Tag: DEI

  • DEI Orthodoxy Doesn’t Belong in NACE Competencies (opinion)

    DEI Orthodoxy Doesn’t Belong in NACE Competencies (opinion)

    If you’re not a supporter of the progressive DEI agenda, you’re not career ready. That’s one of the messages that the National Association of Colleges and Employers, America’s leading professional association for career placement, is sending to students.

    First established in 1956, NACE boasts a current membership of more than 17,000 dues-paying career services and recruitment professionals. Career counselors and others in higher education often cite NACE’s eight career readiness competencies to help students prepare for the job market and workplace.

    I was planning to use the NACE competencies this semester in a class on how liberal arts education equips students for the professional world and was dismayed to find that partisan criteria had crept into this valuable resource. The list includes—alongside things like teamwork, effective communication and technological proficiency—a competency called Equity & Inclusion. According to NACE, this means that a prospective professional will “engage in anti-oppressive practices that actively challenge the systems, structures, and policies of racism and inequity.”

    If you’re fully career ready, the group says, you will not merely “keep an open mind to diverse ideas and new ways of thinking.” You will also “advocate for inclusion, equitable practices, justice, and empowerment for historically marginalized communities” and will “address systems of privilege that limit opportunities” for members of those communities. In other words, you will subscribe to the view that American society is characterized by systemic racism and will work to break down America’s allegedly racist structure.

    NACE defines “equity” in this light: “Whereas equality means providing the same to all, equity means recognizing that we do not all start from the same place and must acknowledge and make adjustments to imbalances.”

    While these beliefs and attitudes might make someone a good fit at one of a diminishing number of “woke” corporations, they have little to do with career readiness in the ordinary sense of the term. Rather, the language NACE employs in its official materials implies a commitment to an ideological agenda that the organization has mixed into its definition of professional competence. NACE could be teaching students how to navigate the political diversity that characterizes most workplaces. Instead, through its influence in the college career counseling world, it is teaching them that acceptance of progressive orthodoxy on disputed questions of racial justice is a prerequisite for professional employment.

    NACE also does a disservice to students by signaling that workplace political engagement is universally valued by employers. In fact, many companies discourage it, and with good reason. In most work environments, political advocacy is more likely to cause tension and division than it is to foster cooperation and trust.

    As a college teacher and administrator, I’m especially troubled by the fact that NACE is conveying to students that their education should lead them to adopt a certain viewpoint on some of the most contentious political issues. The relationship between equity and equality, for example, is something that should be studied, discussed and debated in college, not taught as authoritative moral and political dogma.

    More generally, the way NACE talks about diversity, equity and inclusion ignores—or perhaps disdains—the political disagreement that is a normal and natural part of life in a democratic society, including the workplace. The organization undermines its professed commitment to open-mindedness when it implies that all open-minded people must be capital-P Progressives on issues such as systemic racism and equitable hiring practices. Like many institutions in recent years, NACE appears to have given in to pressure from activist members and embraced the “antiracist” worldview, sidelining the principles of openness and neutrality that are, or ought to be, hallmarks of professionalism.

    Notably, NACE indicates on its website that its equity and inclusion standard is under review. The organization cites recent “federal Executive Orders and subsequent guidance, as well as court decisions and regulatory changes, [that] may create legal risks that either preclude or discourage campuses and employers from using it.” This is encouraging. Better still would be for NACE to free itself from the ideological commitments that make its materials legally and politically risky in the first place. Let’s hope this venerable organization will get out of the business of DEI advocacy and focus on its core purposes of connecting students with employers and preparing students for professional life.

    Andrew J. Bove is the associate director for academic advising in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Villanova University.

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  • Congress Accuses GMU President of Lying About DEI Efforts

    Congress Accuses GMU President of Lying About DEI Efforts

    House Republicans have accused George Mason University President Gregory Washington of lying to Congress about diversity practices at his institution, ratcheting up pressure on the president to step down.

    The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee alleged in a report released Thursday night that Washington made “multiple false statements to Congress” in testimony about diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at GMU. The public university has been under fire for months over allegedly illegal DEI practices as the Trump administration has sought to crack down on such initiatives, claiming they are discriminatory and violate federal civil rights law. The Judiciary Committee report also alleged that the university “likely violated federal civil rights law by discriminating based on race in its hiring practices to advance Dr. Washington’s diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative.”

    Washington has denied breaking the law through efforts to diversify GMU’s faculty and staff, telling Congress that the university did not practice illegal discrimination under his leadership.

    The report is the latest salvo from Republicans who have launched federal investigations into GMU over its hiring policies, including demands that the embattled president apologize for allegedly discriminatory practices, which he has refused to do as he denies any wrongdoing.

    What’s in the Report

    The House Judiciary Committee’s report zoomed in on an effort by GMU, launched shortly after Washington took office in July 2020, to diversify employee ranks. The Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence initiative the president introduced aimed to make faculty and staff “mirror student Demographics” at GMU, which is among the most diverse institutions in the country. As part of that effort, GMU tasked schools and departments with hiring more underrepresented individuals.

    But in Congressional testimony, Washington denied the initiative was a strict mandate.

    “These are overall goals and they’re aspirational in focus,” Washington said, according to a transcript of his Sept. 17 interview released by the House Judiciary Committee Thursday.

    Though the Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence initiative stemmed from his office, Washington told Congress that faculty in each department developed plans for their unit. He also cast the creation of such plans as optional, telling Congress “if units did not want to develop a plan, they did not have to.”

    But the House Judiciary Committee claimed Washington lied about that.

