Op-ed: New Laws Are Putting the Well-Being of University Faculty, Staff and Students, and Our Institutions, At Risk: Here’s What We Can Do

The past two years have seen a surge of laws proposed in U.S. state legislatures dedicated to the proposition that admissions, teaching, research and service – the core activities of colleges and universities – are compromised by a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and that considerations of racial and social justice are counter to our civic values and academic norms and harmful to students and the research enterprise.

These types of laws are a profound threat to the work of students, faculty, staff and researchers at U.S. universities, including those in operations research, decision science, analytics and related fields. Such laws make it more difficult to recruit, retain and graduate students who reflect the diversity of communities that our universities serve. They discourage professors from engaging in teaching and research that can improve all lives, especially those in communities that have been harmed or neglected through public policy. These laws reflect a fear of open and critical discussion of history, privilege and harms. They persuade students and instructors that classroom activities that address inequities, bias or bigotry, or historical and current barriers to opportunity, are invalid if even one person feels harmed by the content. They submit dedicated university employees to uncertainty and potential unemployment for reasons completely unrelated to the quality of their work.

For example, these laws make it illegal for public colleges to:

• Establish and staff a DEI office, spend public funds on DEI programming or products and services for a DEI program or require participation in DEI programming (Arizona) [1].
• Require diversity training and statements or take statements from prospective professors relating to DEI into account when making employment decisions (South Carolina) [2].
• Require training that contains “specified concepts,” such as the notion that “an individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously” (North Dakota) [3].

In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis has signed a bill [4] making it illegal for public institutions to support, maintain or promote DEI programs and forbidding teaching concepts that endorse ‘identity politics’ or that are based on the premise that systemic racism, sexism, oppression and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States in general education courses. In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott has signed a bill [5] that does away with state funding to colleges and universities for “the design, implementation, or administration” of DEI programs.

What This Means for STEM

Some who are trained in STEM fields may think that DEI and racial and social justice are optional to our key academic activities. If so, please reconsider. Engineers trained to find solutions to challenging technical problems must ask themselves: Who are we solving problems for? Who will benefit? Who will be harmed? Management scholars must ask: On whose behalf are we optimizing our business structures? Developing new products? Training workforces? Mathematicians and computing scholars must ask: How do we decide what a good solution looks like? How fair are algorithms that are deployed in the public space with resource allocation decision implications? Is there a “best way” to formulate and solve optimization or computational problems?

“Diversity, equity and inclusion” is more than ensuring that our team has members from different groups or that we have completed mandatory training. It helps us clarify our core values, ensuring that our work in industry, academia and research can truly save lives, save money and reduce social inequities.

Higher education is intended to broaden minds and foster critical thinking, so defunding DEI offices makes it difficult to attract the best instructors and researchers. These detrimental laws will discourage students who need to report or want to talk about racism, discrimination and harassment or to discuss uncomfortable truths. The laws, combined with the recent Supreme Court decision outlawing most forms of affirmative action in university admissions [6], will make it more difficult for students to recognize themselves in their lecturers, instructors and academic programs.

What might our response be to these laws? We can resist them, actively and publicly, or covertly, at risk to our careers. We can accommodate their mandates, trimming our curricula, research programs or service activities to ensure that we do not cause offense. We can leave our institutions and choose other employers, communities or careers that are more accommodating of our values, as some families of LGBTQ people have done [7]. Or we could find ways to creatively engage with DEI that reflect our core values of free speech and accommodate our communities’ values, as Averie Bishop, a recent Miss Texas, has done [8]. We encourage all to ask ourselves individually, what do these laws mean for me? What will I do when subject to them? How can I protect students and communities most vulnerable to authoritarian thinking?

Author note. Thanks to Elham Hesari and Ruben Proano for their comments, suggestions and research and to multiple colleagues for their feedback.

References

1. https://legiscan.com/AZ/text/SB1694/id/2744059
2. https://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess125_2023-2024/bills/4289.htm
3. https://www.ndlegis.gov/assembly/68-2023/regular/documents/23-0417-02000.pdf
4. https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/266
5. https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/88R/billtext/pdf/SB00017I.pdf
6. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf
7. https://abcnews.go.com/US/genocidal-transgender-people-begin-flee-states-anti-lgbtq/story?id=99909913
8. https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/national/yall-means-all-miss-texas-fights-for-diversity/2023/06/29/958d38f9-cd8c-4648-b8c2-3eee94bbc4cd_video.html