Why DEI backlash is gaining momentum on campus and in boardrooms

When trustees at North Carolina’s flagship public university voted last month to divert $2.3 million from diversity, equity, and inclusion programs to its police department they were pushing on an open door. In state capitals and on university boards, a conservative-led rollback of DEI policies and practices in higher education has gained fresh momentum after a tumultuous year of student protests over Israel’s war in Gaza. 

U.S. corporations are also cutting back on diversity initiatives and laying off DEI staff, following a wave of hiring and pledges after nationwide protests in 2020 over the murder of George Floyd. A LinkedIn study of senior executive hiring found that “chief diversity officer” was the fastest-growing category in 2020 and 2021 but fell off a cliff in 2022. At some Wall Street banks, the cooling interest in DEI and threat of litigation on grounds of reverse discrimination have led managers to stop prioritizing women and minority candidates in recruitment and promotions. 

To conservatives, and to some on the left, the push in recent years for greater diversity on campuses and in boardrooms has gone too far. They say it elevates racial and gender identities over individual merit, and imposes ideological boundaries, making DEI programs their own form of discrimination. Defenders argue that diversity should be a shared goal and that historic discrimination has produced inequities that require action. 

Even some supporters of efforts to serve a diverse student body welcome a recalibration of DEI policy. “There is some necessary element of correction that’s going on,” says Brian Rosenberg, former president of Macalester College who teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “My hope is that we can get to a place where we have a reasonable balance between prioritizing diversity and prioritizing other things.”

The pushback on DEI policies comes a year after the Supreme Court ruled that race-conscious admissions of students at public and private universities were unconstitutional, upending how selective colleges and universities decide whom to admit. Conservative activists who filed this case and others have begun to put pressure on business leaders over their diversity initiatives. Earlier this month, a federal appeals court blocked a grant program for Black women entrepreneurs after a lawsuit claimed that it was discriminatory.  

While pro-Palestinian protests and incidents of antisemitism have shined a spotlight on student politics, the pushback to DEI on campuses predates the war in Gaza. Conservative groups began circulating model anti-DEI legislation last year, part of a broader ideological battle over how issues like race, gender, and sexuality are taught. Republican lawmakers in 20 states have filed bills to restrict or ban DEI initiatives, and some have become law. 

One flash point has been the requirement for job applicants at selective universities to provide a diversity statement, which critics compare to an ideological loyalty pledge. Both Harvard’s largest faculty and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently said such statements are no longer mandatory, joining some public universities that have ended their use, often under political pressure.  

Impact on campus 

Still, even as universities scramble to revise their diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, the immediate impact on campus culture may be limited. 

On the right, the idea that DEI stands in the way of free speech, and imposes progressive groupthink, has become a mantra. But while one study found a positive correlation between larger DEI bureaucracies and reduced tolerance of conservative speakers, the author, a political scientist, argued that the effect was likely too small to move the needle on illiberal attitudes among students. Social justice activists often arrive on campus armed with political ideals that percolate online, not in the classroom. 

Cutting DEI programs also offers a way to reduce head count at universities that face budget pressure after a long period of expansion in administrative spending. While DEI offices only represent a small percentage of this spending, they present a tempting target. 

“There’s a real need to tackle administrative bloat as well as mission creep at universities,” says Marty Kotis, a trustee of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He applauds UNC-Chapel Hill’s decision to divert DEI funding to public safety and a separate vote on May 23 by the governors of the broader 17-institution UNC system to rewrite its diversity and inclusion policy. 

The new policy, which replaced a 2019 one that required all schools to submit an annual diversity and inclusion report, requires that UNC schools must “ensure equality of all persons & viewpoints.” 

Mr. Kotis and other conservatives say identity-based DEI programs for certain groups and not others can undermine cohesiveness on campuses and discourage intermingling. “Sometimes when you bring people in and you say you want them to learn and come together, then you separate them into these separate groups ... it can create more divisiveness,” he says. 

Diversity officials say this misconstrues their work and misses the bigger picture, which is that access to higher education isn’t equally distributed. An emphasis on equity, as opposed to on equality, is a way to give students from communities that are underrepresented a chance to participate fully and to flourish, in ways that a meritocracy, or what some call colorblind admissions, doesn’t always allow. 

“We can provide them the support that they need to be successful here. There’s a culture that we want to create that is a supportive culture that acknowledges differences and addresses the way in which we engage with each other across differences,” says Paulette Granberry Russell, president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education.

Ms. Granberry Russell says state legislators are using the backlash to DEI to assert greater control over public universities, not simply on diversity initiatives and hiring. “They’ve characterized higher education almost as though it is the enemy,” she says. 

Even some skeptics of DEI say higher education institutions still need to find ways to support a diverse student body. Calls for a return to meritocracy overlook the fact that colleges have historically chosen whom to include and whom to exclude, and dismantling diversity offices could turn the clock back, they say. 

“I fear that taking away these programs may also impact the graduation rates and success rates of our underrepresented folks,” says a senior diversity officer at a private university in a Republican-run state, who asked not to be identified. “I think their educational experience is diminished by the rollback.” 

Partisan divide

As with many issues, there’s a growing partisan divide on higher education: In 2015, a majority of Americans expressed confidence in colleges and universities, according to Gallup. By 2023, that had fallen to below half, led by sharp declines among Republicans, whose confidence levels fell by 37 percentage points. Previous Gallup polls found that Democrats unhappy with higher education cited rising costs, while among Republicans the main complaint was liberal bias. 

The use of diversity statements in hiring has only added to this sense of exclusion of views that don’t align rigidly with progressive ideas on equity. The University of California system was among the first to adopt this practice and has faced litigation as a result, but in January a federal judge dismissed a case against UC Santa Cruz. Diversity officials say potential hires need to demonstrate they can teach a diverse student body and that such statements are just one part of a properly structured search process. But they concede that Harvard’s decision to drop mandatory statements will likely lead others to follow suit. 

The row over diversity statements speaks to a wider unease among some faculty members over the application of DEI policies and doubts about their overall efficacy, says Professor Rosenberg. But most have been reluctant to speak publicly and risk being attacked as hostile to diversity and in bed with right-wing activists, he says. “People are always sensitive to the company that they keep and the way that they’re perceived.”