    “Documents and testimony obtained by the Committee … show that Dr. Washington and his deputies actively sought to punish schools that did not comply with his racial discrimination mandates,” the committee report states. “A senior GMU official told the Committee that GMU financially punished any school that resisted Dr. Washington’s unconstitutional initiative.” 

    Congress pointed to testimony from Ken Randall, the dean of George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, as evidence that Washington lied about the plan being optional.

    “You’d get fired if you didn’t have a plan,” Randall said, according to an interview transcript.

    Washington also denied the administration formally reviewed plans to diversify faculty hiring. Republicans accused him of lying about that, too, pointing to internal remarks from then-vice president of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Sharnnia Artis (who now has a different title), in which she said the DEI team “consistently reviewed, monitored, and supported” such plans.

    “Again, the evidence contradicts Dr. Washington’s testimony,” the report states.

    However, Douglas Gansler, a lawyer representing the GMU president sharply disrupted claims that his client lied to Congress, which he accused of carrying out a “political lynching” in an emailed statement to Inside Higher Ed.

    “The political theater of the politicians accusing Dr. Washington of misrepresenting anything to them is unadulterated nonsense. Dr. Washington has never discriminated against anybody for any reason and did not utter one syllable of anything not verifiably completely true,” Gansler wrote.

    What Happens Next

    The GMU Board of Visitors has said little in the immediate aftermath of the report.

    “Today, the Board of Visitors received an interim staff report from the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary. We are reviewing the report and consulting with University counsel and counsel for Dr. Washington,” board members wrote in a brief statement. “The Board remains focused on serving our students, faculty and the Commonwealth, ensuring full compliance with federal law and positioning GMU for continued excellence.”

    While the board is reviewing the report, it appears unlikely members would be able to take action against Washington. GMU’s board, which is stocked with GOP donors and political figures appointed by Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, is currently without a quorum after Virginia Democrats blocked multiple appointments in recent months. Now a legal battle over those blocked appointments is slowly winding its way through the judicial system. While the Virginia Supreme Court heard arguments in the case last month, it has yet to issue a ruling on the matter. In the meantime, with only six of its 16 seats filled, GMU’s board is hobbled.

    Youngkin’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

    The George Mason chapter of the American Association of University Professors offered a fiery defense of Washington, arguing in a statement the committee was carrying out a politically motivated attack designed to erode institutional autonomy and impose partisan control over the public university.

    “The Committee’s unfounded accusations, dependence on clearly compromised sources, and selective presentation of ‘evidence’ represent an unprecedented abuse of congressional power—designed not to find the truth, but to silence leadership that refuses to yield to political pressure,” the GMU-AAUP chapter wrote in an emailed statement to Inside Higher Ed.

    GMU students, employees and community members rallied in support of president Gregory Washington earlier this year, amid concerns the board would fire him.

    With Washington under pressure from Congress, state and national Democrats have rallied to his defense, accusing the GOP of waging an ideological war on universities and hypocrisy by focusing on the GMU president’s alleged dishonesty while federal officials brazenly lie in court.

    “In Donald Trump’s Gangster State, they pick the target first and figure out the charges later,” House Judiciary Democrats wrote on X. “Today’s target: GMU President Gregory Washington. The Trump Education Department failed to find evidence of employment discrimination at GMU. So [House Judiciary committee] Chairman [Jim] Jordan opened his own investigation. When that one only confirmed Dr. Washington followed Virginia law, Jordan pivoted and conjured up an absurd and convoluted criminal referral based on an alleged lie that takes 8 pages to explain.”

    Representative James Walkinshaw—a Democrat in Virginia’s 11th district, which includes GMU—called Washington “an exemplary leader” in a biting statement posted on Bluesky.

    “Make no mistake, this is an attack on free speech and academic freedom,” Walkinshaw wrote. “It’s cancel culture at its worst and the American people are tired of right-wing snowflakes like Jim Jordan trying to silence anyone who doesn’t bend the knee to their bizarre MAGA ideology.”

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  • Student Success Leaders Worry About Affordability, AI, DEI

    Student Success Leaders Worry About Affordability, AI, DEI

    After yet another rocky year for higher education, student success administrators retain high confidence in their institution’s core mission: Some 95 percent rate the quality of undergraduate education delivered as good or excellent, according to Inside Higher Ed’s second annual Survey of College and University Student Success Administrators with Hanover Research.

    About the Survey

    On Wednesday, Dec. 10, at 2 p.m. Eastern, Inside Higher Ed will present a free webcast to discuss the results of the 2025 Survey of College and University Student Success Administrators. Please register here—and plan on bringing your questions about student success going into 2026.

    This survey was conducted Aug. 20–Oct. 6 with Hanover Research. Respondents number 204 student success leaders, most of whom work in student affairs at the executive level at public and private nonprofit institutions. The survey’s margin of error is plus or minus seven percentage points. A copy of the free report can be downloaded here.

    This independent editorial survey was made possible by support from the Gates Foundation and Studiosity.

    Most student success administrators (85 percent) also report strong feelings of connection to students served, and nearly as many say they’re satisfied in their roles. Yet leaders continue to worry about the forces holding students back. Selecting up to three options from a longer list, administrators cite mental health challenges (51 percent describe this as a top challenge), financial constraints (49 percent) and lack of adequate preparation before college (48 percent) as the top barriers to student success at their institution. Community college leaders are disproportionately concerned about students needing to work while enrolled (67 percent).

    Just about half of all administrators believe their institution is highly responsive to student needs for flexibility, such as in times of personal or academic crises.

