Higher Education

‘No one is losing their jobs’: After Stitt executive order, OU DEI rebranded

August 7, 2024

Ray Carter

In December 2023, Gov. Kevin Stitt issued an executive order seeking to downsize or eliminate “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) offices and bureaucracy at Oklahoma colleges and prevent colleges from engaging in illegal discrimination.

“In Oklahoma, we’re going to encourage equal opportunity, rather than promising equal outcomes,” Stitt said at the time. “Encouraging our workforce, economy, and education systems to flourish means shifting focus away from exclusivity and discrimination, and toward opportunity and merit. We’re taking politics out of education and focusing on preparing students for the workforce.”

But at the University of Oklahoma, it appears college officials responded to the order primarily by relabeling DEI offices and positions, and no DEI staff positions were eliminated, based on emails obtained through an open-records request.

“This is a tactic that has been seen in other institutions: rename and rebrand the office to something that doesn’t mention DEI, but maintains the same leadership and initiatives,” said Laura Morgan, a registered nurse with 40 years of experience who is now senior director of programs for the organization Do No Harm. “Staff members may be distributed to other departments where the work of engaging in identity politics continues, but on the surface level the university appears to comply with the law.

“As an elite university, OU College of Medicine needs to demonstrate a commitment to excellence in providing a first-class medical education, not pushing an ideological agenda despite executive actions that prohibit it,” Morgan continued. “Do No Harm will continue to call attention to medical schools’ efforts to circumvent the law in the name of ideology.”

Do No Harm is a group dedicated to keeping identity politics out of medical education, research, and clinical practice.

OU produced numerous emails on July 19 in response to an open-records request filed by the American Accountability Foundation. Do No Harm later provided the email records to the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs for this article.

The OU emails show university officials repeatedly emphasized renaming DEI programs rather than altering their missions to comply with Stitt’s executive order.

Stitt’s order required state agencies and institutions of higher education to initiate a review of DEI positions, departments, activities, procedures, and programs to eliminate and dismiss non-critical personnel.

Under the order, state agencies and institutions for higher education cannot utilize state funds, property, or resources to support DEI positions and programs that “grant preferential treatment based on one person’s particular race, color, sex, ethnicity, or national origin over another’s,” or mandate that any student or staff member participate in any activities that grant “preferences based on one person’s particular race, color, sex, ethnicity, or national origin over another’s.”

Oklahoma colleges and universities had until May 24, 2024, to comply with the order.

‘No One Is Losing Their Jobs’ 

Stitt’s order was issued at a time when college DEI programs had been publicly cited, repeatedly, as a cause of growing anti-Semitism on college campuses.

While the order primarily prohibited racist activity on state college campuses, many OU officials responded with dismay.

On Dec. 13, 2023, OU President Joseph Harroz, Jr., issued a letter to the OU community saying that Stitt’s executive order “evokes deep concern and uncertainty about the future, and in many ways feels like a step backward.”

The same day, Diana Fitzpatrick, the manager of academic personnel records at OU, wrote an email to Jonathan Still, the associate director for diversity, equity, and inclusion that referenced Stitt’s executive order and Harroz’s response, saying, “…this is disturbing, to say the least.”

In a Dec. 14, 2023, email, Pamela Allen, a chair in Dermatology at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, wrote, “Many of us have mixed emotions and are still in dismay about the executive order handed down by the Oklahoma governor to eliminate/defund all DEI offices, positions, programs, procedures, and activities in state-funded institutions of higher education.”

But she indicated the OU Health Sciences Center’s DEI office might simply rebrand, writing that the “name may shift and work under a different capacity.”

On Jan, 8, 2024, Roxanne Mountford, professor and chair in the Department of English at OU, wrote, “It is concerning to my faculty—particularly my BIPOC faculty—that the DEI Office at OU will be closing without learning 1) how BIPOC faculty and students will continue to be supported, and 2) how the broad values of diversity, equity and belonging will continue to guide us in all of our work.”

(BIPOC is an abbreviation for “black, indigenous, and people of color.”)

Mountford complained that OU was one of the few, or perhaps only, state colleges to indicate it would formally close its DEI office, saying that “my faculty have interpreted this move as ominous, despite my best effort to reassure them.”

Mountford also claimed, “Many of my faculty feel vulnerable.”

Despite Mountford’s statement that staff were concerned about the closure of DEI offices, numerous emails indicate that both DEI staff and OU’s DEI office would continue under new names with no indication the mission of those staff would be modified to comply with Stitt’s executive order.

On Dec. 13, 2023, Belinda Hyppolite, OU’s vice president of diversity and inclusion and chief diversity officer, emailed numerous school officials, stating that OU “will work to realign to ensure we can continue to support this campus community. No one is losing their jobs …”

Also on Dec. 13, 2023, David Surratt, the vice president for student affairs and dean of students, sent a letter to the student affairs leadership team, stating in text that was both bolded and underlined saying that “there are no plans to terminate any staff.”

In a Jan. 2, 2024, email, Shawna Watkins, executive director for outreach and engagement in the division of diversity, equity, and inclusion at the University of Oklahoma-Tulsa campus, indicated that officials were trying to hide the participation of DEI offices in various events.

