Kaleb L. Briscoe
At the start of a new year, anti-DEI bills and executive orders continue to sweep the country.
Indiana governor Mike Braun signed an executive order Jan. 15 eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion work by state agencies and replacing DEI with “MEI,” or “merit, excellence and innovation.” West Virginia governor Patrick Morrisey also issued an executive order last week banning DEI initiatives at all public institutions in the state. They join a growing number of states imposing such restrictions.
DEI professionals are bearing the brunt of this legislative onslaught as their colleges struggle to respond. Some have lost their jobs while others are continuing the work under chillier conditions, new titles or the auspices of different offices.
As a fellow at the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement, Kaleb L. Briscoe, assistant professor of adult and higher education at the University of Oklahoma, conducted a series of qualitative interviews with 31 DEI professionals at higher ed institutions in states with proposed or enacted DEI bans. The goal of the project was to better understand staff members’ experiences doing DEI work in this political climate and the ways they’ve been affected by DEI bans and their colleges’ varied responses.
Inside Higher Ed spoke with Briscoe about her research and the challenges higher ed DEI professionals are facing. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What made you want to do these in-depth interviews with DEI professionals?
A: A colleague, Dr. Veronica Jones, at the University of North Texas, [and I], we received some Spencer Foundation monies a while back to focus on the CRT legislative bans and how that affects faculty experiences on campus. And then, around that time, when we were wrapping up that work, the DEI bans were coming.
For me, it’s important to note that I am currently a faculty member, but before I was a midlevel student affairs practitioner. I have done diversity work, specifically in student affairs with marginalized communities, having planned and overseen multicultural programs. And so, while I am very much a scholar, I lean on that scholar-practitioner mentality … I was most worried about staff members, primarily because of the connections, or lack thereof, between academic freedom and free speech and how many of them don’t have the same privileges that we have [as faculty members].
I’ve been working with the University of California Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement, who funded this work, and [it] was one of the first empirical studies at the time that focused on staff members. Their voices weren’t included in these narratives, but they were being affected the most by these bans.
Q: When you did the interviews with diversity professionals, what themes emerged, and were there any that surprised you?
A: Some of the things that I described within the report were the overcompliance issues. Before these executive orders and bans come, [campus leaders] are making the decision to remove staff, services, offices and funding. And I think that’s been some of the most disheartening pieces, hearing that people know their jobs are on the line, their livelihoods, their humanities are on the line for misinformation and disinformation campaigns.
Texas legislators, for example, when they wrote SB 17, they weren’t thinking about women’s centers, LGBTQ+ centers. They were specifically talking about DEI offices … but that’s what happened, because institutions overcomplied. And I’m giving Texas as the example, but that happened in Louisiana, that’s happening in Georgia, it’s happening in Idaho, happening in Nebraska, where literally administrators are saying, “Let’s get ahead of this.” And [staying] ahead used to be renaming, reclassifying, but … that wasn’t enough to satisfy legislators. So, they then decided to officially and unofficially dismiss and demote staff members.
And what was sad about this is a lot of this is not being reported right now. UT Austin’s case made national news. Everybody reported on that and how they let go of staff, but that’s happening across the nation right now with these bans, and a lot of it’s not hitting the news. You can’t talk to local newspapers, national newspapers. You can’t let people know what’s happening in this moment. And I have confirmation of that across states that they are being told by provosts, presidents, communications staff that they cannot have these conversations.
The other thing that I found continuously is they’re making the environment—and “they” being both … legislators and policy makers, as well as some institutional leaders—so chilly that staff members don’t even want to do this work anymore, which is sad, because they’ve dedicated their lives to this work. It’s not just the bans that are making people leave. It’s the climate. It’s the attack on who they are. It did give me pause how many of the staff members, as I talked to them, were trying to get out.
Q: What are some of the factors creating that chilly environment?
A: I’ll give a couple of examples. Some white students, white faculty, white staff, who are now feeling emboldened by the re-enactment of Trump’s administration, who feel comfortable with saying certain things in ways that they hadn’t before, because there was consensus and support for DEI, [they’re] being very vocal about “DEI is not necessary, why are we spending so much money on that,” in ways that didn’t happen before this political moment.
The bans both proposed and implemented caused chilliness … All of these states are watching and learning from what legislators are able to do [in other states] to try to … re-enact more violent measures. They know, “OK, I can’t do this, but I can do this,” and they learned from the [critical race theory] bans.
The other thing that I think is challenging is that administrators weren’t communicating with staff. So, your president, provost, vice president of student affairs, chief diversity officer, some were downplaying the severity of it, and then the executive orders or bans happened and they’re out of a job when there was a lack of communication or transparency and multiple cases of staff members asking [for more information]. I will say, on a positive note, there were some chief diversity officers who were actively protecting their staff and actively working to ensure their staff had positions, negotiating with presidents and with provosts to figure out needs to protect their staff, even if it meant not protecting [themselves]. So, there are some examples within the data where [a] chief diversity officer said, “If you keep my staff and fire me, I’ll be OK.”