    A larger share of respondents, 61 percent, believe their institution is highly effective in prioritizing student success. Just 35 percent say it’s highly effective in using student success data to drive decisions, however. Both of these figures are similar to last year’s survey, meaning the gap between aspiration and data-driven change remains.

    Student affairs leaders who responded to NASPA’s own annual Top Issues in Student Affairs survey this year flagged “using dashboards and other data communication tools to help senior administrators translate data into actionable insights for decision-making” as a top issue for institutions, behind only “protecting the institution against cyberattacks” and “navigating political and legislative pressures affecting institutional policies and practices.”

    Colleges can certainly do more to harness the extraordinary number of student data points available to them every day. But Amelia Parnell, NASPA’s president, told Inside Higher Ed that she’d give student success leaders “a little more credit” for their use of data—especially the qualitative kind.

    “We need both quantitative data to see scale and impact and qualitative data to understand the nuances,” including around learning and engagement, she said. “I think professionals have quite a bit of qualitative context about students’ experiences because they spend a lot of time connecting directly with them.”

    Other top areas of concern for student success administrators include affordability, artificial intelligence and policy impacts on campus life, finds Inside Higher Ed’s survey.

    Affordability and Value

    A third of student success administrators say that their trust in higher education has waned in recent years, and many point to concerns about affordability (64 percent) and long-term value of a degree (62 percent) as top drivers of declining public confidence. Leaders also highlight tighter alignment between academic programs and career pathways as a key lever for rebuilding trust.

    About six in 10 respondents are highly confident that their institution is actively working to keep costs affordable, with public institution leaders especially likely to say so (69 percent versus 49 percent of private nonprofit peers).

    But just 11 percent of leaders think students at their institution clearly understand the total cost of attendance, beyond tuition. They raise similar concerns about students’ awareness and understanding of emergency funding resources at their institution.

    In Inside Higher Ed’s main Student Voice survey this year, just 27 percent of students said they understand the total cost of attendance fully and can budget appropriately. More than three in five didn’t know if their college offers emergency aid. Yet 61 percent of student success administrators say this kind of help is available at their institution.

    Some additional context—and evidence of misalignment between student experience and administrator perception: In Inside Higher Ed’s 2025 Survey of College and University Chief Business Officers, most CBOs (88 percent) said that their institution is transparent about the full, net cost of attendance, including tuition discounts and counting fees and other expenses—though just 42 percent said this of colleges and universities as a whole. Most CBOs also said that their institution’s net price is sufficiently affordable.

    Parnell of NASPA noted that financial aid “is but one part of the cost of attendance discussion for some students.” But she added that financial aid offers represent an opportunity for colleges to improve clarity and transparency around total cost—something the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators and others have urged.

    Preparing Students for an AI Future

    Just 2 percent of student success leaders say their institution is very effective in helping students understand how, when and whether to use generative artificial intelligence in academic settings. On promoting academic integrity, specifically, 77 percent endorse educating students about ethical AI use rather than emphasizing punitive measures. Faculty and staff development and efforts to standardize use policies also rank high.

    In the Student Voice survey, just 13 percent of students said they didn’t know when, how and whether to use generative AI for coursework—but most of the remainder attributed their knowledge to individual faculty efforts rather than broader institutional ones.

    Student success administrators also describe a gap between the extent to which high-impact teaching practices, such as those endorsed by the American Association of Colleges and Universities, are highly encouraged at their institution and widely adopted (65 percent versus 36 percent, respectively). And while 87 percent agree that students graduate from their college ready to succeed in today’s job market, half (51 percent) believe their institution should focus more on helping students find paid internships and other experiential learning opportunities.

    Tawnya Means, an innovation consultant who recently joined Bowling Green State University and its Schmidthorst College of Business as a strategic innovation and AI adviser, said that all three of these concerns—lack of institutional guidance on AI, high-impact teaching practices and other opportunities for experiential learning and internships—are connected.

    “Schools treating AI as a catalyst for pedagogical redesign are simultaneously increasing high-impact practices and preparing students for AI-augmented careers,” she said. And institutions doing this well are using some common strategies: making faculty development about pedagogy, not just “AI compliance,” and designing assignments where AI supports real learning. Unpacking the latter point, Means praised approaches that are experiential, teach discipline-specific or contextual AI use versus abstract rules, and mirror actual workplaces.

    While business schools have long understood the power of “messy real-world case studies,” Means said they’re ripe for use across undergraduate education in the generative AI era and “resist simple AI shortcuts.”

    Parnell suggested on-campus employment as yet another way to provide “work experience and support students in their learning journey.”

    On AI specifically, Asim Ali, executive director of the Biggio Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning at Auburn University, who’s worked with many institutions on faculty development, said the “biggest gap I see is not engaging students in the process.”

    At Auburn, he said, student government leaders have taken a “focused interest directly in shaping how we support GenAI learning.” And in discussions between student leaders and faculty, “both groups emphasized that students must also take responsibility for learning the ethics and appropriate use of GenAI.”

    The biggest gap I see is not engaging students in the process.”

    —Asim Ali, executive director of the Biggio Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning at Auburn University

    Financial worries and uncertainty about the future top the list of students’ postcollege stressors, as ranked by student success administrators. And just a quarter of these leaders say their institution makes postgraduate outcomes are easily accessible.

    Policy Impacts and Campus Climate

    Almost all leaders say students feel welcomed, valued and supported on their campuses, and 87 percent say their institution is doing a good or excellent job promoting a positive campus climate. Yet regional differences emerge: Leaders in the South are somewhat less likely than peers elsewhere to say their institution is highly effective in encouraging diverse perspectives among students.