In the email, Watkins discussed a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day event, writing, “My thoughts have been that we can participate but will do so without having ‘DEI’ as the planner (although DEI is the planner). Marketing and communication as well as student affairs are ready to ‘take the lead’ if need be (although it would be me. I would just use their department names).”

In that same email, Watkins informed Hyppolite that several planned summer events “could be deemed ‘controversial.’ Particularly the pride parade and minority focused High school student events (these events are marketed specifically stating minority students, etc.).”

On Jan. 3, 2024, Watkins wrote that officials with one school program “have decided to incorporate curriculum” on “implicit bias” to help students “preparing to work with patients.” Watkins’ email noted Stitt’s executive order, and asked Hyppolite if Watkins could directly advise students in the program using bias training or “if I should simply advise from afar.”

In a Jan. 29, 2024, email, Watkins discussed a recent employee resource group (ERG) meeting, saying officials had discussed the impact of Stitt’s executive order on the group. (In the world of DEI, employee resource groups are “internal communities of workers with shared identities and interests,” meaning the groups may be racially segregated, divided by sex, or split along similar lines.)

Watkins wrote that officials concluded Stitt’s order meant “that they will need to open their groups to anyone who may want to be involved. Additionally, events would need to be opened to any and all. This was the point of contention in my opinion.”

In a Jan. 9, 2024, email, David Wrobel, dean of the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences, indicated that much of what OU officials planned to do in response to Stitt’s executive order was to simply relabel old DEI offices.

Wrobel asked Andre-Denis Wright, provost of OU, if Wrobel could let staff know “that the current working title for the new office is ‘Office of Access and Opportunity,” and also asked if he could inform staff that “we will await further guidance from the task force re/whether certain terms will need to be removed from websites, job announcements, etc?”

On Jan. 2, 2024, Carla Pratt, the Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher Chair in Civil Rights, Race and Justice in Law at the University of Oklahoma College of Law, wrote “as Chair of the law school’s DEI Committee” to the university’s office of diversity and inclusion.

Pratt said law school officials “have expressed a desire to re-name our committee so that it does not offend the new law,” and asked if that was allowed.

Hyppolite responded on Jan. 5, 2024, saying, “The committee is permitted to change as it sees fit; however, no official recommendations have been made regarding language or names.”

DEI’s Tentacles are Extensive

The OU emails show that DEI’s tentacles extended throughout campus academic departments and were not isolated to social-science degree areas where Marxist-derived critical theories are common. Officials indicated that DEI was ingrained into programs such as medical training, engineering, legal training, business programs and more.

On Dec. 13, Corey Phelps, dean of the Michael F. Price College of Business at OU, asked Hyppolite for “specific guidance” regarding the executive order’s impact on the business school’s diversity and inclusion office and multicultural business program.

On Dec. 14, 2023, Phelps wrote that students in the school’s multicultural business program “are anxious about the governor’s EO and DEI.” However, Phelps conceded that because that program is “open to all students” that it was “not impacted” by Stitt’s order.

On Jan. 26, 2024, John Antonio, a chair in the college of earth and energy at OU as well as senior associate vice president for research and partnerships, wrote, “We are starting to award scholarships under the banner of the DEI program … Is that okay?”

OU officials’ dismay over potential changes to the school’s DEI emphasis came despite public feedback indicating Oklahoma taxpayers do not support DEI.

On Dec. 14, 2023, Zachary Higbee, interim assistant vice president of communications for OU, recapped public response to Harroz’s statement on Stitt’s executive order.

Of 356 email responses to the university’s statement, Higbee said 35 percent were supportive of Stitt’s order on DEI and 26 percent were critical of OU. Only 23 percent “supported OU’s values,” Higbee wrote.

On social media, Higbee said reaction “was mixed.”

In February 2023, Oklahoma’s public colleges reported spending at least $83.4 million on DEI programs and personnel over the prior decade. Those expenditures included funding for drag-queen performances, a program on fostering “Trans and Non‐Binary Resilience,” so-called “antiracist” training, and a presentation on “Black Jesus.”

In 2021, the University of Oklahoma mandated that incoming students and staff take DEI training that informed students the phrase “Boomer Sooner” is steeped in racism and can represent a form of oppression, that OU remains a place of discrimination where students may literally fear for their lives, that support for racial equality is wrongheaded, and “equity” measures that can involve different treatment for different groups based on race and other characteristics should be embraced instead. The training also explicitly told  OU staff to embrace “political correctness” in their communications.

OU stopped mandating the training after passage of a state law made it illegal for Oklahoma colleges to require students “to engage in any form of mandatory gender or sexual diversity training or counseling” and banned any “orientation or requirement that presents any form of race or sex stereotyping or a bias on the basis of race or sex.”

A 2021 report by the Heritage Foundation showed that for every one Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) staff member at the University of Oklahoma, there were 4.4 DEI personnel, the 24th highest ratio among 65 universities studied.

[For more stories about higher education in Oklahoma, visit AimHigherOK.com.]