Law & Principles, Culture & the Family
State universities’ DEI programs may prompt lawsuits
August 20, 2024
Ray Carter
Over the past decade, but accelerating in 2020, universities and corporations began incorporating “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) programs into the core of their missions.
But those two entities are now on separate paths.
“If you compare DEI effort in the corporate world, it’s dying already, and it’s dying because there is accountability,” said Ken Cuccinelli, former attorney general of the state of Virginia. “There is very little accountability in higher ed. If you went to the University of Virginia, they would consider themselves more a part of the institution of higher education than of the Commonwealth of Virginia. And you will find that across the country at these universities.”
He noted that university officials do not feel the pain when financial sanctions are imposed after losing lawsuits prompted by DEI programs because the school officials involved are spending taxpayer money, not their own, unlike private businesses.
“It’s not their money when they lose the lawsuit,” Cuccinelli said. “They’re spending your money to afflict you to tell you and your children why to hate America.”
Cuccinelli and other officials warned that DEI programs are increasingly illegal and likely to produce more successful lawsuits at universities across the country during “Unveiling DEI: Examining Its True Impact on Higher Education,” a panel hosted by The Heritage Foundation on Aug. 20.
Teresa Manning, policy director for the National Association of Scholars and moderator for the panel, noted that the average U.S. college now employs 45 DEI staffers and said that number continues to rise.
George LaNouse, professor emeritus and research professor of public policy and political science at the University of Maryland, noted that DEI policies often involve violations of students’ and staff members’ constitutional rights, including violation of equal-protection rights and free speech.
He pointed out that compelled speech is common with DEI programs at universities, including through requirements for job applicants to submit DEI statements as part of the hiring process.
“DEI does not value intellectual or political diversity,” LaNouse said. “And when DEI is part of a job ad, it effectively deters non-progressive candidates from applying. And when it is a part of the interview process, it can be used to eliminate those who do not subscribe to the search committee’s prevailing ideologies. So that’s a very serious issue. It shapes the characteristics of faculties.”
Conservatives Need Not Apply
That problem has arisen at Oklahoma universities and colleges in recent years as the processes used at many Oklahoma colleges and universities pressure job applicants to express support for the political viewpoints embodied by DEI.
For example, officials at the University of Oklahoma have vowed that DEI programming will “permeate” business-school programs.
Officials at the Gibbs College of Architecture at the University of Oklahoma have stated that “preference may be given to those candidates who can articulate how they may address issues of equity and belonging through their teaching, research and/or service.”
When OU sought a law school dean, the job posting stated that “the next dean must be visionary, politically astute, and have a commitment to service and to diversity, equity, and inclusion necessary to advance OU Law and inspire its multiple constituencies.”
A job posting for an assistant professor with a specialty in English education at the University of Central Oklahoma said applicants should include a “philosophy statement regarding culturally responsive pedagogy and diversity, equity, and inclusion in English education.”
At Oklahoma State University, applicants for assistant professor with a specialty in English Education were required to include a diversity statement with their application.
Officials on the Heritage panel noted that the DEI programs at most universities have no relation to any effort to address real-world discrimination.
Cuccinelli said university DEI plans do not “speak to any recent or even alleged current racism that has to be fixed.”
LaNouse also emphasized that point.
“None of this happens because the campuses have identified any particular problem of racial discrimination that’s current,” LaNouse said.
Instead, he said schools claim their DEI departments are about “a generalized view of past American society and DEI’s idealized view of proportional representation.”
Scott Yenor, professor of political science at Boise State University, said universities’ strategic plans have included DEI emphasis for more than a decade now, but are growing more extreme over time.
“If you did a strategic plan in 2020, it ended up being bonkers,” Yenor said, “but also implemented with a fanaticism that could be easily traced and documented.”
Officials in Oklahoma have tried to rein in DEI abuses on state college campuses.
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.
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.”
But emails recently obtained through an open-records request indicate that officials at the University of Oklahoma responded by mostly renaming DEI programs.
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. Oklahoma State University had the 23rd highest ratio for DEI-staff-to-history faculty. OSU had 26 DEI dedicated personnel, compared to 17 history professors.
Jay Greene, senior research fellow at the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation, said the DEI focus of many universities will have long-range, negative ramifications for the nation.
“This is an ideology that is a significant departure from a traditional academic and American ideal of treating people as individuals, equally under the law, but instead treating people as members of groups and treating them differently based on their group identity with ‘oppressors’ deserving rough treatment, being stripped of their privilege, while the ‘oppressed’ are deserving of restitution for collective or historic wrongs.”
Oklahoma’s public colleges spent at least $83.4 million on DEI programs and personnel over a decade, according to estimates released by state higher-education entities in February 2023.
As Oklahoma colleges have shifted more spending to DEI, other needs have suffered financially.
At a December 2023 budget hearing, officials with state colleges asked lawmakers to provide them with an additional $200 million to repair or demolish neglected buildings across Oklahoma campuses.
Manning said infrastructure is not the only area negatively impacted when college officials divert money to DEI programs.
“Any one cent spent on a destructive ideology that pits Americans against each other based on race or sex or ethnicity is too much money, so we will probably discuss how expenditures have exploded in recent years,” Manning said. “But the principle is that all of this spending is displacing real education.”
[For more stories about higher education in Oklahoma, visit AimHigherOK.com.]