    Nearly two in three leaders (62 percent) say recent federal restrictions on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives have negatively impacted students, and the rate is higher among public institution leaders than their private nonprofit peers.

    In the Student Voice survey, 48 percent of students said such changes had negatively impacted their college experience or that of peers; most of the remainder saw no change, rather than a positive one.

    Most administrators also believe new student aid policies, such as those included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, will limit access to college rather than expand it. And many already report moderate (39 percent) or significant (29 percent) declines in international student enrollments tied to recent federal actions, such as visa appointment restrictions and targeted actions at specific institutions.

    Leaders estimate that 40 percent of students participate in no extracurricular activities, a figure that rises to 67 percent among community college administrators. Respondents are mostly like to say involvement would increase if students saw a clear connection between activities and their career goals.

    For institutions struggling to get students in involved, Parnell highlighted the importance of effectively communicating and delivering available activities to students: Are any activities at community colleges, which serve many working students, available after 5 p.m., for example, she asked?

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  • Mike Gavin Resigns to Lead DEI Defense Coalition

    Mike Gavin Resigns to Lead DEI Defense Coalition

    Mike Gavin, the founder of Education for All, a grassroots group of community college administrators fighting legislative attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion, will step down as president of Delta College in January. He has been in the post since 2021. 

    Gavin informed the Delta College Board of Trustees last week that he would resign to lead a national coalition focused on defending equity in higher ed. 

    “My whole career has been focused on equity and how higher ed is situated in the democratic experiment, so when I was asked to do the next thing, I felt compelled to do it,” Gavin told Inside Higher Ed. 

    “I was not looking for a job. Delta has been amazing. The faculty and staff are some of the most insightful and student-centered I’ve ever seen,” he said. 

    More information about the coalition, including its priorities and funding model, will be released soon, he added. 

    Since the early days of the second Trump administration, Gavin has been a leading voice in defending DEI work in higher ed, especially at community colleges. Participation in Education for All surged at the beginning of the year as college leaders sought advice on protecting programs and navigating compliance with Trump administration mandates. 

    “My scholarship rests on the great thinkers of our past, from Benjamin Franklin to James Baldwin. It is also grounded in the belief that our country depends on a higher education sector that must be free from partisan interference, in order to democratize higher education for all,” Gavin wrote in a letter to the Delta College community.  

    Delta College trustees said they will begin the process of appointing Gavin’s successor in the coming weeks. 

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  • Senator Who Banned DEI Set to Be Texas Tech Chancellor

    Senator Who Banned DEI Set to Be Texas Tech Chancellor

    In 2023, Texas became one of the first red states to institute a sweeping ban on diversity, equity and inclusion in public colleges and universities.

    Following pro-Palestinian protests and a police crackdown on an encampment at the University of Texas at Austin in 2024, the Texas Legislature this year passed another law restricting free speech on public campuses, including banning all expressive activities from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m.

    The Legislature also this year passed a wide-ranging bill that allows public college and university presidents to take over faculty senates and councils, prohibits faculty elected to those bodies from serving more than two years in a row, and creates an “ombudsman” position that can threaten universities’ funding if they don’t follow that law or the DEI ban.

    The lead author listed on all three laws is Sen. Brandon Creighton, chair of the Texas Senate education committee. Having overhauled higher ed statewide, he’s about to get the chance to further his vision at one large university system: On Thursday, the Texas Tech University System plans to name Creighton the “sole finalist” for the system chancellor and chief executive officer job.

    His hiring by the system’s Board of Regents—whose members are appointed by the governor with confirmation from the Senate—marks another example of a Republican politician in a large red state, namely Texas and Florida, being installed as a higher ed leader. The trend reflects an evolution in how Republicans are influencing public universities, from passing laws to directly leading institutions and systems. For universities, having a former member of the Legislature in the presidency can help with lobbying lawmakers, but it could also threaten academic freedom and risk alienating faculty.

    Creighton wasn’t the only, or even the highest-ranking, politician considered for the position, which historically pays more than $1 million a year. As The Texas Tribune earlier reported, Rep. Jodey Arrington, chair of the U.S. House Budget Committee and shepherd of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which affected higher ed nationwide, was also in the running. Unlike Creighton, Arrington has worked in higher ed—specifically as a vice chancellor and chancellor’s chief of staff in the Texas Tech system. Arrington, who didn’t provide Inside Higher Ed an interview, issued a statement Sunday congratulating Creighton.

    Faculty leaders offered a muted response to Creighton’s impending appointment. Neither the president of the Faculty Senate at the main Texas Tech campus, the president of the university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors nor the state AAUP conference publicly denounced Creighton. In an emailed statement, the state conference said, “We have concerns about the future of academic freedom and shared governance in the Texas Tech University System given the positions Sen. Creighton has taken in the legislature.”

    “We hope that Texas Tech’s strong tradition of shared governance and academic freedom continues so that Texas Tech can thrive,” the statement said.

    Cody Campbell, the system board chair, said Creighton is “a fantastic fit with our culture and is clearly the best person for the job.” He added that he likes the higher ed legislation Creighton has passed. (Creighton was also lead author of a new law that lets universities pay athletes directly.)

    “He shares the values of the Texas Tech University System,” Campbell said. Both the system and the wider community of Lubbock, where the main Texas Tech campus is located, are “conservative,” he said.

