcement of these efforts within both state and federal governments. Galarowicz concludes with a directive that would do much to end DEI practices for good:
Depoliticization starts by jettisoning the ideologically discriminatory programs responsible for the incompetent, activist-administrator class of today. Legislators and boards of trustees ought to eliminate these programs to ebb the flow of DEI activist-scholars into university administrations. Intradisciplinary reform, distinguishing disciplines from DEI pseudo-scholarship, will not occur with activists forming majorities in university leadership. If DEI pipelines remain unassailed, the American academy will endure 40 years of monoculture and stultification, if Lysenkoism’s dogmatic triumph to denomination as pseudoscience is any indication.
With that, the molasses should get easier to clean up in the coming months, as temperatures at the White House are warming. An appeals court has ruled that Trump can enforce his anti-DEI policies, making higher ed's resistance to reform all the more futile.
Until next week.
CounterCurrent is the National Association of Scholars’ weekly newsletter, written by the NAS Staff. To subscribe, update your email preferences here.
Photo by Oliver Le Moal on Adobe Stock
