Right-wingers have been complaining about and lobbying against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives for years. Axios ran the numbers on Republican efforts to strike down those programs in state education systems in a recent report, and it turns out that those efforts have been shockingly successful: GOP state lawmakers in 21 states have introduced laws dismantling DEI programs on state college campuses and, since 2021, have managed to get such laws passed in nine of the states.
Red states have become overtly hostile to initiatives that they were either open to or less hostile to before the peak of Black Lives Matters’ energy around 2020. This reactionary backlash was not only fueled by the fear of a more antiracist society, but also by a positive vision of white nationalism that grew under Donald Trump. The entire premise of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan is that a reversion to social norms when white supremacy and patriarchy were relatively unchallenged would light the path to a great society. The anti-DEI crusade helps fulfill that vision.
The anti-DEI crusade is helping push universities in the direction of becoming institutions defending the status quo.
Unlike conservatives’ poorly organized and mostly ill-fated attempts to boycott “woke” corporations, their anti-DEI agenda has evolved into something seriously consequential. It’s a reminder of how even incremental attempts at social reform can elicit a backlash that reverses reform attempts and sometimes even unravels pre-reform norms.
As Axios reports, drawing from data from the National Conference of State Legislatures, in the last two years two states have passed laws that require higher education institutions to “offer training on DEI or antiracism.” But things have headed more strongly in the other direction on this front: At least nine states have passed laws that restrict or ban DEI programs or “divisive concepts” on college campuses in red states from Florida to North Dakota.
Anti-DEI laws can have a variety of effects but, broadly speaking, they’re designed to prohibit or discourage university policies and coursework that attempt to account for and address the historical effects of bigotry and exclusion in American life. They ban initiatives to recruit students from underrepresented and marginalized backgrounds. They prohibit antiracist training for staffers. They block class curricula with writings that discuss the history of white supremacy and other modes of identitarian domination. And they can have strange knock-on effects, such as Florida’s decision to eliminate sociology as a core course at its universities because the entire academic discipline has been deemed intolerably “woke.” These efforts — including in the private sector — have only grown bolder after the Supreme Court gutted affirmative action policies last year.
The anti-DEI crusade is helping push universities in the direction of becoming institutions defending the status quo. By trying to stigmatize and prohibit antiracist training, coursework and recruitment, universities in these states are likely to become more homogenous demographically, culturally and intellectually. The public higher education system is the greatest engine our society has for teaching people to think independently and critically, and these efforts strike a blow at the very heart of how they do so: by exposing people to a wide range of ideas and peoples. DEI programs, alongside affirmative action policies, date back in various forms to the civil rights era. Academic appraisals of the history of race, gender and other types of identity have been influential on American campuses for decades. But a rise in demands for racial justice in America sparked a reappraisal of previously uncontroversial, or at least less controversial, norms of diversity in academia. Making higher education more exclusive and eviscerating the ability of people to learn about how oppression works is exactly the kind of social tool that takes us in the direction of a white nationalist country. This is their path to making America “great” again — making a world in which only a narrow range of people are considered worthy of unlocking the American promise.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer for MS NOW. Sign up for his newsletter. 