    “We do not subscribe to the ideas around DEI and are supportive of a merit-based culture,” Campbell said, adding that Creighton is well positioned to continue the system’s growth in research, enrollment and academic standing.

    For Creighton, the job could come with a big payout. Retiring Texas Tech system chancellor Tedd L. Mitchell made $1.3 million in 2023, ranking him the 12th-highest-paid public university leader in the country, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education’s database. The system didn’t respond to Inside Higher Ed’s open records request for Mitchell’s current contract in time for this article’s publication, and Campbell told Inside Higher Ed Creighton’s pay is “yet to be determined.”

    “The contract or the compensation were never part of the discussion with any of the candidates,” Campbell said.

    Creighton didn’t provide Inside Higher Ed an interview or answer written questions. But he appeared to accept the position in a post on X.

    “Over the past six years, no university system in Texas has taken more bold steps forward,” he wrote. “Serving as Chairman of the Senate Education Committee and the Budget Subcommittee has been the honor of a lifetime—especially to help deliver that success for Texas Tech and its regional universities. I feel very blessed to have been considered for the role of Chancellor. There is no greater purpose I would consider than working to make generational changes that transform the lives of young Texans for decades to come.”

    Cowing Faculty Senates

    Campbell said he doesn’t recall whether Creighton and Arrington initially expressed interest in the position to the board or whether the board reached out to them. Dustin Womble, the board’s vice chair, declined to comment. Campbell said the board “actively recruited” some candidates.

    “There wasn’t really a formal application process, necessarily,” he said. But dozens of candidates across the country expressed interest in the “high-paying position” leading a large system, he said.

    The system says it has more than 60,000 students across five institutions and 20 locations, including one in San José, Costa Rica. The five institutions are Texas Tech (which has multiple campuses), Texas Tech Health Sciences Center (which also has multiple campuses), the separate Texas Tech Health Sciences Center El Paso, Angelo State University and Midwestern State University.

    Asked about Creighton’s lack of higher ed work experience, Campbell said that wasn’t unusual for system chancellors, contrasting the position with those of the presidents who lead individual institutions on a day-to-day basis.

    “Our past chancellor was a medical doctor, the chancellor before him was a state senator, the chancellor before him was a former U.S. congressman and a state politician; we’ve had businessmen in that position, we’ve had all different types of people,” Campbell said.

    Aside from serving in the Senate for a decade and the state House for seven years before that, Creighton is an attorney.

    Andrew Martin, the tenured art professor who leads the Texas Tech University main campus’s AAUP chapter, noted that “our chapter has actively opposed some of the legislation that Sen. Creighton has authored.”

    “Our hope now is that Sen. Creighton, in apparently assuming the role of chancellor, will spend time learning more about the campuses in the TTU System and will meet as many students, faculty [and] administrators on our campuses as possible to see how these institutions actually operate day in and day out,” Martin said. “I’m not sure how clear that’s been from his perspective as a lawyer and legislator.”

    Martin—who stressed that he was speaking for himself and colleagues he’s spoken to, but not on behalf of his university—said the AAUP is concerned with maintaining academic freedom for faculty and students, upholding tenure protections, and preserving the faculty’s role in determining curriculum, conducting research and exercising shared governance.

    When the Legislature passed Senate Bill 37—the Creighton legislation that, among other things, upended faculty senates—Creighton issued a news release saying, “Faculty Senates will no longer control our campuses.” He said his legislation “takes on politically charged academic programs and ensures students graduate with degrees of value, not degrees rooted in activism and political indoctrination.”

    Among other things, SB 37 requires university presidents to choose who leads faculty senates. Ryan Cassidy, a tenured associate librarian, was elected to lead the Texas Tech University main campus’s Faculty Senate before SB 37 took effect, and the institution’s president has allowed him to stay in that role.

    Asked about Creighton being named chancellor, Cassidy said, “I haven’t really had time to reflect on it.”

    Creighton’s bio on the Legislature’s website touts his conservative values outside of higher ed, too. “He has relentlessly hammered excessive taxation, pursued ‘loser pays’ tort reform, passed drug testing for unemployment benefits, stood up for Texas’ 10th Amendment rights and effectively blocked Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion,” the bio says.

    Martin said Texas Tech aspires to become a member of the Association of American Universities, a prestigious group of top research universities, of which UT Austin and Texas A&M University are already members. That would be hard if faculty are “marginalized,” he said.

    “You can’t get there without the huge investment of faculty,” he said.

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  • Higher Ed Join March on Wall Street to Defend DEI Programs

    Higher Ed Join March on Wall Street to Defend DEI Programs

    NEW YORK — The early morning mist hung over Lower Manhattan as buses began arriving from campuses across America. From Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the South to state flagships in the Midwest, from community colleges in New Jersey to Ivy League institutions in New England, students and faculty poured into New York City with a singular purpose: to stand with the Rev. Al Sharpton in defending diversity, equity and inclusion programs under siege.

    Thursday’s “March on Wall Street” drew thousands to Manhattan’s Financial District, but among the clergy, labor and community leaders were hundreds of higher education advocates who had traveled from every corner of the nation, transforming the demonstration into an unlikely convergence of campus and community activism.

    The 45-minute march through downtown Manhattan carried special significance, timed to coincide with the anniversary of the Civil Rights-era March on Washington in 1963. But this time, the target wasn’t the nation’s capital—it was corporate America’s headquarters.

    “We come to Wall Street rather than Washington this year to let them know, you can try to turn back the clock, but you can’t turn back time,” Sharpton said as the demonstration began at New York’s popular Foley Square. 

