For Amanda Garcia, the memories are still fresh.
An alum of the University of Texas at Austin, she recalls how her campus changed after a state law dismantled diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
“We didn’t expect it to go as far as it did,” she says, sitting in a café near the capitol building remembering January 2024. “When the Multicultural Engagement Center shut down, as soon as the news broke, the next day there was somebody literally scraping letters off of the wall,” Ms. Garcia says.
Why We Wrote This
The Trump administration has made ridding U.S. college campuses of diversity, equity, and inclusion a top priority. What can be learned from a university in Texas, where a state DEI ban is already in place?
Even before the Trump administration started pressuring schools to get rid of DEI initiatives, red states were enacting laws to do so. Texas is one of at least 11 states, including Florida, Utah, and Iowa, with laws eliminating DEI efforts in higher education. How that process has unfurled there may hold lessons for colleges and universities across the United States.
Dismantling DEI programs has been messy. In recent weeks, after the U.S. Department of Education threatened to withhold federal funding if schools didn’t act, campus leaders have done everything from deleting references to DEI on websites to firing spokespeople. On Feb. 28, the deadline schools were given for making changes, Education Department officials offered clarification to some of their original language, including reinforcing that First Amendment rights shouldn’t be restricted. The constant stream of directives, some confusing, has colleges caught between politicians and the academic communities they serve.
In Texas, the law, Senate Bill 17, has been in effect since Jan. 1, 2024. Its rollout offers an example of how bans on DEI on campus can play out. Colleges and universities in the state have taken a range of actions to comply: shuttering DEI offices and firing staff, defunding programs and student clubs, getting rid of diversity training.
Free speech advocates such as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and the American Civil Liberties Union have filed multiple lawsuits against the state of Florida and some Texas universities, arguing that efforts to eradicate DEI are infringing on students’ and professors’ free speech rights.
Not everyone is unhappy about the anti-DEI developments, but with them come new questions. What’s the best way to welcome and support students of color and first-generation and low-income students? Can college courses legally be policed for content? What is actually allowed under the new laws? Some faculty at state universities are concerned about scrutiny of their syllabuses – and about the people they teach.
Ira Porter/The Christian Science Monitor
“There was a sense among students of color, and LGBTQ students, that they were no longer wanted or welcomed. … It sent a very clear message,” says Lauren Gutterman, a professor of American studies who has taught at UT Austin for 10 years.
Dr. Gutterman was teaching an LGBTQ+ studies class when the law went into effect. Students wondered if they were not going to have LGBTQ+ courses or women’s and gender studies courses in the future. “There was a lot of that fear,” she says.
“Conflicting messages”
More than a year on, the Austin campus – home to more than 53,000 students – and other colleges and universities in the state are still sorting out the effects of the law. Concerns have been raised by professors about how schools are responding to state mandates, and whether or not they are overcomplying. The University of North Texas, for example, removed words like “gender,” “race,” “class,” and “equity” from course titles. A graduate course titled “race, class and gender issues in education” was renamed to “critical inquiry in education.”
The Texas branch of the American Association of University Professors labeled UNT’s move “blatant censorship,” and called for a reversal of course content changes. Additionally, some tenured professors in Texas say they are treading lightly when speaking on this issue because another law, SB 18, makes it easier for tenure to be taken away and for faculty to be fired for cause. UNT has said that the course changes and content edits were so the school could be in line with state standards relating to teaching education.
These professors are similar to educators in Florida, who are also pushing back. In 2023, Sunshine State Gov. Ron DeSantis signed SB 266, which banned DEI initiatives at public colleges and universities. In January of this year, a group of Florida college professors filed a federal lawsuit that challenged the state’s restrictions for DEI programs, arguing that their academic freedom and free speech rights were violated. That case is ongoing.
After SB 17 went into effect in Texas, UT Austin faculty member Paige Schilt was supposed to give a lecture series talk on mentorship and LGBTQ+ issues, but it was canceled with very little explanation, Dr. Gutterman says, noting that students and staff were looking forward to it. The university was concerned it could be perceived as diversity training, something the new law bans.
“We have gotten conflicting messages,” Dr. Gutterman says. “These are unexplained acts of a kind of censorship.”
The Monitor made several attempts to reach UT Austin communications or administration, with no response.
A voice in support of the ban
When Texas legislators were considering the law, UT Austin philosophy professor Daniel Bonevac gave testimony in support of a ban. He says many colleagues who share his opinion have reached out to applaud his coming forward.
For Dr. Bonevac, DEI undermined academic seriousness and freedom of speech. He describes negative student experiences associated with the practice.
“What really got me involved and willing to testify and speak out on this particular issue was talking to some of my minority students,” he says during an interview in his office in Waggener Hall.
He offers two examples: A group of his students, some of whom were international students and people of color, was talking after class about a university PR campaign that read, “You belong” and “Make Texas your Texas.”
“The students were really put off by this, and I was intrigued,” Dr. Bonevac says. “It was a bad marketing campaign, and they said, ‘Look, when you come up to somebody and say, “You belong,” it’s weird. It’s like, “Wait, you didn’t think I belonged already?”’” Dr. Bonevac says eventually the university brought the old slogan back: “What starts here changes the world.”
