University of Kentucky drops DEI program under pressure from Republicans

In Kentucky, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, and other red states, state-funded universities and colleges are very publicly dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives as state lawmakers threaten the state schools with legislation that hasn’t even passed.

It doesn’t have to — the threats just need to earn administrators’ attention.

Related:

Alabama GOP passes extreme “gag order” to ban diversity discussions in universities

The sweeping education bill also includes a trans bathroom ban.

In the case of the University of Kentucky at Lexington, the state school disbanded its office promoting DEI efforts in response to lawmakers questioning whether UK’s focus on identity has stifled political discussions, its president said Tuesday.

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The school has “listened to policymakers and heard many of their questions about whether we appear partisan or political on the issues of our day and, as a result, narrowly interpret things solely through the lens of identity,” UK President Eli Capilouto wrote in a campus-wide email.

“In so doing, the concern is that we either intentionally or unintentionally limit discourse. I hear many of those concerns reflected in discussions with some of our students, faculty, and staff across our campus.”

While a bill addressing those concerns failed to make it out of the legislature, Capilouto acted preemptively to shut down the school’s Office for Institutional Diversity and divide its responsibilities among other school departments; a new Office for Community Relations will take on some of the shuttered department’s responsibilities, Capilouto said, and the restructuring won’t result in job losses.

The school’s core values to protect academic freedom and promote a “sense of belonging” for everyone on campus, regardless of background or perspective, will remain intact, he added.

A statement on UK’s previous DEI office website read its mission was to “enhance the diversity and inclusivity of our university community through the recruitment and retention of an increasingly diverse population.” Initiatives promoting diversity-related experiences can help ensure success in an “interconnected world,” the mission statement read.

In his statement, Capilouto noted other states have been grappling with the same issue.

On Tuesday, Rodney Bennett, the first Black chancellor to run the University of Nebraska, announced plans to disband that school’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion.  

“I fully grasp the weight of this decision and its implications, but a centralized approach to this work is no longer right for our institution,” Bennett said in a public letter.

Like Kentucky, the Nebraska state school will split the former office’s responsibility among other departments.

In Iowa earlier this year, the Republican-led legislature approved a budget bill that would ban all DEI offices, while Missouri lawmakers have introduced several anti-DEI bills, although the legislation hasn’t passed.

Regardless, the University of Missouri recently announced it is dissolving that school’s “Inclusion, Diversity and Equity” department and dispersing the staff.

While rearranging the department’s title didn’t help save Missouri’s “IDE” office, dividing the mission among departments seems to have ameliorated lawmakers’ concerns, as it has in Kentucky and Nebraska.

“A true elimination of these DEI policies in our public universities will end the division they promote and allow our colleges and universities to be the true bastion of free thought we need them to be,” Kentucky Republican state Sen. Mike Wilson said in a statement.

How “true” that elimination turns out to be remains in the hands of university officials — for now.

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