    For the academics who joined the march, Sharpton’s words resonated with particular urgency. Since returning to the White House in January, President Donald J. Trump has successfully moved to end DEI programs within the federal government and warned schools to do the same or risk losing federal money.

    Dr. Harold Williams, an adjunct sociology professor from Philadelphia who had driven three hours with a van full of colleagues, clutched a handmade sign reading “Education is Democracy.”  

    “We’re watching the systematic destruction of everything we’ve worked to build,” said the 63-year-old educator, who was just one when his mother brought him to Washington, D.C. on August 28, 1963  to hear Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., deliver his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.  “They’re not just cutting programs, they’re cutting the pathways that opened higher education to an entire generation of students.”

    Among the crowd that gathered near the African Burial Ground—the largest known resting place of enslaved and freed Africans in the country—Dr. Michael Eric Dyson’s voice carried the weight of history and the urgency of the present moment.

    The prominent Vanderbilt University professor and public intellectual delivered a rousing address along with a litany of other activists including Marc H. Morial of the National Urban League, Maya Wiley of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers. 

    “Well, you know, people often ask, what was it like? They look at the grainy black and white photos of Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy and Rosa Parks and Ella Baker and Diane Nash and John Lewis. What was it like to be with them?” Dyson said in an interview with Diverse.  

    “Well, you know right now, these are the times that define us. These times to future generations will be remarkable. What did you do with the fascist presidency, with an authoritarian man, with an autocrat who was attempting to absorb for himself all the power that was not due him? Well, this is what it looks like.”

    Dyson’s words particularly resonated among the young activists in the crowd—students who had grown up during an era of increasing attacks on institutional knowledge and educational access.

    The logistics of moving academics from campuses nationwide told its own story of commitment. Many had used personal funds or organized fundraisers to join what some called an “academic pilgrimage” to stand with Sharpton and the broader civil rights community.  Howard University organized a busload from the nation’s capital.

    Jonah Cohen, 18, a freshman at City College of New York, said that he was energized by the public demonstration of activism.

    “This is our moment,” he said of the student turnout. “We are no longer accepting these attacks without a fight. We are fighting back against those who want to take us back to an uglier America. We see a better country.” 

    State Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate in the upcoming New York City mayoral race, marched alongside some of the professors and students, embodying the coalition between academic and political leadership that advocates say is necessary to resist the rollbacks.

    The National Action Network’s strategy of encouraging consumer boycotts of retailers that have scaled back DEI policies resonated with many academics who said that they understood the connection between corporate and educational equity initiatives.

    “Corporate America wants to walk away from Black communities, so we are marching to them to bring this fight to their doorstep,” Sharpton said.

     

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  • DEI was the Compromise, Not the Solution

    DEI was the Compromise, Not the Solution

    Dr. Marcela Rodriguez-Campo Through the work that I did as a director of a diversity office, I was always finding ways to make magic out of the least given how poorly our work was funded. Nonetheless, we did everything we could to pay folks for their time and labor. After finishing the planning of one of the largest state-wide events my team had ever hosted, a local artist we had collaborated with previously offered to return to our campus to offer my team a pour-painting workshop, for free. I was left stunned.

    That’s too generous, right? Are you sure? Maybe we can dig up some funds or find a sponsorship?

    No. I want to give this to your team as a thank you for the work that you all do. And for being a safe person folks can go to.

    My eyes immediately welled up with tears: We were safe for her and now she wanted to keep our spirits safe in return. This is community care. 

    When people from historically marginalized communities enter the Ivory Tower as students, staff, or faculty, institutions actively work to estrange us from our communities. They teach us that our culture, our histories, our languages don’t matter, by rarely including us in the curriculum. They show us that our voices and our stories aren’t allowed to take up space there, when they ban our books, dismiss our questions, deny our realities, and reject our ways of knowing. They mold us into “professionals”, train us in Eurocentric research and teaching practices, and force us to subscribe to their ways of being in order to succeed and survive. They convince us that success will be measured by their standards, rather than those set forth by our communities.

    Diversity, equity, & inclusion (DEI) offices are fundamentally about enacting an ethic of care that is culturally and politically grounded in the communities our students come from.

    The Trump administration has deemed that a danger and threat to society. They are attempting to make us forget ourselves and pushing an agenda of historical amnesia. They are trying to make us forget that there is a whole world out there beyond the Ivory Walls that needs us to exist. Heartbreakingly enough, it is working. Once bold and visionary leaders are capitulating to authoritarianism and white supremacist ideology. As we see the far-reaching resistance to this now trending DEI-boogeyman, it is more important than ever that we remember our lineage, that we return to our communities, that we return to the river that offered us our first sips of liberation. So that we may continue to — as Toni Morrison taught us — move in the direction of freedom.

    As we face persistent threats and attacks on our work, allow me to offer the DEI professionals and our student leaders a reminder: your community needs you and it needs you free, too. Let us learn from the lineage of our work and remember as our own continuous act of rebellion the river from which DEI pulls from.

    Cultural centers and diversity offices did not come about placidly or because of the goodwill of institutions. They were fought for, demanded. They were created not because of the polite and demure requests of Students and Faculty of Color, but as a result of courageous boycotts, sit-ins, building occupations, protests, mobilization, and organizing of marginalized communities who recognized the second-class support they were receiving and who were inspired by the activism of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. Chicano students in East LA walked out of schools in droves to denounce the substandard education they were being given. They stepped out to demand better teachers, better learning conditions, more resources, and ethnic studies. In that same year a month later, Black students at Columbia University occupied Hamilton Hall to protest segregation and racism in higher education. Students collectively led a revolution through each act of resistance and refused to accept an education system that dehumanized and disrespected their community.