It’s also disheartening that … staff members that they end up releasing or firing or demoting [spent time] renaming and reclassifying services—hours, days, months coming up with new language, new guiding principles, trying to appease legislators … moving to [terms like] “opportunity,” “belonging,” “access.”
Q: That certainly has been one approach to anti-DEI legislation—universities renaming DEI offices and shuffling around personnel to other departments, like student affairs. In your interviews, how did diversity professionals feel about their institutions taking that approach, and how did it affect their day-to-day work?
A: They feel betrayed. They feel silenced. I’ll give a couple examples, and I’m saying this as someone who does this work but also who used to oversee a student involvement office. Structurally, here’s what’s happening. You move somebody from a DEI office that could have multicultural, inclusive excellence programming for Black students, marginalized populations, to a generalist student affairs position. When you move them to this, they’re not doing the same work. They aren’t [necessarily] being paid the same amount because you’re moving titles. A director of a multicultural center does not make the same money that a student affairs coordinator or specialist does. Their roles aren’t the same thing. So, [administrators are] demoting, retitling, changing positions, giving them less money. But that’s not fair when a person has 15, 20, 30 years of experience doing this work and has terminal degrees. It’s not at all equitable.
I think back to the CRT bans; I did not like the renaming of individuals doing CRT stuff. But if the renaming and the redefining—not to reclassify, let’s put that aside—keep someone’s job, I see this differently under the DEI bans. Because faculty within these states with the CRT bans were rarely fired, but DEI staff have been let go. So, in this moment, if that’s what we have to do to preserve both people and services and support, then that’s what we need to do. But the reclassification process … has really harmed diversity professionals in this moment, because it proves to them that they don’t matter on campuses, that their work isn’t valued, when you just move them to generalist positions.
Q: I’m also curious, because you interviewed DEI professionals at different points in their careers, how the experiences of chief diversity officers compared to midlevel or entry-level employees’ experiences of DEI bans? Did you notice any differences that stood out to you?
A: Absolutely. Chief diversity officers in most capacities, not all, were privy to upper-level insights around both the bans [and] the responses to the bans. They were often driving conversations and working with board members, presidents, communication staff, government liaisons on response mechanisms. Many of them were driving supporting staff and responses to staff [questions]. But in some cases, there were some chief diversity officers who were not included in those conversations.
A lot of the entry-level staff members were actively looking for jobs. It wasn’t that they didn’t value the work or weren’t invested—they saw the writing on the wall, regardless of what was being communicated to them.
And then I would say midlevel, that one was really tough, because many of them were so invested in the work that they were fearful of leaving because of what would happen to their students, staff and faculty that they support. So, they were really in constant turmoil on what makes sense in this moment to do. And so that meant many of them toughing it out, and by toughing it out, I mean staying in just harsh environments, staying even when people are doing just horrible things to them. Several examples of white students yelling at them, like, “We don’t want you here. Go back to—” wherever. I mean, it’s gotten really ugly in states in ways that, again, isn’t being talked about on a national level about how these bans are really causing severe racism on campus.
Q: What do you think the ripple effects of these DEI bans, or proposed bans, might be on students as you’re seeing the ways they affect staff?
A: Students are … enraged, very fearful and scared because these are one of the safe spaces that they had and they no longer have. They feel they don’t belong. [States and institutions] need to be prepared that this is going to affect enrollment, recruitment of students and staff and faculty. Your talented faculty, who bring in millions of dollars in grants, don’t want to come to these environments. Students don’t want to come there. And the next wave that I’m anticipating is student athletes will not come there. That’s affecting your money. What will you do then?
The other thing that they are not thinking about in relation to students as well is, over all, diversity professionals were on the front lines responding to racism, hate crimes, an uptick in racial bias incidents in Trump’s first administration. Who will serve staff, students, faculty now? You fired them, you demoted them, you closed these offices.
Q: What do you think higher ed leaders can learn from the experiences DEI professionals shared in terms of how they can respond in the current moment?
A: There’s no need to start dismantling services, offices, firing people, demoting people, if there is something proposed and not implemented.
There’s a relationship … that has to happen better between the government liaison, general counsel, university presidents and board members. There’s such a huge disconnect between these individuals in response to this. And I would add your chief diversity officer. A university president, they’re not socialized to understand DEI. That is not usually their pedigree.
The other piece is let students’ voices carry. One of the things I was extremely proud of is the way Texas students mobilized, the way that they worked with alumni. They were at the Capitol fighting policymakers.
Then the last thing that really comes to mind is that … presidents have one of the most difficult jobs right now … but I really want presidents to be brave. They can withstand this moment. They can push back. They have more rights and privileges than so many people on campus. They can be vocal. They can get in community amongst themselves. What would it look like if all the SEC presidents, all the Big Ten presidents, came together and said, “We’re not going to dismantle DEI”? Legislators are not going to take everybody’s funding. That coalition building across [institutions] has to happen, and it needs to happen at the presidency.