“How Higher Ed Is Rebranding DEI Departments” – Our Study On How Schools Are Evading DEI Cutbacks

“How Higher Ed Is Rebranding DEI Departments” – Our Study On How Schools Are Evading DEI Cutbacks

CriticalRace.org, a project of the Legal Insurrection Foundation, was launched in February 2021 to document the spread of Critical Race Theory in higher education.

The site has several interactive maps and databases with our fully-sourced findings, including a map of over 500 colleges and universities, all 156 U.S. Medical Schools, the military service academies, as well as business and veterinary schools, elite private K-12, and DEI certificate programs, amounting to over 700 institutions in all.

The CriticalRace.org site has receive enormous media attention, with over 150 links, quotes, and cites to our findings, and dozens of major media reports. Updating the databases and keeping them current in a changing landscape is the core of the website, but we also are moving into analysis (and in the near future will be releasing a parents guide). Kemberlee is the Managing Editor of CriticalRace.org and is overseeing these effort.

CriticalRace.org recently released a report, How Higher Ed Is Rebranding DEI Departments (full embed at bottom of this post), to address whether and how extensively DEI efforts are moving underground in red states where there are DEI department closures:

Over the last year and a half several states have taken action against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) on college campuses. But banning something never results in its eradication. A year ago, we wrote about this problem – that DEI isn’t going away, it’s just going underground. Whether campuses are renaming their DEI offices, or moving administrators into other departments to do the same work, DEI still exists.

So we dug in further, looking at the states who have taken legislative action against DEI in higher education to see their legislative efforts have panned out.

At CriticalRace.org, we have cataloged over 700 institutions of higher education and what is happening on their campuses, so far it pertains to DEI activities. In this report we dove into our database, exploring which states have taken action against DEI and the responses of the larger schools in those states.

• Out of the 26 Universities we have evaluated in states where DEI laws have been passed, 10 claim to have eliminated their DEI offices (and related activities) and have replaced them with new offices that have similar programming and/or personnel.
• New offices such as the “Office of Access and Engagement” and the “Division of Access, Opportunity, and Diversity” will replace former DEI offices.
• The 10 universities that have enacted this change include: University of Alabama, Florida State University, University of Iowa, University of Northern Iowa, Oklahoma State University, South Dakota State University, University of South Dakota, University of Tennessee (System-wide), University of Utah and Utah Valley University.

We then go into the fully-sources and footnoted details that support our findings.

Fox News covered the report,

Some American universities have claimed they would eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) ideology but instead opted to rebrand the polarizing practice, according to CriticalRace.org.

CriticalRace.org, which monitors CRT curricula and training in higher education, has cataloged over 700 institutions of higher education to examine activities on campus. The group says that out of 26 universes where legislative efforts have been implemented to phase out DEI, 10 have simply replaced them with new offices that have similar programming and/or personnel, as lawmakers face an uphill battle to uproot DEI ideology from public institutions.

“These findings highlight how deeply embedded CRT and DEI concepts are in higher education, with entrenched ideological commitment that is resistant to change,” William A. Jacobson told Fox News Digital.

“The efforts to excise CRT and DEI from universities will take time to see real impact,” Jacobson continued. “Higher education has little desire to reform itself, and only a sustained long-term effort will move universities back to the central mission of education, and away from ideological indoctrination.”

Jacobson, Clinical Professor of Law at Cornell Law School and founder of the Legal Insurrection website, founded CriticalRace.org’s sprawling database that has also examined elite K-12 private schools, America’s top undergraduate programs, military service academies, medical schools and others.

CriticalRace.org’s latest project was to examine the states where states want to eliminate DEI from college campuses. Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, and North Dakota have taken legislative action to eliminate DEI practices, but CriticalRace.org found that new offices such as the “Office of Access and Engagement” and the “Division of Access, Opportunity, and Diversity” will replace former DEI offices at many institutions.

“Many education groups have moved on from CRT/DEI to other issues because the politics also have shifted to other topics such as gender theory. At CriticalRace.org we are keeping our focus on CRT/DEI precisely because others have lost their focus, and because CRT/DEI poses a threat to our core rights to equality and equal protection of the laws,” Jacobson said.

“At our EqualProtect.org project we take legal action to remedy discrimination done in the name of DEI based on our research findings at CriticalRace.org,” Jacobson added. “We urge the public to send us tips as to discriminatory programs and scholarships.”

CriticalRace.org. details the exact curricula and training at each school, along with contact information and an overview of every university.

University of Alabama, Florida State University, University of Iowa, University of Northern Iowa, Oklahoma State University, South Dakota State University, University of South Dakota, University of Tennessee (System-wide), University of Utah and Utah Valley University have all rebranded their DEI efforts, according to CriticalRace.org.

“For example, the University of Alabama disbanded its DEI office and launched the Division of Opportunities, Connections, and Success; however, the new division is led by Dr. Christine Taylor, who was the Vice President and Associate Provost for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,” CriticalRace.org wrote in its findings.

“Florida State University took a similar approach by changing title names and reclassifying positions of employees who were already working in DEI to give them different roles; the approach circumvented the University laying anyone off,” the report continued. “The Office of Equal Opportunity Compliance and Engagement was activated in October 2023 to replace the DEI office.”

CriticalRace.org managing editor Kemberlee Kaye isn’t surprised.

“We predicted a year ago after the Supreme Court affirmative action ruling that DEI would not disappear on college campuses but would move underground in a variety of ways. Our research findings confirm our analysis that one time legislative efforts are not sufficient and sustained action is necessary,” Kaye told Fox News Digital.

“This research is imperative to understanding that legislative efforts halting the funding and/or proliferation of DEI/CRT on campus are a solid first step, but they’re not a one-stop solution,” she added.

The Fox News article then had reactions from several schools, none of which denied the facts presesnted in the Report, but asserted they were in compliance with state law.

The story also has been picked up at Yahoo News, HotAir, and elsewhere.

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