    DEI is a byproduct of student activism. As Black cultural centers began opening, cultural centers for other community groups were created in the same vein, to offer safe spaces and resources to students from the margins. Cultural centers created spaces for students to develop a collective consciousness where they could find themselves and each other in a sea of white curriculum, culture, policies, and practices. They have historically supported the recruitment, retention, and graduation of marginalized student groups. Student and scholar activists’ radical visions of transforming higher education to equitably serve and empower students from the margins was stunted by institutional resistance that was coded as budgets, enrollment, and value add. Some of the same code words we hear today.

    So, DEI was created as the compromise, a palatable option. One that checked some of the boxes, while not transforming the institution wholly. DEI was never intended to be the radical resolution student activists fought for.

    The aggressive attack on DEI is the consequence of our ability to become effective, to reach a critical mass of folks nationally to question the status quo and the system enough to make the people in power uncomfortable. Whether DEI is banned for one presidency or two or forever, it was never meant to save us. We have to do that. Our communities have always done that. DEI was never going to be enough and at many institutions, it was never intended to be effective. We need to reclaim our agency and power and voices from the institutions who never loved us back anyway and recognize that there is so much more we could build with or without them in and with community. As this current moment and the highly organized right works to scare, intimidate, and paralyze us, the most critical thing we could be doing in this very moment is building community from within and especially from outside of our institutions.

    Beloved, we are the global majority. And this current political moment is working hard and fast because it is the last opportunity to reset the scales. They are scared of the collective power and freedom we can tap into in our communities because our communities are our source. The very care that we offer to our students we first learned from our communities. The care we owe is to our communities. The reason we do this work is for our communities. The care we are searching for is in our communities. The resistance has begun and will continue to exist within our communities. Your work will likely need to evolve, as this work always has, so go ahead and evolve.

    In Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown she shares this powerful wisdom on interdependence and community by Naima Penniman:

    “When Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, almost everything lost its footing. Houses were detached from their foundations, trees and shrubbery were uprooted, signposts and vehicles floated down the rivers that became of the streets. But amidst the whipping winds and surging water, the oak tree held its ground. How? Instead of digging its roots deep and solitary into the earth, the oak tree grows its roots wide and interlocks with other oak trees in the surrounding area. And you can’t bring down a hundred oak trees bound beneath the soil! How do we survive the unnatural disasters of climate change, environmental injustice, over-policing, mass-imprisonment, militarization, economic inequality, corporate globalization, and displacement? We must connect in the underground, my people! In this way, we shall survive” (p. 84–85).

    We have left ourselves vulnerable because we have dug our roots deep in academia and have not rooted ourselves like the oak tree across our community. We must become an oak tree, rooting ourselves expansively, interdependently within community so that when they come for us– and they will– we will continue to stand. Whatever work we are able to do between now and the next attack on our work, let us reach towards the oak trees who seeded us and root ourselves to one another as we gear up for the struggle of our lifetime. It is the imperative of our lifetime to remember who we are and return to community.

    When my institution quickly disposed of the legacy of the DEI professionals and students, community saved me. When they demonized me, targeted me, and worked to snuff out my fire, community reminded me of who I am. When the institution nearly convinced me that someone like me should not exist, community reminded me of the entire world that breathes and lives outside the ivory walls that needs me. Community rekindled my spirit and my hope, that even in the direst set of circumstances, my people make magic.

    _____________________

    Dr. Marcela Rodriguez-Campo is an educator and scholar-practitioner. She is a former DEI Director from a public four year institution. She is the founder of Co-Libre Education.

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  • Federal Agency Finds George Mason University Violated Civil Rights Law Through DEI Policies

    Federal Agency Finds George Mason University Violated Civil Rights Law Through DEI Policies

    The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has determined that George Mason University violated federal civil rights law by using race as a factor in hiring and promotion decisions, the agency announced on Friday.

    The finding concluded that GMU violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, and national origin in federally funded education programs. The university now has 10 days to accept a proposed resolution agreement or risk losing federal funding.

    Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said President Gregory Washington led “a university-wide campaign to implement unlawful DEI policies that intentionally discriminate on the basis of race.”

    “You can’t make this up,” Trainor said in a statement, noting that Washington had previously called for removing “racist vestiges” from campus in 2020.

    The investigation, launched in July 2025, stemmed from complaints filed by multiple GMU professors who alleged the university adopted preferential treatment policies for faculty from “underrepresented groups” between 2020 and the present.

    Federal investigators said that they found several problematic practices. As recently as fall 2024, they argue that the university’s website stated it “may choose to waive the competitive search process when there is an opportunity to hire a candidate who strategically advances the institutional commitment to diversity and inclusion.”

    The current Faculty Handbook also requires approval from the “Office of Access, Compliance, and Community” – previously called the “Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” until GMU renamed it in March 2025 – before extending job offers.

    One high-level administrator told investigators that Washington “created an atmosphere of surveillance” regarding hiring decisions related to diversity objectives.

    Under the proposed resolution agreement, Washington must personally issue a statement and apology to the university community, acknowledging the discriminatory practices. The university must also revise hiring policies, conduct annual training, and remove any provisions encouraging racial preferences.

    GMU must post the presidential statement prominently on its website and remove any contradictory materials. The university would also be required to maintain compliance records and designate a coordinator to work with federal officials.