Ira Porter/The Christian Science Monitor
The second example is a Black student who shared with Dr. Bonevac that he thought the DEI initiatives on campus felt aggressive.
“Hearing him say that he found this a threat as a minority student, it was like there was this odd cult on campus trying to lure people in and trying to get them to study African and African diaspora studies, or Mexican American studies, or whatever. It was almost like, yeah, there’s some weird thing going on there,” Dr. Bonevac adds.
As far as the people who were laid off, and the outreach that students may need, he thinks this is the perfect time for professors to get more closely involved with students.
“It’s our job, actually. And I think it was unfair for us to shut off an important part of our job – which is working with students one-on-one – and say, ‘Oh, you guys do it,’” he says, referring to the support and counseling staff that had been offered through DEI initiatives.
“I think faculty members, we’re too lazy, especially since COVID got so bad. We spend too little time in the office,” says Dr. Bonevac. Mentoring students might get in the way of faculty research, he adds, but it’s an important part of their job.
Dr. Gutterman disagrees.
“That labor is not going to fall equally on all professors,” Dr. Gutterman says. “It’s going to be predominantly faculty of color, LGBTQ faculty, and female professors, especially professors who teach about these issues, who are perceived by students as allies, who are going to be and have already been taking up some of that labor that supportive staff were doing.” She says the responsibility will lie with faculty other than straight white men.
University president in the hot seat
A survey done by the American Association of University Professors in August found that faculty members in Texas are dissatisfied with how things are going in higher education and that 61% of respondents wouldn’t recommend teaching in the state. More than 26% said they plan to apply for jobs elsewhere. Political climate, salaries, DEI, and academic freedoms were some of their concerns.
Karma Chávez is among a chorus of dissatisfied faculty at UT Austin. She saw dozens of her colleagues get fired last April because they worked as counselors and support staff for DEI initiatives on campus. She and others are angry because after the law was announced, those same people had their jobs reclassified to non-DEI jobs but were still terminated.
Ira Porter/The Christian Science Monitor
“All of that institutional memory, all of that expertise, is gone,” says Dr. Chávez, a professor of Mexican American and Latina/o studies. Dr. Chávez has a colleague whose research involves equity who’s been told she can’t apply for grants because her work relates to DEI.
“She’s fleeing the state because of SB 17,” Dr. Chávez says.
She says she has been recruited for jobs the last few years, but hasn’t applied. “This is a battle for higher education, and I’m in ground zero right now, and I know this beast well. And I feel like I’m gonna fight this fight here, as long as they employ me, because it isn’t safe anywhere.”
The university’s president is the latest to lose his job. Jay Hartzell was planning to leave anyway, to helm Southern Methodist University, in June. He was instead abruptly replaced last month. His handling of both the Hamas-Israel war protests and the DEI changes caused a rupture with the faculty. More than 650 people signed a no-confidence letter last April. Dr. Hartzell, they argued, “capitulated to political pressure” in shutting the Division of Campus and Community Engagement, previously known as the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, which resulted in the job losses.
Shortly before that, Texas politicians had increased the heat on complying with the new law, including not just renaming initiatives and job titles, threatening to pull funding.
Raising funds and pondering the future
Ms. Garcia, the alum, recalls what was so special to her about the Multicultural Engagement Center, or MEC, as everyone on campus called it. Six student groups, sponsored by the university, were housed there. They served students from the Asian and Pacific Islander, Native American, Indigenous, LGBTQ+, Black, and Latino communities. A separate Gender and Sexuality Center was also closed when the anti-DEI law went into effect.
Courtesy of Amanda Garcia
The MEC was where Ms. Garcia first learned about Latino student groups she could join. As of 2023, just over 25% of the school’s full-time undergraduate students are Hispanic. For Ms. Garcia, the MEC offered a sanctuary of sorts, a haven from the microaggressions she says she and others experienced from some white students.
A friend she met there invited her to the bilingual Latinx graduation, as it is called, during her sophomore year. Cultural graduation celebrations, which have taken place in addition to regular commencements, were common across Texas before SB 17. After the law, there is no more funding for them.
Last spring, Ms. Garcia says, students raised the money themselves. They turned to GoFundMe. They got assistance from the Austin City Council, which helped them find a place to host the event and provided a space for their parents to see them walk across the stage wearing Latinx stoles.
“We were lucky to be able to have that,” Ms. Garcia reflects. “We were all really grateful, but the issue is that that could be a one-time thing.” There is no guarantee the tradition can return, especially without the personnel and funding the MEC once provided.
Now Ms. Garcia is weighing if she wants to encourage her sister – who attends Austin Community College, and is also from the large Latino community of the Rio Grande Valley – to consider a school that she feels doesn’t want people who look like them.
“She goes to ACC now, but she’s been trying to transfer to UT, and I told her, ‘I don’t really know if it’s worth trying to come to UT anymore.’”
