Some States Eyeing More Extensive Anti-DEI Measures in Higher Education

The Women’s and Gender Studies major at Texas A&M will be phased out within three years, while six courses across various majors were canceled before classes resumed for the spring semester, the university announced.

Administrators said in a Jan. 30 statement that the instruction in question does not support the requirement under the university system’s new policy for academic integrity. In the past two months, 5,400 course syllabi were reviewed, and faculty members and department heads worked diligently to remove race or gender ideology references in courses that are unrelated to those topics.

“Strong oversight and standards protect academic integrity and restore public trust, guaranteeing that a degree from Texas A&M means something to our students and the people who will hire them,” Tommy Williams, interim university president, said in the statement, which also noted that enrollment in the Women’s and Gender Studies program has continued to decline.

A review of legislation and campus reports indicates that, in the months ahead, various states and some higher education institutions may go a step further, under their own accord, and attempt to weed out political bias in academic instruction.

President Donald Trump has already pushed for an end to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices across higher education through a series of executive orders that cite existing Civil Rights laws and a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court Decision prohibiting consideration of race in student admissions. Texas, Florida, and several other red states now have laws prohibiting DEI practices in admissions, hiring, and mandatory training.

Iowa, Kansas, North Carolina, and Missouri have pending legislation related to the removal of DEI or critical race theory from public college and university instruction, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Alabama staved off legal challenges to its law restricting “divisive concepts” in both K–12 and higher education. Mississippi passed a similar law, but it was blocked by a federal judge.

Tennessee’s Higher Education Freedom of Expression and Transparency Act, passed in 2023, also has a divisive concepts clause, and colleges and universities are expected to investigate complaints from students or employees who report violations.

The Goldwater Institute’s Freedom from Indoctrination Act model legislation was previously adopted by Idaho lawmakers and North Carolina’s university system Board of Governors. It prevents schools from mandating that students take courses promoting ideological activism as a graduation requirement, although institutions are still allowed to offer such courses to willing participants. Florida passed a similar law prohibiting its public colleges and universities from requiring that students complete a sociology course.

Wyoming lawmakers were poised to adopt Goldwater’s model legislation last year, but it was amended during the committee process, and Gov. Mark Gordon vetoed it. In Louisiana, the proposed law was introduced last year but didn’t emerge from committees. Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed the legislation in the Grand Canyon State, but the same proposal is expected to go to a public referendum by 2027, if not this election year, according to Timothy Minella, Goldwater Institute’s higher education director.

“I don’t believe universities can reform themselves internally,” Minella told The Epoch Times. “Public universities are supposed to be accountable to the public. We want these institutions to focus on education, not indoctrination.”

At the most local level, multiple schools decided to make changes based on input from administrators, faculty, or students. This includes dropping cultural diversity courses as general education requirements at some public universities in Texas, Arizona, and Iowa, he said.

At Bates College, a private school in Maine, a new general education requirement for two courses on “race, power, privilege, and colonialism” has been postponed until 2029—not for reasons related to restricting DEI, but for “protecting faculty, staff, students, and Bates as an institution from federal attention and targeting,” the college’s student newspaper reported.

The American Association of University Professors union has criticized anti-DEI curricula reforms in North Carolina and Texas and cites an instance in which a Texas A&M professor was told to remove references to race and gender ideology from the syllabus for a course on Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher.

“Barring a foundational philosopher who is a cornerstone of Western thought, because his work touches on race or gender, is a blatant attempt at thought policing that will not survive legal scrutiny,” Todd Wolfson, the union’s president, said in a Jan. 12 statement.

Even with the state law in place in Idaho, there has been some pushback from faculty leaders. In an email to The Epoch Times, the Goldwater Institute’s legal team said three public universities in Idaho added DEI course requirements to counseling, social work, and anthropology majors, which are not disciplines centered on social justice work. They’ve asked the Idaho attorney general’s office to take action against the schools.

Minella said he expects widespread faculty pushback as these laws and policies move forward.

“This [instruction] is a somewhat tougher mountain to climb than hiring and admissions,” Minella said.

“In my observations, if students have more freedom to choose, they would not freely choose woke studies courses like this, but a lot of faculty and administrators on campuses are true believers that even biology majors need to be schooled in how oppressive this society is. If students are not forced to take these courses, [professors] lose … funding and justification for being on the campus in the first place.”