    George Mason University, located in Fairfax, Virginia, enrolls approximately 39,000 students and receives federal funding that could be at risk if the violations are not resolved.

    George Mason officials said that they are reviewing the specific resolution steps proposed by the Department of Education. 

    “We will continue to respond fully and cooperatively to all inquiries from the Department of Education, the Department of Justice and the U.S. House of Representatives and evaluate the evidence that comes to light,” the university said in a statement. “Our sole focus is our fiduciary duty to serve the best interests of the University and the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

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  • Justice Department targets ‘unlawful’ DEI in hiring, training

    Justice Department targets ‘unlawful’ DEI in hiring, training

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    The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday released a sweeping guidance document that could impact school district hiring and training practices, as well as the programming available to students. 

    In some situations, districts could be exposed to legal liability by asking job applicants how their “cultural background informs their teaching,” using recruitment strategies targeting candidates from specific geographic areas or racial backgrounds, and asking job candidates to describe how they overcame obstacles, according to the memo from U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi. 

    Such diversity, equity and inclusion practices could amount to “illegal discrimination,” said Bondi in a statement on Wednesday. “This guidance will ensure we are serving the American people and not ideological agendas.” 

    The DOJ memo contains examples of practices it lists as “unlawful” and says could lead to federal funding being revoked, as well as a list of recommendations, which it says are not mandatory, to avoid “legal pitfalls.”

    The guidance issued to all federal agencies also says the following actions could expose federally funded institutions, including school districts,to legal liability based on race, ethnicity or sex-based discrimination: 

    • Providing teacher training that “all white people are inherently privileged” or training on “toxic masculinity.” 
    • Providing areas, such as lounges, that are primarily meant to provide “safe spaces” for traditionally underserved groups. 
    • Using demographically driven criteria “to increase participation by specific racial or sex-based groups” in programs and opportunities. 
    • Asking employees, including teachers, during training sessions to “confess” to personal biases or privileges based on a protected characteristic.

    Instead, school districts and other federally funded institutions should provide opportunities to all races and sex-based groups without regard to their protected characteristics or demographic goals, instead focusing on “universally applicable criteria” such as academic merit or financial hardship, the Justice Department memo said. 

    The guidance could impact districts’ efforts to make education more equitable, such as by diversifying the teacher pool through Black educator pipelines, training teachers on implicit and explicit biases, and creating academic or enrichment programs to increase engagement from minority student groups. 

    The directive is in line with the Trump administration’s push to pare back diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, including through the U.S. Department of Education. In recent months, the Education Department has increasingly collaborated with the Department of Justice to enforce civil rights laws, often seeking to protect Asian and White students. 

    The guidance from the Justice Department illustrates the major shift in how both agencies under President Donald Trump approach enforcement of civil rights laws, with officials now targeting programs that were often launched to fight systemic discrimination.

    In April, the Education Department announced a Title VI investigation into Chicago Public Schools over allegations from the conservative group Defending Education that the district’s “Black Students Success Plan” implemented in 2023-24 discriminated against students based on race. 

    In May, the department announced another Title VI investigation into Fairfax County Public Schools over a 2020 revision to the admissions policy at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. That policy dropped standardized testing requirements and instead used a holistic review process, which the Education Department said harms Asian American students. 

    In 2024-25, the highly selective magnet school was 61% Asian and 21% White, with Black and Hispanic students making up less than 10% of the student population each.

    The guidance from the Trump administration and the Education Department investigations come after concerns from civil rights groups that recent federal policy changes, along with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, would set back educational equity efforts even outside of race-conscious admissions. 

    Scholarship availability, teacher pipelines and student affinity groups were among the top areas beyond college access that advocates were concerned could be impacted in the wake of that ruling.

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  • Video Allegedly Showing U of Iowa Promoting DEI Sparks Probe

    Video Allegedly Showing U of Iowa Promoting DEI Sparks Probe

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    Following a complaint by Iowa governor Kim Reynolds, the state attorney general’s office is investigating a video that allegedly shows a University of Iowa administrator saying the institution is still promoting diversity, equity and inclusion, despite the state’s ban.

    Fox News Digital published a story earlier this week based on what it called an “undercover video,” which shows a woman identified as Drea Tinoco, assistant director for leadership and student organization development at the university, saying, “On behalf of my office, we’re still going to talk about DEI, we’re still going to do all the DEI things.”

    The story doesn’t specify who recorded the video or whether they were working for Fox or another entity. The conservative group Accuracy in Media has released similar videos allegedly revealing employees skirting DEI prohibitions in other states, but AIM president Adam Guillette said the video isn’t from his organization.

    In the video, dated July 2, the woman also says, “DEI and student organizations and all of that, it is real, it still exists, we’re still doing DEI work.” Though it’s not in the clip, Fox also reported that Tinoco called Reynolds, a Republican, “cuckoo bananas.”

    Tinoco didn’t respond to Inside Higher Ed’s requests for comment Thursday. In an email, a university spokesperson didn’t confirm or deny whether the video is real or whether Tinoco is the person shown in it, saying, “Personnel matters are considered confidential.”

    Last year, Reynolds signed legislation banning DEI at public universities. In a statement Tuesday, Reynolds said, “I’m appalled by the remarks made in this video by a University of Iowa employee who blatantly admits to defying DEI restrictions I signed into law on May 9, 2024.”

    She filed a complaint with Attorney General Brenna Bird, another Republican, who announced her office is investigating. University president Barbara Wilson additionally told the Iowa Board of Regents Wednesday that her institution has “launched an immediate and comprehensive investigation.”

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