GOP lawmakers praise University of Kentucky for removing Office of Institutional Diversity

LEXINGTON, Ky. — Republican lawmakers who sponsored anti-DEI bills earlier this year are praising the University of Kentucky for deciding to eliminate its Office of Institutional Diversity.

The GOP-controlled state legislature this spring tried but failed to pass bills targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programs — commonly referred to as DEI — on college campuses.

UK announced its independent decision to dismantle its institutional diversity office Tuesday. In addition, the university will remove diversity training, and employees will not be required to write a diversity statement to be employed.

Legislation targeting DEI efforts on college campuses has been proposed in 28 states since 2023, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, which has been tracking such legislation.

Many conservatives, including in Kentucky, label DEI as discriminating against white conservatives and the latest form of institutions pushing “woke” ideology on students.

Universities, including UK President Eli Capilouto, have pushed back on that characterization. Soon after the bills were filed in the winter, Capilouto decried them, saying, “We are growing more diverse.

“We should embrace that change and harness the opportunities it presents, not shrink from it,” he said.

The mission of the Office of Institutional Diversity, according to the UK website, was to “enhance the diversity and inclusivity of our university community through the recruitment and retention of an increasingly diverse population of faculty, administrators, staff and students, and by implementing initiatives that provide rich diversity-related experiences for all to help ensure their success in an interconnected world.”

Capilouto cited the feedback he received throughout the summer, including meetings with legislators who expressed concerns about the role of DEI at UK, as reasons for dismantling the office.

Rep. Jennifer Decker, who sponsored the bill to defund DEI programs in public colleges and universities earlier this year, lauded UK for these changes. She had previously called such initiatives “failed policy,” “misguided,” and said such programs push colleges to be “more divided, more expensive and less tolerant.”

Republicans were poised to pass Decker’s version of the bill, but ultimately chose not to do so on the final night of the regular session.

“Our efforts have always been aimed at eliminating unconstitutional, unnecessary, costly, and duplicative bureaucracy while still making sure campuses are open and welcoming to a diversity of students and staff,” Decker, R-Waddy, said in a statement Tuesday.

Decker said she remains “hopeful that other institutions, as well as the Council on Postsecondary Education, will follow their lead and recognize that this failed experiment has done nothing to make postsecondary education more accessible.”

Senate Majority Whip Mike Wilson, who also sponsored an unsuccessful bill to restrict DEI practices in higher education said he was “pleased” with UK’s decision. During the legislative session, Wilson called DEI a “new form of discrimination.”

“”I would encourage other institutions to follow UK’s initiative,” the Bowling Green Republican said in a Tuesday statement. “A true elimination of these DEI policies in our public universities will end the division they promote, allowing our colleges and universities to be the true bastion of free thought we need them to be.”

DeShana Collett, a professor in the UK department of physician assistant studies, said she was disappointed with the move to dissolve the Office of Institutional Diversity. Collett was the previous chair of the university senate council before the senate was disbanded by the board of trustees earlier this year.

“This action is deeply disheartening, reflecting the institution’s surrender to an oppressive political agenda rather than the evidence that is amply abundant,” Collett said. “As a minority faculty member, this reinforces a sense of inequality and it should seriously compel others to consider whether this is a university where they can thrive and not just survive.”

Proposed DEI bills failed in Kentucky

The two bills proposed by Decker and Wilson during the legislature’s regular session this winter would have blocked all DEI initiatives that promoted “discriminatory concepts” and would have forced public Kentucky colleges and universities to dismantle and defund DEI offices and positions.

The final version of Senate Bill 6, which would’ve dismantled DEI offices at public universities, failed to pass at the eleventh hour on the final night of session.

In his email Tuesday announcing the changes, Capilouto said conversations with legislators had indicated that DEI would again be brought before the legislature in 2025.

In March, Republican Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman said public universities’ use of certain DEI policies violated the U.S. Constitution and the Civil Rights Act.

Drawing on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, the case which struck down affirmative action last year, Coleman said using “underrepresented minorities” as a metric for funding state colleges is unconstitutional.

Following that, a law was passed barring the Council on Postsecondary Education from considering race in its performance-based funding model, which determines how state funding is distributed to public universities and community colleges.

CPE then changed metrics in its performance-based funding model to remove “race-based metrics” from funding consideration, giving more weight to low-income bachelor’s degree produced and introducing degrees earned by first-generation students and non-traditional students into the model.